Iran/US Nuclear Weapons Crisis.

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March 10, 2006

SouthAmerica: Condi asked for $75 million dollars request for Iran propaganda — the money would be used "to reach the Iranian people" through radio broadcasts, Web sites and other means.”

In the other hand, the Iranians will spend at least 100 times that amount to undermine everything the US is even dreaming of accomplishing in the entire Middle East.

The Iranians are giving a Check Mate to the US regarding its interference in Iran’s internal affairs and on US interference in the countries bordering Iran.

Regarding Condi Rice - All I can do is laugh about her performance as the US secretary of state.

Today the US has the most incompetent secretary of state in a long time – Condi Rice is a real joke – I have no idea why she has not been fired as yet.

Maybe after she helps start a new war against Iran?????

Quoting from today’s The New York Times article: “…During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on supplemental spending requests from the Departments of State and Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld was pressed repeatedly by the committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, not only to defend spending more money for the Iraq war, but also to defend the war itself.

Mr. Rumsfeld appeared with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and two top military commanders, but aside from some pointed questioning from Democrats, it was more or less a recitation of the administration's standard formulations on Iraq and, to some extent, Iran.

…She said the administration's $75 million request for Iran — would be used "to reach the Iranian people" through radio broadcasts, Web sites and other means.”

Two days ago Dick Cheney implied on his speech that the US might use force against Iran – regarding the latest US/Iran nuclear weapons crisis.

According to Dick Cheney and Condi Rice – Iran is the latest “Boogieman” that is going to get the United States.


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“Iraqi Forces Would Handle Any Civil War, Rumsfeld Says”
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times - March 10, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 9 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday that the United States would seek to avoid putting its forces in the middle of any civil war in Iraq, as he emphasized that America's goal was to prevent the violence from worsening into full-fledged sectarian fighting.

He said that in the event the violence descended into civil war, the American military would rely on Iraqi security forces.

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on supplemental spending requests from the Departments of State and Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld was pressed repeatedly by the committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, not only to defend spending more money for the Iraq war, but also to defend the war itself.

Mr. Rumsfeld appeared with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and two top military commanders, but aside from some pointed questioning from Democrats, it was more or less a recitation of the administration's standard formulations on Iraq and, to some extent, Iran.

"In recent days, Iraq has only narrowly missed descending into an all-out civil war, and top administration officials acknowledged that the threat of civil war is still very real," Mr. Byrd said.

"The Congress and the public have a right to know the administration's plans for Iraq before scores of additional billions of dollars, billions of dollars, are spent in that war."

He pressed Mr. Rumsfeld for assurances that any emergency money approved "won't be used to put our troops right in the middle of a full-blown Iraqi civil war."

"Senator, I can say that certainly it is not the intention of the military commanders to allow that to happen," Mr. Rumsfeld replied. "The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the — from a security standpoint — have the Iraqi security forces deal with it to the extent they're able to."

At the hearing, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said sectarian violence in Iraq was replacing the insurgency as the greatest threat to security and stability. He said Iraqi forces, with American support, could prevent civil war.

Security in Iraq ultimately requires a political, and not a military, solution, said the general, who leads Central Command. Ms. Rice, while not diminishing the importance of the level of violence in Iraq, said Iran might become an even bigger threat to national security.

"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," she said, describing that country's leadership as "the central banker for terrorism," an oppressor of its own people, a fomenter of unrest in the Middle East and a would-be nuclear power.

She said the administration's $75 million request for Iran — would be used "to reach the Iranian people" through radio broadcasts, Web sites and other means.


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March 10, 2006

SouthAmerica: I don’t know if Condi Rice has a clue about the past history of US interference on Iran’s internal affairs and the future consequences of those actions.

The United States never learn from past history and its own mistakes – and the US continues making the same mistakes - that is why today US foreign policy can be considered to be a case study of incompetence and arrogance.

Here is a reminder of what happened since the CIA overthrows the Iranian government in 1953:

A very happy group of men convened at the White House on Sept. 4, 1953, to hear a cloak-and-dagger story that would resonate through all of subsequent American history. Two weeks before, the Central Intelligence Agency had overthrown Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran. It was the first time the CIA had deposed a foreign leader, and on this day the agent who ran the operation, Kermit Roosevelt, was to explain how he did it.

