May 9. I read tonight a brief article by Philip Giraldi posted on the American Conservative website: “War with Iran Might Be Closer than You Think.”

“There is considerable speculation,” writes the former CIA officer, “and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods [Revolutionary Guards]-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants. The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran.”

Giraldi provides details. He reports that the meeting came as “the direct result” of Hizbollah advances in Lebanon in recent days. (Recall that the U.S. State Department lists the Shiite organization Hizbollah as “terrorist” and as a tool of both Iran and Baathist Syria. In fact it is probably the country’s largest and most popular political party and has built significant ties with some Christian and Sunni groups. Hizbollah’s rapid seizure of the Muslim sections of Beirut, accomplished with little resistance, may have been deliberately provoked by the U.S.-backed quasi-government of Lebanon when the latter shut down the party’s private communications network.) Read more »

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration appears set to offer Israel a powerful radar system that could greatly boost Israeli defenses against enemy ballistic missiles while tying it directly into a growing U.S. missile shield.

President George W. Bush is expected to discuss the matter during a visit to Israel on Wednesday to mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state amid mounting U.S. concerns about perceived threats from Iran, people familiar with the matter said.

This is “probably the No. 2 issue” on Bush’s agenda for the visit, second only to the Middle East peace process, said Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican who has spearheaded calls in Congress for tighter U.S. missile-defence ties with Israel. Read more »

Former top US diplomat John Bolton calls for military strikes on Iran, claiming they will serve as a major step toward a victory in Iraq. 

The former American ambassador to the UN told Fox News that while there is a risk of a hostile Iranian response - in case of a US strike on Iran -, Washington would be in more trouble than it already is in if no action is taken against Tehran.

Bolton’s remarks come at a time when the White House is making a fresh stream of allegations regarding ‘Iran’s influence in Iraq’. Read more »

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq would make it difficult to mount any attack on Iran, the Pentagon’s top officer said in remarks broadcast on Monday, adding that he would prefer to avoid a new regional war.

I actually am very hopeful that we don’t get into a position where we have to get into a conflict,” Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Israel’s Channel Ten television when asked if he might recommend that U.S. forces strike Iranian nuclear facilities preemptively. Read more »

Iran said Monday it would not hold a new round of talks with the U.S. on security in Iraq until American forces end their current assault against Shiite militias.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have been battling supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and Iraq’s government spokesman said Sunday that the crackdown would continue even if Iran pulled out of the talks.

“We believe the talks will not be held given the current situation (in Iraq),” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters during his weekly press briefing Monday. Read more »

 Four years after after an urgent bulletin issued by the U.S. Army — with the headline ‘The Unexpected Killer’ — at least two more soldiers have been electrocuted, according to Pentagon and Congressional investigators.

The Defense Contract Management Agency tasked with supervising maintenance work by contractors at American bases in Iraq attempted to defend itself in a written statement as did KBR, which until just last year was known as Kellogg, Brown and Root and was a subsidiary of Halliburton.

From Sunday’s NYT:

“The Defense Contract Management Agency, which is responsible for supervising maintenance work by contractors at American bases in Iraq, defended its performance. In a written statement, the agency said it had no information that staff members “were aware” of the Army alert or “failed to take appropriate action in response to unsafe conditions brought to our attention.” Read more »

Theft, hookers, melting down Iraqi gold to make cowboy spurs—all in a day’s work for private military contractors in Iraq? Allegations of widespread mismanagement and corruption among private contractors in Iraq are nothing new; if anything, tales of cronyism, over-billing, and embezzlement have become so frequent that our national tolerance for them seems only to have increased as the Iraq War has drawn on. Even so, the testimony earlier this week of three whistleblowers before the Senate’s Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) stands out for the sheer outrageousness of their accusations—namely that U.S. private contractors looted Iraqi palaces and ministries, stole military equipment, fenced supplies destined for U.S. troops, and even operated a prostitution ring that may have contributed to the death of fellow contractor. Yet despite its focus on such salacious matters as sex and corruption, the session earned little media attention. Source>>>

President Bush sent lawmakers a $70 billion request Friday to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring, which would give the next president breathing room to make his or her own war policy.

