Iranian Revolutionary Guard Infiltrating Iraq Rumsfeld by Jim Mannion AFP Mar 07, 2006 Washington - US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Iran Tuesday of sending Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces into Iraq, and warned Tehran it was "an error in judgement. They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq, and we know it, and it is something that they will look back on as having been an error in judgement." Pressed to elaborate, Rumsfeld said the Iranians were putting "Quds force-type people," or Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces, into Iraq. "I don't think we could consider them religious pilgrims," Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld charges come amid heightened sectarian tension inside Iraq that have raised fears of civil war. At the same time, Washington is engaged in a sharpening diplomatic confrontation with Iran over suspicions it is developing nuclear weapons. Many Iraqi Shiite leaders, who are now locked in struggle with Sunnis and Kurds over the formation of a new government, have ties with Iran's ruling Shiite clergy that were forged in exile. But Rumsfeld said he believed the Shia see themselves as Iraqis first. "I think they are not going to be enamored of having help from across their border," he said. "So it is clearly a problem. Is it a threat to their security? Is it possible some more Iraqis will be killed? Sure," he said. General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said some improvised explosive devices and other weapons have been traced back to Iran. "The most recent reports have to do with individuals crossing the border into Iraq," he told reporters. Pace said he did not know whether the infiltrators had the backing of the Iranian government, nor could he say whether the flow of infiltrations is on the rise. But Rumsfeld said that "of course" the Iranian government was behind them. "The Iranian Revolutionary Guard doesn't go milling around willy-nilly, one would think," he said. Rumsfeld spoke at a Pentagon press conference in which he played down the risk of a full-blown civil war but accused the media of exaggerating the violence that followed the bombing of a revered Shiite mosque February 22. "The steady stream of errors all seem to be of a nature to inflame the situation and to give heart to the terrorists and to discourage those who hope for success in Iraq," he said. When pressed on whether he believed the media had fallen for a disinformation campaign, Rumsfeld said, "Oh, I can't go into people's minds. All I'm doing is reporting on what we've seen." However, the United States will wait and see before deciding on any further reductions in US forces in Iraq, which now number 132,000, he said. "We'll let this settle down and we see where we are," Rumsfeld said. General George Casey, the US commander in Iraq, was expected to make recommendations on force levels this month. He was scheduled to meet with President George W. Bush later this week. "I think that these things go in bursts, and the burst has passed. And it's been handled pretty well," Rumsfeld said. "And there will be another burst at some point down the road, simply because that's the nature of that part of the world and the situation." Comment: So, according to Rumsfeld, if there is civil war in Iraq, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the US occupation. It is because Saddam had a repressive regime and the Iranians are stoking the flames. Trouble is, there will be people who believe, and a compliant media that does nothing to show what a pack of lies it is. Think of how outrageous these lies are. Yet the psychopath can lie like he breathes, as naturally as possible. Until people are willing to stand up for the truth and demand an end to the lies, until people's lives are affected more directly - that is, until their lives fall apart - nothing will change. Rummy, Cheney, and much of the rest of the Bush gang have a long history of inventing threats to further their imperialist goals. See the following article...

Flashback: Rumsfeld and Cheney Revive Their 70's Terror Playbook By Thom Hartmann Common Dreams 13 Feb 06 Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are at it again. Last week, Rumsfeld told the press we should be preparing for "the Long War," saying of the war this administration has stirred up with its attack on Iraq that, "Just as the Cold War lasted a long time, this war is something that is not going to go away." The last time Rumsfeld talked like this was in the 1970s, in response to the danger of peace presented by Richard Nixon. In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called "détente." On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said: "Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world." But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? And how could billions of dollars taken as taxes from average working people be transferred to the companies that Rumsfeld and Cheney - and their cronies - would soon work for and/or run? Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear. They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with. The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone. As Dr. Anne Cahn, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1977 to 1980, told the BBC's Adam Curtis for his documentary "The Power of Nightmares": "They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, 'we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.' "INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence. "CAHN: Even though there was no evidence. "INTERVIEWER: So they’re saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn’t exist… "CAHN: Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it." But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good. Wolfowitz's group, known as "Team B," came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology. It could - within a matter of months - be off the coast of New York City with a nuclear warhead. Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of this powerful new Soviet WMD was unproven - they said the lack of proof proved the "undetectable" sub existed - they nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in military spending to selected defense contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan administration. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz helped re-organized a group - The Committee on the Present Danger - to promote their worldview. The Committee produced documentaries, publications, and provided guests for national talk shows and news reports. They worked hard to whip up fear and encourage increases in defense spending, particularly for sophisticated weapons systems offered by the defense contractors for whom many of these same men would later become lobbyists. And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in the United States, and making themselves and their defense contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world. Trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s about Soviet WMDs and the Soviet super-sub technology. Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any new and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that the Soviets were, in fact, decaying from within, ripe for collapse any time, regardless of what the US did - just as the CIA (and anybody who visited Soviet states - as I had - during that time could easily predict). The Soviet economic and political system wasn't working, and their military was disintegrating. But the Cold War was good for business, and good for the political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz to Cheney who have all become rich in part because of the arms industry. Today, making Americans terrified with their so-called "War On Terror" is the same strategy, run for many of the same reasons, by the same people. And by hyping it - and then invading Iraq to bring it into fruition - we may well be bringing into reality forces that previously existed only on the margins and with very little power to harm us. Most recently we've learned from former CIA National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia Paul Pillar that, just like in the 1970s, the CIA disagreed in 2002 with Rumsfeld and Cheney about an WMD threat - this time posed by Iraq - even as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz were telling America how afraid we should be of an eminent "mushroom cloud." We've seen this movie before. The last time, it cost our nation hundreds of billions of dollars, vastly enriched the cronies of these men, and ultimately helped bring Ronald Reagan to power. This time they've added on top of their crony enrichment program the burden of over 2200 dead American servicemen and women, tens of thousands wounded, as many as a hundred thousand dead Iraqis, and a level of worldwide instability not seen since the run-up to World War Two. When Hilary Clinton recently noted that the only political card Republicans are any longer capable of playing is the card of fear, she was spot-on right. They're now even running radio and TV commercials designed to terrorize our children ("Do you have a plan for a terrorist attack?"), the modern reincarnation of "Duck and Cover." Now that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has confessed that many of the terror alerts that continually popped up during the 2004 election campaign were, as USA Today noted on 10 May 2005, based on "flimsy evidence" or were >done over his objection at the insistence of "administration officials," it's increasingly clear that the Bush administration itself is the source of much of the "be afraid!" terror inflicted on US citizens over the past 5 years. It's time for patriotic Americans of all political affiliations, and for our media, to join with Senator Clinton, former CIA official Paul Pillar, and the many others who are pointing this out, and refuse to allow the Bush administration to inflict terror on Americans - and the world - for political gain. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address in 1932, when Americans were terrorized by the Republican Great Depression, the echoes of World War One, and the rise of Communism in Russia: This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. Indeed, the best hope for the growth of democracy around the world and the survival of individual liberty in the United States is for us to turn away from Rumsfeld's and Cheney's politics of terror and fear, and once again embrace the great vision of this nation, held by her great statesmen and women from 1776 to today. Indeed, they are still among us, as we saw most recently when a brave few senators stood up to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito. In this election year, we must redouble our efforts to swell their ranks, to involve ourselves in local and national political groups, and to return America to her destiny as the world's beacon of courage, liberty, and light. Thom Hartmann [thom (at) thomhartmann.com] is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated noon-3pm Eastern Time daily progressive talk show syndicated by Air America Radio. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent book is "What Would Jefferson Do?"

Shock and Awe; the Sequel by Mike Whitney OpEdNews.com March 8, 2006 The Bush administration has unilaterally repealed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) by demanding that Iran cease all uranium enrichment. This action overturns the central principle of the treaty which provides states with the "inalienable right" (NPT phrase) to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Two years of intrusive inspections by the UN watchdog agency (IAEA) have never produced "any evidence of nuclear weapons programs" or any diversion of nuclear material. Nevertheless, the US insists that Iran be deprived of the same right that is afforded to every other signatory of the NPT. What gives Washington the right to rescind an internationally-recognized treaty? White House press secretary Scott McClellan summarized the administration's view saying, "We've made it clear as have many in the international community that the regime must suspend all enrichment activity. It cannot be allowed to pursue enrichment in any capacity on any scale that would allow the regime to develop technologies needed to develop nuclear weapons." McClellan's comments are a clear violation of the letter and spirit of the treaty which is not intended to arbitrarily deprive any member of the advantages of nuclear technology. The administration's brazen declaration puts the onus on the 35-member board of the IAEA