Also sprach Pat Buchanan, one of the few independent voices in U.S. media and politics that does not kneel to AIPAC and to what he has called the “Israeli amen corner”. At issue is independence: the U.S. Congress (both houses) is doing the bidding of the Israeli right-wing prime minister, and acts against the long-term interests of the United States. This bill (S. 1881) would effectively make the Israeli politician the “decider” of war and peace for America.
Cheers
mhg
“A series of revelations about the rocket believed to have delivered poison sarin gas to a Damascus suburb last summer are challenging American intelligence assumptions about that attack and suggest that the case U.S. officials initially made for retaliatory military action was flawed. A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government…………..”
Could this be a case of déjà vu all over again (Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc)?Could we be revisiting the same story again this year or next in Iran? You betcha it could and we could.
Slick New Washington Battle Cry: Remember the Alamo? No, Remember Syria in Peoria……
Bashar Al Assad to the West on WMD: Show Me Yours, I’ll Show You Mine, L’affaire Dreyfus………
The Obama Wars: Set to Out-Bush, Out-Clinton, and Out-LBJ them all………
Grain of Salt? Saudi Arabia Claims Use of Chemical Weapons in Damascus……..
Bloomberg Columnist Knows not only that Assad Used WMD, but Which Airports his Bombers Used……..
Cheers
mhg
“When insurgents shot down a CH-47D Chinook helicopter carrying Navy SEALs over Afghanistan in 2011, it spawned myriad questions about who in the U.S. military and political establishment should be held accountable. But the families of several of the 38 men killed in that mission intend to take it a step farther, suing another entity more removed from the incident: Iran. Problem is, the families don’t at the moment have much in the way of direct evidence to implicate Iran in the shootdown. The families plan to name Tehran, two of its leaders — former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei — and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards among the defendants in a lawsuit seeking $600 million in damages………………”
Imagine if the family of every veteran who was ever wounded or killed in battle or in a terrorist attack decides to sue ‘somebody’ for it. Many thousands who died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. Many thousands of veterans who were wounded. It would be a mess. That ought to keep a lot of lawyers occupied.
This case is one hell of a stretch, but nothing new here. It seems that other parties in the USA have aspire to sue Iran for money, and have done so. And why not, and who needs real solid reasonable sensible evidence? There have been judges in recent years who ruled millions of Iranian dollars for American victims of Al Qaeda terrorism, under the pretext that “Saudi Arabia Iran supports Al Qaeda”! This is as sensible and reasonable as claiming that Jews supported Nazism. But hey, these honorable judges are just doing their job, and there is a lot of honorable frozen Iranian money to be had. There is plenty of easy money to be had.
BTW: How come nobody sues those princes and Wahhabi potentates who created, arm, lead, and finance Al Qaeda? And should the families of all those Afghans and Pakistanis and Yemenis who were collateral damage in the war against Al Qaeda terrorists decide to sue for the drones killing their relatives by mistake? And how much should they ask for? And what are their chances of a judge outside Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen ruling for them?
Here are some links to a few of my older posts on similar topics of ‘legal’ absurdity:
The Iran Embassy Plot and My old American History Professor, about the Maine……
Cheers
mhg
Video:
A Kenny G Holiday
“An American man who went missing in Iran more six years ago had been working for the CIA in what U.S. intelligence officials describe as a rogue operation that led to a major shake-up in the spy agency and his family receiving a secret, multimillion-dollar settlement. Bob Levinson, an ex-FBI agent, traveled to the Iranian Island of Kish in March 2007 to investigate corruption at a time when he was discussing the renewal of a CIA contract he had held for several years. He also inquired about getting reimbursed for the Iran trip by the agency before he departed, according to former and current U.S. intelligence officials. …………. But months after Levinson’s abduction, e-mails and other documents surfaced that suggested he had gone to Iran at the direction of certain CIA analysts who had no authority to run operations overseas…………….”
This has always seemed like a baffling case. I had thought there was something odd (rather fishy?) about Mr. Levinson’s case: it was never made clear who in Iran was holding him and why. For years both American and Iranian officials danced around the story of his disappearance gingerly, avoiding details. Odd that the Iranians, if they have him, did not announce it, given the series of assassinations of their scientists and academics in recent years. Given that they must have ‘interrogated’ him and got whatever he knows. And what about that odd picture in an ‘orange’ prison suit and chains and the brief message?