Friday’s request fills in the details of the $70 billion placeholder that the White House asked for when it sent its budget to Congress in February. The money is for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

Congressional analysts say Bush’s request would bring the total spending since Sept. 11, 2001, to fight terrorism and conduct the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to $875 billion. Read more »

(CNN) — Efraim Diveroli’s father hoped his son would become “a nice Jewish doctor or lawyer”.

What he got instead is a 22-year-old international arms dealer who faces a congressional inquiry for allegedly selling old Chinese ammunition to the U.S. military to equip allies in Afghanistan.

Diveroli is president of AEY Inc., a South Florida company which, according to U.S. government documents, has done more than $10 million of business with the U.S. government since 2004.

The papers also reveal the company struck it big in 2007 with contracts totaling more than $200 million to supply ammunition, assault rifles and other weapons to the Afghan National Army and police. The company’s contract said it would get the ammunition from Hungary.

Read more »

As the calendar reads September 23, 1980, Iran recalls the spirit of its mythical archer and hero, Arash Kamangir, to launch Operation Kaman 99, its largest ever Air Force retaliation against US-backed dictator Saddam Hussein, just a day after Iraq launched surprise aerial attacks on the Islamic Republic.

On September 22, 1980, a war-experienced Iraq initiated massive air strikes on strategic locations in the newly-established Islamic Republic of Iran in the hope of crippling the country’s Air Force and gaining air supremacy.

At 1:45 pm local time, 6 Mig-23 fighter jets bombarded an airbase near Ahvaz in Iran’s southwestern province of Khuzestan. Read more »

“Days later, Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memorandum distilling their collective guidance into bullet points. Two were underlined:

‘Focus on the Global War on Terror - not simply Iraq. The wider war - the long war.’

‘Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.’ “ Read more »

Ray McGovern, a prominent former CIA analyst, says US President George W. Bush is planning to wage a military attack on Iran this year.

McGovern who has been a CIA officer under seven US presidents–presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House for many of them–believes President Bush and his administration have no intention of leaving Iraq and are preparing to attack Iran in the next few months.

“I believe George Bush and Dick Cheney plan to take care of Iran before they leave office,” the former CIA official said in an interview with Charleston Gazette, which was published on Wednesday. Read more »

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran, OPEC’s second-largest producer, has stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars, a top Oil Ministry official said Wednesday, in a concerted attempt to reduce reliance on Washington at a time of tension over Tehran’s nuclear program and suspected involvement in Iraq.

Iran has dramatically reduced dependence on the dollar over the past year in the face of increasing U.S. pressure on its financial system and the fall in the value of the American currency.

Oil is priced in dollars on the world market, and the currency’s depreciation has concerned producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and eroded the value of their dollar reserves.

Read more »

Syria’s president scoffed at U.S. claims that his country was building a nuclear reactor at a site attacked by Israel seven months ago, according to excerpts of an interview published Friday.

President Bashar Assad questioned the logic of such allegations and insisted that the site was an unused military facility.

“Is it logical for a nuclear site to be left without protection and not guarded by anti-aircraft guns?” Assad told the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan. Read more »

The Bush Regime has quagmired America into a sixth year of war in Afghanistan and Iraq with no end in sight.  The cost of these wars of aggression is horrendous.  Official US combat casualties stand at 4,538 dead.  Officially, 29,780 US troops have been wounded in Iraq. Experts have argued that these numbers are understatements. Regardless, these numbers are only the tip of the iceberg. On April 17, 2008, AP News reported that a new study released by the RAND Corporation concludes that “some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries.” Read more »

A BRITISH foreign minister said US Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons was imprudent.

Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, a former United Nations deputy secretary-general and the foreign office minister responsible for Asia, questioned the comments by the New York senator, made in an interview broadcast yesterday.

“While it is reasonable to warn Iran of the consequence of it continuing to develop nuclear weapons and what those real consequences bring to its security, it is not probably prudent … in today’s world to threaten to obliterate any other country and in many cases civilians resident in such a country,” he said. Read more »

PENTAGON (AP) — A top military officer says the Army’s “stop-loss” program will remain in place at least until the fall of next year. Lieutenant General James Thurman, the deputy chief of staff for Army operations, says he hopes to see demand for troops drop enough by the fall of 2009 that the controversial program will end.

