RhetIraq

Who: Tony Blair, British Prime Minister
Source: The Scotsman
Quotes: From article titled, "Blair refuses to back Iran strike"

TONY Blair has told George Bush that Britain cannot offer military support to any strike on Iran, regardless of whether the move wins the backing of the international community, government sources claimed yesterday.

Amid increasing tension over Tehran's attempts to develop a military nuclear capacity, the Prime Minister has laid bare the limits of his support for President Bush, who is believed to be considering an assault on Iran, Foreign Office sources revealed.

"We will support the diplomatic moves, at best," a Foreign Office source told Scotland on Sunday. "But we cannot commit our own resources to a military strike."

Source: The New York Times via Information Clearing House
Quotes: From article titled, "Analysts Say a Nuclear Iran Is Years Away"

Western nuclear analysts said yesterday that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions, even as a senior Iranian official said Iran would defy international pressure and rapidly expand its ability to enrich uranium for fuel.

The official, Muhammad Saeedi, the deputy head of Iran's atomic energy organization, said Iran would push quickly to put 54,000 centrifuges on line — a vast increase from the 164 the Iranians said Tuesday that they had used to enrich uranium to levels that could fuel a nuclear reactor.

Still, nuclear analysts called the claims exaggerated. They said nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020.

The head of Russia's nuclear agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, today flatly declared that Mr. Saeedi's plans for a quick increase in production was not realistic.

"Industrial uranium enrichment is out of the question," given the state of Iran's program, he told Russia's official news agency.

Still, Iran's announcement brought criticism from several Western nations and to a lesser degree from Russia and China. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for "strong steps" against Iran, using the country's clear statement of defiance to persuade reluctant countries like Russia and China to support tough international penalties.

But Russian officials said they had not changed their opposition to such penalties. Nuclear analysts said Iran's boast that it had enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges meant that it had now moved one small but significant step beyond what it had been ready to do nearly three years ago, when it agreed to suspend enrichment while negotiating the fate of its nuclear program.

"They're hyping it," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, a private group that monitors the Iranian nuclear program. Anthony H. Cordesman and Khalid R. al-Rodhan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington called the new Iranian claims "little more than vacuous political posturing" meant to promote Iranian nationalism and a global sense of atomic inevitability.

The nuclear experts said Iran's claim yesterday that it would mass-produce 54,000 centrifuges echoed boasts that it made years ago. Even so, they noted, the Islamic state still lacked the parts and materials to make droves of the highly complex machines, which can spin uranium into fuel rich enough for use in nuclear reactors or atom bombs.

It took Tehran 21 years of planning and 7 years of sporadic experiments, mostly in secret, to reach its current ability to link 164 spinning centrifuges in what nuclear experts call a cascade. Now, the analysts said, Tehran has to achieve not only consistent results around the clock for many months and years but even higher degrees of precision and mass production. It is as if Iran, having mastered a difficult musical instrument, now faces the challenge of making thousands of them and creating a very large orchestra that always plays in tune and in unison.

Yesterday, Mr. Saeedi, the Iranian nuclear official, said Iran was moving rapidly toward its atomic goals. "We will expand uranium enrichment to industrial scale at Natanz," he was quoted as saying by the ISNA student news agency in a reference to Iran's main enrichment facility. Mr. Saeedi said Iran would start operating the first of 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz by late 2006, with further expansion to 54,000 centrifuges. "We have no problem in doing that," he told ISNA. "We just need to increase our production lines."

The news from Iran, which holds 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, has made oil markets very nervous in recent days and contributed to a spike in oil prices to nearly $70 a barrel on Tuesday. Oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange closed at $68.62 a barrel yesterday, just $2 short of their record after Hurricane Katrina.

The Russian stance against penalties highlighted the obstacles Washington faces in its effort to force a halt to Iran's nuclear program. A senior aide to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said yesterday that any effort to employ broad penalties against Tehran would backfire because "Iran's current president will use them for his benefit, and he will use them to consolidate public opinion around him."