to reject the demands. Unfortunately, most of them are already cowed by the bullying tactics of the US. This tells us that the system is broken and cannot be expected to provide solutions to this or any of the other pressing issues that face the world community. The "superpower model" of governance allows one party to quash agreements on global warming, nuclear proliferation, chemical-biological weapons and anything else that isn't in its narrow, subjective interests. Will the member states cave in on these species-threatening issues too, simply to please Washington? The Iran Daily; 3-7-06 A last minute compromise by Iran's foreign-minister left IAEA-chief Muhammad ElBaradei believing that a negotiated settlement to the nuclear standoff was possible. "I am still very much hopeful that that in the next week or so an agreement can be reached," said ElBaradei. The administration crushed all hope of a settlement immediately. The US State Department dismissed Iran's concessions and pushed for a quick referral to the UN Security Council. Why? What's the hurry? Is the administration looking for solutions or are Pentagon planners operating on a tight timeline? Iran's last minute compromise put Condi Rice into a frenzy; firing off a panicky phone call to ElBaradei saying, "The United States cannot support this." Support what? Negotiation? Deliberation? Peace? ElBaradei had merely suggested that "the standoff with Iran could be resolved in a week or so". (NY Times) He was optimistic that a deal with Russia to enrich uranium outside of Iran would allay American fears of a hidden nuclear weapons program. Is that what made Condi so anxious? The US reaction is instructive in many ways, and seems to indicate that Bush and Co. may have scheduled hostilities for later this month. Certainly, the propaganda-campaign is already in full-swing with Condi, McClellan, Rumsfeld, Bolton, and Cheney all blasting-away at Iran in less than a 48 hours period. The media smokescreen has obscured Iran's attempts to build confidence by agreeing to forgo all "industrial scale" enrichment for two years even though it is allowed under the terms of the NPT. The strategy now is to divert attention from Iran's 'generous offer' and ratchet up the demagoguery to full-throttle. In the meantime, the State Dept has been busy moving the goalposts to ensure that Iran will reject its final offer. Right after ElBaradei expressed optimism about finding a solution, Undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns, pulled the rug out from under him saying, "The United States will not support any halfway measures. That means full suspension of all nuclear activities, and a return to negotiations on that basis." "Full suspension"? What right does the US have to ask for full suspension? This was the first time that US officials admitted they were repealing the NPT and brushing aside the counsel of the IAEA. Burns remarks confirm that the administration is bent on torpedoing the process. But how will Burns and Condi derail ElBaradei's efforts for peace? Well, for starters, the State Dept will have to make outrageous, unilateral demands that are so extreme that Iran will never agree to them. That way, the media can say that Iran is "defying the international community" and forcing a referral to the Security Council. The administration will insist that Iran agrees to a moratorium on production of enriched uranium, comply with additional "unspecified" protocols, and allow for "transparency measures" to accommodate future inspections. Sound familiar?" These are the same conditions that were placed on Saddam. Iran knows that the US will use these "transparency measures" to ferret through every inch of the country; rummaging through armories, military bases, palaces, barracks, private residences; anywhere that might annoy, provoke, humiliate or harass the current regime. Then, after months of microscopically-combing through every inch of Iranian sovereign territory, the flummoxed administration will invent some shaky pretext for invasion. True or false? Yesterday's ham-fisted maneuverings reveal the administration's true objectives. Bush would like to conceal his attack on Iran behind a mask of international legitimacy. But even without Security Council approval the plan will move forward. The current showdown has nothing to do with "noncompliance" or imaginary nuclear weapons programs. It has everything to do with consolidating the vast resources of the Caspian Basin under the Stars and Stripes and fending off future threats to America's global domination. Prepare for Shock-and-Awe "the Sequel" sometime in late March.

Knee-Jerk Liars: The Legend of United Flight 93 By Ted Rall 03/07/06 "ICH" -- -- NEW YORK--On the first anniversary of the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge delivered a speech at the site of the disaster in western Pennsylvania. "Faced with the most frightening circumstances one could possibly imagine," he told grieving relatives of the passengers and crewmembers aboard the fourth plane hijacked on 9/11, "they met the challenge like citizen soldiers, like Americans." He recited the now-familiar story of passengers learning by phone about the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, deciding to fight back and breaking into the cockpit--a heroic act that led to their own deaths while sparing countless others in Washington. "The terrorists were right to fear an uprising," Ridge rhapsodized. "The passengers and crew did whatever they humanly could--boil water, phone the authorities, and ultimately rush the cockpit to foil the attack." Ridge's boss repeatedly used United 93 to close his standard stump speech. Calling the passenger revolt "the most vivid and sad symbol of them all," George W. Bush said: "People are flying across the country on an airplane, at least they thought they were. They learned the plane was going to be used as a weapon. They got on their telephones. They were told the true story. Many of them told their loved ones goodbye. They said they loved them. They said a prayer; a prayer was said. One guy said, 'Let's roll.' They took the plane into the ground." The legend of Flight 93 had everything a nation caught with its pants down needed to feel better about itself: guts, heroism, self-sacrifice. Best of all, it was marketable--by Hollywood and by a president