Roosevelt's account of bribes, staged riots and artillery duels was almost too hair-raising to believe. It transfixed everyone in the room, including President Dwight Eisenhower, who later wrote that it "seemed more like a dime novel than historical facts." If there was a single moment when the United States can be said to have entered the modern era of covert action and regime change, this was it.

… Over the 50 years that have followed, driven by a combination of idealism and arrogance, successive American administrations have assumed the right to topple governments around the world. Only now, in the wake of the shocks that the world system has suffered in the last few years, is the full aftereffect of those operations being felt.

… Economic factors have often played a crucial role in American decisions to plot regime change. The target country almost always has a valuable resource that it is refusing to share on terms that the West considers fair. Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized Britain's fabulously lucrative Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and American leaders feared that if the nationalization were allowed to stand, it would set a dangerous precedent that could undermine corporate power around the world.

… In their eyes, every leader not explicitly tied to the United States was a potential enemy. Arbenz's sin, like Mossadegh's, was his insistence on embracing the domestic challenge of alleviating poverty rather than the global one of supporting Washington's anti-communist crusade.

…At a National Security Council meeting in March 1953, they gave him one asserting that communists "might easily take over" in Iran and deprive the West of "the enormous assets represented by Iranian oil production and reserves." Years later, however, retired American officials who were posted in Iran in 1953 told an American scholar, Mark J. Gasiorowski, that Iran's communist party "was really not very powerful, and that higher-level U.S. officials routinely exaggerated its strength and Mossadegh's reliance on it."

… From the perspective of 50 years of history, the horrific aftereffects of the 1953 Iran coup are becoming clear. That coup showed emerging leaders throughout the Middle East that the United States preferred strongman rule to democracy, a message that encouraged budding tyrants including Saddam Hussein. It also placed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi back on his throne, leading to 25 years of dictatorship that finally produced the Islamic Revolution of 1979. That revolution brought to power a band of militantly anti-Western clerics who not only sponsored acts of murderous terrorism against the United States but also inspired fundamentalist sects in other countries. Among those sects was the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, which gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and other violent fanatics.



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Rice: US faces “no greater challenge” than Iran.
CNN – March 9, 2006

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told senators Thursday that the United States faces "no greater challenge from a single country" than from Iran. Testifying before the Senate Appropriations ...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told senators Thursday that the United States faces "no greater challenge from a single country" than from Iran.

Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Rice said the Iranian government seems "determined ... to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance" of the international community.

She called the regime a "central banker" of terror, saying it plays roles in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. She also criticized its "terrible human rights record."

Rice appeared at the Senate hearing in support of an emergency spending bill that seeks $68 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $75 million to promote democracy in Iran.
She said the money would help the United States broadcast messages more effectively to Iranians and do innovative outreach, including developing Web sites.

Regarding the standoff over Iran's nuclear programs, Rice said the Iranian government "will be isolated if it continues down" its militant road, but that it was important the Iranian people not be cut off.

Also there to testify were Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command.

Meanwhile, Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, said the U.S. focus on Iran's nuclear programs was a "pretext" for what he called its "psychological war" against Iran and its Islamic system of government.

"Whenever the U.S. pretext lost its effect for any reason, immediately it brought up another one, given its belief that continued psychological war ... is the best way to confront the Islamic system," Khamenei said, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

Khamenei's remarks came a day after talks began among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council following a report by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei critical of Iran's nuclear programs.


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I think we should let Iran build as many nuclear bombs as they want to.

They won't use them. They have very nice humble individuals running
that country right now and they like Isreal very very much. In fact,
I think I heard they want to build maps or something for Israel.

Then again, I am as stupid as a horse...

 

Right. They only want to move Israel to Germany. Anything wrong with that? Maybe we could also move Texas to Iran?

 

Could we move this to chit-chat?

 

This is probably "the most" important issue facing the markets and the economy right now.

It should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

 

It is only a crisis if you watch Fox News.

 

Your Joking right?

A mad man 10x as crazy as So Damn Insane and Osama is going to be in control of a nuclear weapon within the next several months (unless stopped) and you have this attitude?

Hello



I just pray that the Israelis can stop him without US support.

This is SUPER SERIOUS

 

The markets don't seem to agree with you.

And I'm not saying the issue is not important. But whenever SouthAmerica posts his usual tirade, the thread goes right into oblivion. Hence, chit-chat.

 

ic....