China announced today that it is sending a high-level envoy to Tehran and Moscow for talks on the issue, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. "China is concerned about the statement by the Iranian side and is worried about the way in which things are developing," said Liu Jianchao, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.

The United States is urging members of the United Nations Security Council to approve travel and financial restrictions on Iran's leaders, and administration officials view Russia, which has close trade ties to Iran, as the linchpin of those efforts.

Ms. Rice said yesterday that the Security Council must consider "strong steps" to induce Iran to change course. "The Security Council will need to take into consideration this move by Iran," she said about Tuesday's announcement. "It will be time when it reconvenes on this case for strong steps to make certain that we maintain the credibility of the international community."

In Iran on Tuesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in an elaborate ceremony that Iranian scientists had enriched uranium to 3.5 percent — a level of purity that, if enough could be made, might fuel a nuclear reactor. While Iran hailed the step as a first, the nuclear experts said Tehran had in fact been doing periodic enrichment experiments with centrifuges for seven years, since 1999.

Amid the tensions, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran yesterday for talks with Iranian nuclear officials. Despite the provocative nature of Iran's statements, he still held out hope that the government could be persuaded to compromise. "We hope to convince Iran to take confidence-building measures including suspension of uranium enrichment activities until outstanding issues are clarified," Dr. ElBaradei told journalists at the Tehran airport, Reuters reported.

Mr. Ahmadenijad today declared that Iran would refuse to talk with Mr. ElBaradei about its right to perform enrichment, and lashed out again at Western critics. "Our answer to those who are angry about Iran obtaining the full nuclear cycle is one phrase, we say: Be angry and die of this anger," he said, according to the BBC.

Iran's state-run television was dominated by programs about the atomic claim in what seemed like an organized effort to mobilize public support for the nuclear program. One channel showed a reporter stopping people on the street to ask if they had bought pastry to celebrate the news. Another showed nuclear sites and uranium mines. Television news said schools celebrated the success and rebroadcast the announcement of Iran's president hailing the enrichment step.

Mr. Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security said he was not surprised that the Iranians had got a group of 164 centrifuges up and running and had begun to introduce uranium gas into them for enrichment.

"There's still a lot they have to do," he said, to perfect the operation of the cascade of centrifuges. A report that he and his colleagues made public late last month suggested that Iran would need 6 to 12 months to master that process, and Mr. Albright said in an interview that he stood by that rough estimate as accurate.

His March report said Iran had parts for perhaps 1,000 or 2,000 centrifuges beyond the ones already in operation, and that Iran is not likely to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon until 2009 at the earliest.

In Pakistan, Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told a news conference at the American embassy in Islamabad that military action against Iran was unlikely, Reuters reported.

Mr. Hagel said that President Bush was committed to pursuing a diplomatic solution. Mr. Bush on Monday called news reports of planning for airstrikes against Iran "wild speculation" and stressed that he would push hard for a peaceful resolution.

Mr. Hagel said that for him to comment on military action would also be "complete speculation."

"But I would say that a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible option," he said.

Who: Robert Scheer, Syndicated Columnist
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Quotes: From article titled, "Now Powell tells us"

On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us.

The specter of the Iraqi nuclear threat was primarily based on an already-discredited claim that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes for the purpose of making nuclear weapons. In fact, at the time, the INR wrote in the National Intelligence Estimate that it "accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose."

In excerpts [of the Iraq NIE] later made available to the public, it is clear that the Niger claim doesn't even appear as a key finding in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, while the INR dissent in that document dismisses it curtly: "[T]he claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment highly dubious."

I queried Powell at a reception following a talk he gave in Los Angeles on Monday. Pointing out that the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate showed that his State Department had gotten it right on the nonexistent Iraq nuclear threat, I asked why did the president ignore that wisdom in his stated case for the invasion?

"The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote," Powell said. And the Niger reference in Bush's State of the Union speech? "That was a big mistake," he said. "It should never have been in the speech. I didn't need Wilson to tell me that there wasn't a Niger connection. He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. I never believed it."

When I pressed further as to why the president played up the Iraq nuclear threat, Powell said it wasn't the president: "That was all Cheney." A convenient response for a Bush family loyalist, perhaps, but it begs the question of how the president came to be a captive of his vice president's fantasies.