willing to surf on a kind of heroism notably absent from his own life. (Theatrical release of the second "United 93" movie is scheduled to open April 28.) Lisa Beamer, widow of the passenger credited with the call-to-arms "let's roll," wrote a bestselling book by the same name, applied for a trademark on the expression, and is now working the Christianist lecture circuit. Actually, the 9/11 Commission found, the evidence indicates that what Todd Beamer (or someone else) said was not "let's roll," but "roll it"--possibly referring to an airplane service cart the passengers may have wanted to use to break down the door into the cockpit. Too bad-. "Roll it" sounds less cinematic, and more like a book about cinematography. The first indication that government officials were covering up the truth about United 93 came with their refusal to make public the cockpit voice recording (CVR). Releasing CVRs after a crash has long been standard practice; pilots' last, usually profane, utterances have become a cliché. Yet the FBI stonewalled victims' relatives for months after 9/11. "While we empathize with the grieving families," assistant director John Collingwood wrote one widow, "we do not believe that the horror captured on the cockpit voice recording will console them in any way." And yet, if the tape contained inspiring proof of the passenger revolt and its success, it would have been one hell of a lot more consoling than Tom Ridge's oratory. Why not release it? Finally, after seven months of political pressure, the FBI allowed United 93 relatives to listen to the CVR. The feds told the families not to reveal what they'd heard. "They said the information on the tapes could be possibly used in the prosecution of [alleged "20th hijacker" Zacarias] Moussaoui, and anything that we say could affect the case in a negative way," said the brother of one of the victims. Though they studied the recording, the 9/11 Commission found zero evidence that the passenger revolt succeeded, that they made it into the cockpit and, as Bush claimed, "took the plane into the ground." Tom Kean & Co. offered only conjecture: "The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them." "Must have." At a time when war can be justified by waving around a bottle of fake anthrax on TV, "must have" is judged adequate proof. Another eyebrow-raising portion of the official account of Flight 93 states that "the passengers and flight crew began a series of calls from GTE airphones and cellular phones" after the hijacking. Ever forgotten to turn off your cellphone during a flight? I have. Try it yourself: Cellular telephone calls tend to drop when you're driving at 60 miles per hour; passenger jets travel up to ten times that speed. Moreover, there's zero signal, and thus no ability to place a call, above 8,000 feet. Flight 93, en route from Newark to San Francisco at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, dropped 700 feet when it was hijacked at 9:28 am. Cell calls? Not likely. The Bush Administration has alternately claimed that the White House, then the Capitol, and finally the White House again was the target of the Flight 93 hijackers. Sure, it's possible that the same terrorists who didn't know that New Yorkers don't start work until nine--the World Trade Center was struck at 8:42--wouldn't have thought to check Bush's schedule to find out whether he'd be home that morning. But if the White House was the objective, why not hit it first? After all, if Bush had been home when the news from New York first broke, he would have been whisked away to Dick Cheney's secret undisclosed location. If the government doesn't know what the target was, they shouldn't say that they do. What happened to United 93? There was almost certainly a passenger uprising. Did it succeed? Probably not. The 9/11 Commission Report says that "at some time between 10:10 and 10:15" Dick Cheney ordered the Air Force to shoot down the plane, which had turned east towards Washington. The plane had already crashed at 10:03. But the regional air traffic control center in Cleveland asked the FAA whether military fighter jets should be dispatched at flight at 9:36, giving the Air Force more than enough time to intercept before the fatal plunge into the field at Shanksville. Was United 93 shot down, despite the official story? Local media accounts offer some evidence of that possibility. The September 13, 2001 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, for example: "In a morning briefing, State Police Major Lyle Szupinka confirmed that debris from the plane had turned up in relatively far-flung sites, including the residential area of Indian Lake [two and a half miles from the crash site]." Flight 93 "headed down...rolled onto its back," and crashed, leaving a smoldering crater. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette again: "[Indian Lake marina employee John] Fleegle said he climbed on the roof of an abandoned cabin and tossed down a burning seat cushion that had landed there. By Wednesday morning, crash debris began washing ashore at the marina. Fleegle said there was something that looked like a rib bone amid pieces of seats, small chunks of melted plastic and checks." Seats and bones don't fly two and a half miles from a crash. Their location could indicate an initial explosion, such as that from a missile hitting a plane. If the Air Force shot down Flight 93 to protect the capital, it was the only time on 9/11, or since, that the Bush Administration has done something to keep America safe. Whether they were concerned about being second-guessed or for the financial health of the airline industry, we'll never know. We do know that they've become knee-jerk liars, even covering up the rare occasions when they do something right. Perhaps they don't really know what happened up there. If so, they ought to say that rather than promote more fairy tales about Flight 93. The passengers did try. The only thing that takes away from their heroism is Bush's lies. So. Now that Zacarias Moussauoi has been convicted, where's that tape? (Ted Rall is the editor of "Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists," an anthology of webcartoons which will be published in May.) Comment: And what if the reason Flight 93 was shot down was to cover up the fact that there were no "Arab terrorists" on the flight?