This story may explain part of the mystery, although it may be difficult convincing the Iranians that he was sent by “rogue” elements within the CIA. You see, Iranian officials are as ready to believe American officials as American officials are ready to believe Iranian officials. Hard to believe that the contempt is mutual, almost shocking, no?
Can there be more to this story, another angle not divulged? Some Iranians may think so. I suspect there is and I don’t even consider myself a conspiracy theorist. I just hope for his sake that it is not as bad as it can be.
Cheers
mhg
Video:
A Kenny G Holiday
“Under pressure from Congress to demonstrate that it is not easing up on sanctions on Iran’s oil sector or on its nuclear and missile programs, the Obama administration on Thursday announced an expanded list of Iranian companies and individuals that it said it would target to block their trading activities around the world. The administration’s announcement came shortly before Wendy Sherman, chief American negotiator on the Iran agreement, was scheduled to testify on the nuclear accord with Iran and the sanctions issues to the Senate Banking Committee…………….”
No profile in courage here, but then politics is not about courage, it never is. On the eve of expanded nuclear negotiations, the Obama administration tightens the blockade of Iran. Just to keep the hawkish Knesset in Washington (both Republicans and Democrats) at bay. To keep Ben Netanyahu’s groupies, his fan club, happy.
Cheers
mhg
Video:
A Kenny G Holiday
“An enthusiastic crowd all but crushed chief negotiator Mohammad Zarif upon his return to Tehran, after a deal had been reached with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. The foreign minister deserved a gold medal for his diplomatic skills, the Iranian newspaper Arman Daily wrote enthusiastically, noting that the world had come a step closer to global peace “without Iran having to abandon its principles.” The deal evoked a completely different reaction in Saudi Arabia and Israel. Abdullah al-Askar, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the influential Shura Council, spoke darkly of what he called Iran’s “evil agenda.”………………”
Chairman of the ‘Foreign affairs Committee’ indeed! I’d say this was a joke, if Wahhabis had a sense of humor.
Der Spiegel calls it “influential”. Nobody would seriously say this appointed advisory council, the Shura, is influential. It was appointed to rubber stamp some limited bureaucratic decisions of the princes. Der Spiegel would never call such an appointed impotent group influential if it were in another country.
Influential? In Arabic they say it is a “صفر على الشمال: a zero on the left side of a number”, meaning it is meaningless, null and void.
Cheers
mhg
This is what Saudi Prince Bandar wants the West to think of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran.
P.S.: he was apparently incognito (no, not that one: in disguise) when he wrote this piece for Foreign Policy. Or so I think. He even threatens that his family, the Al Saud, will go nuclear if a deal is finalized, meaning he will be a nuclear bomb from somewhere (Pakistan, North Korea, UmmAl-Quwain, Jordan, WTF……..). But that is also exactly what the Al Saud and their vast media mouthpieces had threatened to do if there was NO deal in Geneva.
On the other hand, that is also what Ben Netanyahu has been saying for two decades, that he will go nuclear, even more nuclear than he has been for some four decades. Could he be the writer in disguise?
Cheers
mhg
“If the negotiations don’t succeed — and clearly, Alwaleed sees no chance of success — then what? Anti-proliferation by force? I asked him if he thought the Arab states would actually back an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, if this terrible option should come to pass. “Publicly, they would be against it,” he said. “Privately, they would love it.” What about at the level of the so-called Arab street? “The Sunnis will love it,” he said, referring to the dominant branch of Islam, to which most Arab Muslims adhere. “The Sunni Muslim is very much anti-Shiite, and very much anti-, anti-, anti-Iran,” he said. You’re sure they loathe Iran more than they loathe Israel?……………..”
That other celebrity, that Kardashian celebrity chick could not have put it better than this celebrity prince. Or maybe she could. The Mufti Shaikh Al Al Shaikh himself could not have put it any better.