More important: Why was this doubt, on the part of the secretary of state and others, about the salient facts justifying the invasion of Iraq kept from the public until we heard the truth from whistle-blower Wilson, whose credibility the president then sought to destroy?

In matters of national security, when a president leaks, he lies.

By selectively releasing classified information to suit his political purposes, as President Bush did in this case, he is denying that there was a valid basis for keeping the intelligence findings secret in the first place. "We ought to get to the bottom of it, so it can be evaluated by the American people," said Sen. Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I couldn't have put it any better.

Who: Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll
Source: Los Angeles Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Doubts About Taking On Tehran"

Asked whether they would support military action if Iran continued to produce material that could be used to develop nuclear weapons, 48% of the poll's respondents, or almost half, said yes; 40% said no.

[Blogger's Note: Iran has yet to produce material that could be used to develop nuclear weapons making this a very provocative and misleading question.]

A majority of respondents, 61%, said they believed that Iran would eventually get nuclear weapons. Fifteen percent said they believed that Iran would be prevented from developing nuclear weapons through diplomatic negotiations, and 12% said they thought Iran would be stopped through military action.

In a telling reflection of Bush's erosion in public support, 54% said they did not trust him to "make the right decision about whether we should go to war with Iran," while 42% of respondents said they trusted him to do so.

That was a reversal of public sentiment since 2003, on the eve of Bush's decision to invade Iraq, when 55% of respondents said they trusted him to make the right decision over whether to go to war.

The poll found that two in five Americans, or 40%, said the war in Iraq had made them less supportive of military action against Iran; about the same proportion, 38%, said the experience of Iraq had no influence on their views of Iran. By a ratio of more than 3-to-1, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say that Iraq had made them less supportive of action in Iran.

On Iraq, the poll found that Americans had become markedly more pessimistic about the chances of success in the war since the beginning of this year.

About one in four respondents, or 23%, said they expected the situation in Iraq to "get better" over the coming year. In the Times/Bloomberg poll conducted in January, 34% said they expected the situation to improve.

Most of that decline in overall confidence came from respondents who described themselves as Democrats; 6% in this month's poll said they expected things to improve over the coming year, down from 24% in January. But Republicans' optimism also dropped, to 44% this month from 55% in January.

A majority of respondents, 56%, said they believed Iraq was "currently engaged in a civil war." And a record high number for the Times poll, 58%, said they believed it was not worth going to war in Iraq. Until the spring of 2004, a majority of poll respondents said it was worth going to war, but since 2004 the number disagreeing has gradually risen.

Almost half, 45%, of those polled this month said they believed Bush should set a date for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of his term in 2009. That is a significant increase since October 2004, when a similar question was asked and 28% said Bush should set a definite date for withdrawal.

When asked what the United States should do if the violence in Iraq turned into "a nationwide civil war," about one-third, or 32%, said all American troops should be withdrawn. About the same proportion, 33%, said U.S. troops should remain neutral and attempt to mediate. One-fourth, or 25%, said U.S. troops should intervene in the violence — either to stop the fighting or to help one side win (the latter a minority opinion that measured at 6%).

Options in Iran

Q: Do you think Iran will be stopped from getting nuclear weapons through diplomatic solutions, or only through military action, or will it eventually get nuclear weapons?

Will eventually get nuclear weapons: 61%
Diplomatic solutions: 15%
Military action: 12%
Don't know: 12%

--

Q: Suppose George W. Bush decides to order military action against Iran, which action would you support:

Airstrikes/no ground troops: 44%

No military action: 20%
Combination of airstrikes and ground troops: 19%
Ground troops: 6%
Don't know: 11%

--

Q: If Iran continued to produce material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons, would you support or oppose military action?

Support : 48%
Oppose : 40%
Don't know: 12%

--

Q: Would you trust George W. Bush to make the right decision about whether we should go to war with Iran?