Thurman says there are currently 12,000 troops who have been forced to stay in the service beyond their retirement or re-enlistment dates. Critics call “stop-loss” a “backdoor draft.” SOURCE>>>

By Patrick Buchanan 

Iran is conducting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq, declared Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week.

How? Gen. David Petraeus explained. The Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah are arming, training and directing the Shia militia fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces in Basra and firing rockets into the Green Zone. Said Petraeus, the Quds Force is responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers.

If true, these are acts of war from a privileged sanctuary. And Bush would be as justified in attacking these Iranian base camps as was Nixon in ordering U.S. forces to clean out the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia. Read more »

Under pressure to meet combat needs, the Army and Marine Corps brought in significantly more recruits with felony convictions last year than in 2006, including some with manslaughter and sex crime convictions.

Data released by a congressional committee shows the number of soldiers admitted to the Army with felony records jumped from 249 in 2006 to 511 in 2007. And the number of Marines with felonies rose from 208 to 350.

Those numbers represent a fraction of the more than 180,000 recruits brought in by the active duty Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines during the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2007. But they highlight a trend that has raised concerns both within the military and on Capitol Hill. Read more »

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Henry Carroll got into trouble with the county when he agreed to look after his son Adam’s two dogs. Carroll’s son is overseas fighting in Iraq. The soldier is scheduled to return home in December, and his father says he is determined to make sure that when his son returns from his tour of duty, the dogs are waiting for him.

Carroll already had three dogs of his own. With five dogs, the county said he had two dogs too many.

Carroll got the army to write a letter saying two of the dogs belonged to his son, but county officials didn’t buy it. They said, “Since Adam didn’t sign it, it really might not be valid because it was signed by his platoon leader.” STORY>>>

Forced to leave the combat zone after his two brothers died in the Iraq war, Army Spc. Jason Hubbard faced another battle once he returned home: The military cut off his family’s health care, stopped his G.I. educational subsidies and wanted him to repay his sign-up bonus.

It wasn’t until Hubbard petitioned his local congressman that he was able to restore some of his benefits.

Now that congressman, Rep. Devin Nunes, is leading an effort to pass a bill that would ensure basic benefits to all soldiers who are discharged under an Army policy governing sole surviving siblings and children of soldiers killed in combat. The rule is a holdover from World War II meant to protect the rights of service people who have lost a family member to war. Read more »

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said Wednesday it was “speechless” after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced doubts about the accepted version of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

“I am not sure what you say about a statement like that. It leaves one speechless,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

“It is just misguided, misinformed rhetoric,” McCormack said.

“I cannot tell whether or not it is something that he truly believes or if this is just an attempt to try to shake up public opinion in Iran or elsewhere,” McCormack said. Read more »

The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” Ma’ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events “swung American public opinion in our favor.” Read more »

Contrary to some claims that the Bush administration will allow diplomacy to handle Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a leading member of America’s Jewish community tells Newsmax that a military strike is not only on the table – but likely.

“Israel is preparing for heavy casualties,” the source said, suggesting that although Israel will not take part in the strike, it is expecting to be the target of Iranian retribution.

“Look at Dick Cheney’s recent trip through the Middle East as preparation for the U.S. attack,” the source said.

Cheney’s hastily arranged 9-day visit to the region, which began on March 16, included stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, Turkey, and the Palestinian territories. Read more »

Iran will respond to any military attack from Israel by “eliminating” the Jewish state, a senior army commander said on Tuesday.

Deputy commander-in-chief Mohammad Reza Ashtiani was echoing Iran’s late leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who said Israel should be wiped off the map.

Some analysts have speculated that Israel might attack Iran to stop its nuclear activities, which the West fears are a front for weapons development. Iran, which does not recognize Israel, insists it wants nuclear technology only for electricity. Read more »

The Iraq war has featured a changing cast of U.S. adversaries. Saddam Hussein. Sunni insurgents. Foreign fighters. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

In the latest shift, the two top U.S. officials in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, focused in this week’s congressional testimony on “special groups”  —  Iranian-backed militias  —  as the greatest long-term threat to Iraqi democracy.

On Thursday, President Bush endorsed the officials’ troop recommendations and again recast the enemy. Iraq, he said toward the end of his speech, is “the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century: al-Qaeda and Iran.” Read more »

A Texas sergeant and his son recently found themselves separated not only by an eight-hour time difference, several bodies of water, thousands of miles and a war, but by a high school official who suspended the boy for answering his dad’s call during class.