That is the problem with Western media: they like answers that they ‘like’ to hear. That is why they assume Wahhabi tribal Saudi princes speak for all Arabs, especially for all Sunni Arabs. That fits nicely with what they believe Arabs are, which most Arabs are not. Ask any Arab on the street (outside Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and their suburbs), ask from Baghdad to Cairo to Casablanca where the threat comes from, ask them what they think of Netanyahu (plus the Saudi princes) on one side and Rouhani on the other and the answer would shock any card-carrying AIPAC groupie member of the U.S. Congress (both chambers, both parties).
Saudi Arabia does not represent the Arabs, not even the Sunni Arabs, maybe just Wahhabi Arabs: it has only about 19 million citizens plus 9 million temporary foreign laborer and housemaids.
Al-Waleed is the prince who famously claimed that US support for Israel was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and prompted Mayor Rudi Giuliani (NYC) to return his check. That was in 2011, and I suspect if the check was made out to Giuliani personally he would not have returned it).
Prince Al-Waleed is always listed on the Forbes Magazine list of the richest people in the world. Forbes lists the source of his wealth as “self-made”. That is exactly what the enemies of Ali Baba, the forty men of the famous cave, thought of the source of their wealth and they were actually right. A few months ago Al-Waleed was reportedly suing Forbes Magazine for publicly underestimating his wealth by a couple of billions (and thus insulting all Arabs by downgrading the wealth of their betters and looters).
Cheers
mhg
“Nearly two thirds of Israeli Jews oppose a deal being reached between world powers and Iran on Tehran’s controversial nuclear program, the results of a survey published on Friday said. The survey also showed 52.4 percent supported an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in the event of a “bad deal” and if Tehran pursued its nuclear ambitions, while 26.8 percent said they would oppose such an attack. A strong majority of 68.8 percent said they believed the Israeli military was capable of going it alone in a strike on Iran. When asked: “Should Israel support or oppose the nuclear agreement being discussed with Iran?” 65.5 percent said they were against it………………..”
Israelis are supposed to be allegedly apparently the most educated people in the Middle East. Yet they are overwhelmingly against a potential nuclear deal that they know nothing about, yet. Except what their right-wing ‘leader’ tells them, and he doesn’t know much about it either. Which is not necessarily a sign of superior intelligence (self-claimed or otherwise), not necessarily.
Obviously a majority would support a war of aggression because they believe they can win it (which is also not necessarily a sign of superior intelligence either). On the other hand, why shouldn’t they? They have won every one of their wars against the Arabs, except the two against Lebanon and Hezbollah. Those two defeats (2000 and 2006) still rankle but, hey, it is not fun winning all the time. An occasional defeat can make things interesting.
Or maybe they know that Uncle Sam will intervene to help them once Ben Netanyahu starts his war of aggression and gets bogged down, big time. They know there are many in Washington who seem to have a strange proclivity for intervention and warring in Muslim lands. It is almost certain that many in the US Congress, possibly both Likud-nik houses, will assume these polls reflect their own American constituencies and vote for war. They almost have already.
Cheers
mhg
“Thursday, Nov. 14, Israel sent the White House in Washington a confidential document outlining blow by blow how and when Iran will attain a nuclear weapon if the Obama-Kerry strategy for dealing with the issue goes through. The document was addressed to the National Security Council headed by Susan Rice, debkafile reports. Communications between the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem and the State Department have almost petered out since exchanges between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State John Kerry sharpened in tone. Our Washington sources report that Rice and the NSC have taken a critical stand against the State Department’s policies – not just on the Iranian nuclear question……… It confines itself to a dry account, step by step, of how the Iranian nuclear bomb program will continue to unfold if the administration’s secret proposition is accepted…………….”
If we are to believe this Israeli media story, Ben Netanyahu’s Looney Tunes nuclear cartoons that traced Iran’s nuclear path at the UN General Assembly last year are back in circulation. They are now at the White House, in the hands of Susan Rice, allegedly known as more strongly pro-Israel than others. She is apparently a true believer in their veracity, possibly adding her own embellishments, possibly in colorful crayons. Possibly shoving the carrot into Bugs Bunny’s hand. No doubt the reception of this Looney Tunes document in Washington is much warmer than the hilarity of world-wide reaction last year after their UN debut.
Cheers
mhg