Yes: 42%
No: 54%
Don't know: 4%

Source: Associated Press via Yahoo News
Quotes: From article titled, "Government Spending Hits Record in March"

Government spending hit an all-time high for a single month in March, pushing the budget deficit up significantly from the red-ink level of a year ago.

In its monthly accounting of the government's books, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday that federal spending totaled $250 billion last month, up 13.7 percent from March 2005.

Government receipts also were up, rising 10.6 percent from a year ago, to $164.6 billion. That left a deficit for the month of $85.5 billion, a record imbalance for March.

The March outlay record of $250 billion surpassed the old mark of $232 billion set in February.

Even though the deficit was a record for March, it was below the all-time monthly high of $119.2 billion, which was set in February.

So far through the first six months of this budget year, which began in October, the deficit totals $303 billion, an increase of 2.8 percent over the deficit in the first six months of the 2005 budget year.

The administration is forecasting that the deficit for this budget year, which will end Sept. 30, will hit a record $423 billion, surpassing the old mark in dollar terms of $413 billion set in 2004. The administration says the costs of the war in
Iraq and reconstruction spending from the Gulf Coast hurricanes will drive the deficit higher.

The Congressional Budget Office is forecasting that the deficit will total $371 billion this year, and many private forecasters believe the red ink will be even lower, noting that the healthy economy has pushed revenues up sharply.

Through the first six months of this budget year, revenues have totaled $1.04 trillion, up 10.5 percent from the same period a year ago.

Spending during this six-month period totals $1.34 trillion, up 8.7 percent from the same period in 2005.

Source: Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)
Quotes: From article titled, "42% of Your Taxes Pay for War"

42 Percent

That is the percentage of your federal income taxes that went to pay for past wars and the military in fiscal year 2005 (FY05), the year for which we are now filing our income tax returns.

FCNL estimates the U.S. spent $783 billion in FY05 for past and present military activities. This includes funding for the Defense Department, Energy Department nuclear weapons programs, military-related activities of other agencies, foreign military financing and training, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, mandatory spending for military retirement and health care, veterans programs ($69 billion), and the estimated portion of interest paid on the national debt which can be attributed to past wars and military spending ($170 billion).

Source: Inter Press Service News Agency
Quotes: From article titled, "Baghdad Morgue Overflowing Daily"

The [Baghdad] morgue is receiving a minimum of 60 bodies a day and sometimes more than 100, a morgue employee told IPS on condition of anonymity.

"The average is probably over 85," said the employee on the morning of April 12, as scores of family members waited outside the building to see if their loved ones were among the dead.

Morgue official said bodies unclaimed after 15 days are transferred to the cemetery administration to be catalogued, and then taken for burial at a cemetery in Najaf. As he spoke, three Iraqi police pick-up trucks loaded with about 10 bodies each arrived at the morgue.

At the cemetery administration, an official told IPS: "From February 1 to March 31, we've logged and buried 2,576 bodies from Baghdad."

Iraqiyun, a humanitarian group affiliated with the political party of interim president Ghazi al-Yawir reported Jul. 12 last year that there had been 128,000 violent deaths since the invasion. The group said it had only counted deaths confirmed by relatives, and that it had omitted the large numbers of people who simply disappeared without trace.

The Baghdad central morgue alone accounts for roughly 30,000 bodies annually. That is besides the large number of bodies taken to morgues in cities such as Basra, Mosul, Ramadi, Kirkuk, Irbil, Najaf and Karbala.

Who: Christopher H. Sheppard, former US Marine Captain
Source: The Seattle Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Coming home — disillusioned"

Three years ago, I was a Marine Corps captain on the Iraqi/Kuwaiti border, participating in the invasion of Iraq. Awestruck, I heard our howitzers thunder and watched artillery rockets rise into the night sky and streak toward Iraq — their light bathing the desert moonscape like giant arc welders.

As I watched the Iraq war begin, I completely trusted the Bush administration. I thought we were going to prove all of the left-wing antiwar protesters and dissenters wrong. I thought we were going to make America safer. Regrettably, I acknowledge that it was I who was wrong.

I believed the Bush administration when it said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I believed its assertion that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Africa and refine it into weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. I believed its claim Iraq had vast quantities of biological and chemical agents. After years of thorough inspections, all of these claims have been disproved.