Cove High School in Texas, where half the students have at least one parent deployed, justified the punishment against Branden Hill by saying he had violated the no-cell phone policy when he took the call from his father, who is serving in Iraq. SOURCE>>>

The neocons may yet get their war on Iran.

Ever since President Nouri al-Maliki ordered the attacks in Basra on the Mahdi Army, Gen. David Petraeus has been laying the predicate for U.S. air strikes on Iran and a wider war in the Middle East.

Iran, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee, has “fueled the recent violence in a particularly damaging way through its lethal support of the special groups.”

These “special groups” are “funded, trained, armed and directed by Iran’s Quds Force with help from Lebanese Hezbollah. It was these groups that launched Iranian rockets and mortar rounds at Iraq’s seat of government (the Green Zone) … causing loss of innocent life and fear in the capital.” Read more »

The Academic General by Charley Reese

I mean no disrespect, but Gen. David Petraeus is overrated. I don’t for a second question his intelligence, patriotism or courage. He just has had the misfortune of coming along at a time when the Pentagon hands out generals’ stars and decorations like Mardi Gras beads.

He has medals (commonly called a “fruit salad”) from his collarbone almost to his bellybutton, yet he has seen very, very little combat. If you read his resume, he has been mostly a desk jockey. Again, the medals aren’t his fault. The politicians in Washington, those in and those out of uniform, have cheapened them all by too generously handing them out for too little in the way of accomplishments.

..Last week, he went before the sycophants in Congress, resplendent with four stars and all his medals, telling them that when the Iraqi army is trained and able to take over … WHOA! Stop the tape. How long have we been hearing this? No army in the world has been trained longer than the Iraqi army. If Iraqi soldiers don’t take the field pretty soon, they will all be too old. READ ARTICLE>>>>>>>>>

The military is full of thieves.  One proposed solution is to make more laws restricting what citizens can own.  Just what we need…… 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sensitive and stolen U.S. military items are being sold on eBay and Craigslist, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

Government investigators posing as buyers were able to purchase a dozen prohibited military items on the popular online selling sites. The report notes that the items purchased could easily have been shipped overseas and “used directly against our troops and allies.”

Read more »

WAR IN IRAQ By Bob Finch

There is no such thing as an American empire. America does not have an empire. On the contrary, America has become part of the Jewish empire which dictates America’s domestic and foreign policies. The policies that America is pursuing in the middle east have nothing to do with America’s national interests — on the contrary, over the last four decades it has been forced to fight the wars on behalf of its Jewish master.

READ MORE>>>

Five years ago, the US government presented what it said was proof that Iraq harbored biological weapons. The information came from a source developed by German intelligence — and it turned out to be disastrously wrong. But to this day Germany denies any responsibility.

If your looking to hide out from the rest of the world, the grayish white residential block in this southern German city would be a good place to be. Six families live here, most of them with children, and the building blends inconspicuously into the dull suburban skyline. A green toy tractor is parked out front, the bicycles have baby trailers, one of them complete with an American flag fluttering in the breeze. On a mailbox hanging outside the building’s entrance, the name Rafed has been scrawled in pale green handwriting — difficult to read , but decipherable from up close. FULL STORY>>>

Russian president challenges US policy towards Iran, says Tehran should not be isolated. BUCHAREST - Russian President Vladimir Putin challenged US policy toward Iran on Friday and said that the Islamic republic should be helped to emerge from isolation, instead of being threatened. “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the United States,” a source in the Russian delegation at the NATO-Russia summit in Bucharest quoted Putin as telling leaders. Read more »

The stories are shocking in their simplicity and brutality: A female military recruit is pinned down at knifepoint and raped repeatedly in her own barracks. Her attackers hid their faces but she identified them by their uniforms; they were her fellow soldiers. During a routine gynecological exam, a female soldier is attacked and raped by her military physician. Yet another young soldier, still adapting to life in a war zone, is raped by her commanding officer. Afraid for her standing in her unit, she feels she has nowhere to turn.

These are true stories, and, sadly, not isolated incidents. Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq. Read more »

MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran’s borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

“The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran,” the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran “that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost.” Read more »

« Previous entries