I believed the administration when it claimed there was overwhelming evidence Iraq was in cahoots with al-Qaida. In January 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that there was no concrete evidence linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

I believed the administration when it grandly proclaimed we were going to bring a stable, Western-style liberal democracy to Iraq, complete with religious tolerance and the rule of law. We never had enough troops in Iraq to restore civil order and the rule of law. The Iraqi elections have produced a ruling majority of Shiite fundamentalists and marginalized the seething Sunni minority. Iraq dangerously teeters on the brink of civil war. We have emboldened Iran and destabilized the entire Middle East.

I believed the administration when it claimed the war could be done quickly and cheaply. It said the war would cost only between $50 billion and $60 billion. It said that Iraqi oil revenue would fund the country's reconstruction. I believed President Bush when he landed on the USS Lincoln and said "major combat operations have ended."

The war has cost the American taxpayers $250 billion and counting. The vast majority — 94 percent — of the more than 2,300 United States service members killed in Iraq have occurred since Bush's "Top Gun" proclamation. The cost in men and materiel has been far beyond what we were led to believe.

I volunteered to go back to Iraq for the fall and winter of 2004-2005. I went back out of frustration and guilt; frustration from watching Iraq unravel on the news and guilt that I wasn't there trying to stop it. Many fine Marines from my reserve battalion felt the same and volunteered to go back. I buried my mounting suspicions and mustered enough trust and faith in my civilian leadership to go back.

I returned disillusioned by what I saw. I participated in the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004. We crushed the insurgents in the city, but we only ended up scattering them throughout the province. The dumb ones stayed and died. The smart ones left town before the battle, to garner more recruits and fight another day. We were simply the little Dutch boy with our finger in the dike. In retrospect, we never had enough troops to firmly control the region; we had just enough to maintain a tenuous equilibrium.

I now know I wrongfully placed my faith and trust in a presidential administration hopelessly mired in incompetence, hubris and a lack of accountability. It planned a war based on false intelligence and unrealistic assumptions. It has strategically surrendered the condition of victory in Iraq to people who do not share our vision, values or interests. The Bush administration has proven successful at only one thing in Iraq — painting us into a corner with no feasible exit.

I will never trust any of them again.

Source: The Raw Story
Quotes: From article titled, "On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say"

One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which is being “run” in two southern regional areas of Iran. They are Baluchistan, a Sunni stronghold, and Khuzestan, a Shia region where a series of recent attacks has left many dead and hundreds injured in the last three months.

One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice President’s office and opposed by the State Department, National Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.

“The MEK is run by a husband and wife team who were given bases in northern Baghdad by Saddam,” the intelligence official told RAW STORY. “The US army secured a key MEK facility 60 miles northwest of Baghdad shortly after the 2003 invasion, but they did not secure the MEK and let them basically be because [then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz was thinking ahead to Iran.”

“We disarmed [the MEK] of major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops team, but policy infighting between their camp and Condi, but she was able to fight them off for a while,” said the intelligence official. According to still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their organization.

“These guys are nuts,” this intelligence source said. “Cambone and those guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.”

Stephen Cambone is the Undersecretary of Defense Intelligence. His office did not return calls for comment.

According to all three intelligence sources, military and intelligence officials alike were alarmed that instead of securing a known terrorist organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world – including US civilian and military casualties – Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike.

“They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” one intelligence source said.

Indeed, Saddam Hussein himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security detail to the MEK as a way of policing dissent among his own people. It was under the guidance of MEK ‘policing’ that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely tortured, attacked and arrested.

Although the specifics of what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a UN official close to the Security Council explained that the newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run instead of military advance teams, committing acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.

“We are already at war,” the UN official told RAW STORY.

Asked how long the MEK agents have been active in the region under the guidance of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official explained that the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year and included unmanned drones run jointly by several agencies.

Asked about the MEK, a senior British intelligence official said that the Brits are not yet sure of what the situation on Iran’s southern border is, but vehemently condemned any joint activity with the terrorist organization.

“We don’t know who precisely is carrying out those attacks in the south but we believe it is MEK,” the British official said.

When asked if the US military is running the MEK, the source was careful to indicate that while there is a US unit in Iran gathering information, it’s difficult to say if they are in any way involved with MEK.

“The people who are inside Iran are from a US Special mission unit,” the source explained. “They are called by codenames, but would not be involved in the bomb blasts. They want to get in, get the intelligence and go out with anyone knowing they have been there. But the bomb blasts might be diversions away from the operations by this US special mission unit. The British are definitely not involved in any of this.”

Moreover, the British official expressed that any operations with MEK would violate their own military code and would absolutely not be tolerated.

“We have very strict rules and can’t go consorting with terrorists," the official added. "We did it in Northern Ireland. No more.”

Who: Written by Pat Buchanan, Conservative Columnist
Source: The Conservative Voice
Quotes: From article titled, "THE GENERALS' REVOLT"

In just two weeks, six retired U.S. Marine and Army generals have denounced the Pentagon planning for the war in Iraq and called for the resignation or firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who travels often to Iraq and supports the war, says that the generals mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more.

This is not a Cindy Sheehan moment.

This is a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the U.S. armed forces by senior officers once responsible for carrying out the orders of that leadership. It is hard to recall a situation in history where retired U.S. Army and Marine Corps generals, almost all of whom had major commands in a war yet underway, denounced the civilian leadership and called on the president to fire his secretary for war.

The generals have sent an unmistakable message to Commander in Chief George W. Bush: Get rid of Rumsfeld, or you will lose the war.

With the exception of Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of Central Command who opposed the Bush-Rumsfeld rush to war, the other generals did not publicly protest until secure in retirement. Nevertheless, they bring imposing credentials to their charges against the defense secretary.

Major Gen. Paul Eaton, first of the five rebels to speak out, was in charge of training Iraqi forces until 2004. He blames Rumsfeld for complicating the U.S. mission by alienating our NATO allies.

Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs up to the eve of war, charges Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith with a "casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results."

Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the Army's 1st Division in Iraq, charges that Rumsfeld does not seek nor does he accept the counsel of field commanders. Maj. Gen. John Riggs echoes Batiste. This directly contradicts what President Bush has told the nation.

Maj. Gen. Charles J. Swannack, former field commander of the 82nd Airborne, believes we can create a stable government in Iraq, but says Rumsfeld has mismanaged the war.

Whatever one thinks of the Iraq war, dismissal of Rumsfeld in response to a clamor created by ex-generals would mark Bush as a weak if not fatally compromised president. He will have capitulated to a generals' coup. Will he then have to clear Rumsfeld's successor with them?

And there is an unstated message of the Generals' Revolt. If Iraq collapses in chaos and sectarian war, and is perceived as another U.S. defeat, they are saying: We are not going to carry the can. The first volley in a "Who Lost Iraq?" war of recriminations has been fired.

In the last analysis, the Generals' Revolt is not just against Rumsfeld, but is aimed at the man who appointed him and has stood by him for three years of a guerrilla war the Pentagon did not predict or expect.

Source: The Guardian UK
Quotes: From article titled, "Army report on al-Qaida accuses Rumsfeld"

Donald Rumsfeld was directly linked to prisoner abuse for the first time yesterday, when it emerged he had been "personally involved" in a Guantánamo Bay interrogation found by military investigators to have been "degrading and abusive".

Human Rights Watch last night called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate whether the defence secretary could be criminally liable for the treatment of Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi al-Qaida suspect forced to wear women's underwear, stand naked in front of a woman interrogator, and to perform "dog tricks" on a leash, in late 2002 and early 2003. The US rights group said it had obtained a copy of the interrogation log, which showed he was also subjected to sleep deprivation and forced to maintain "stress" positions; it concluded that the treatment "amounted to torture".

However, military investigators decided the interrogation did not amount to torture but was "abusive and degrading". Those conclusions were made public last year but this is the first time Mr Rumsfeld's own involvement has emerged.

According to a December report by the army inspector general, obtained by Salon.com online magazine, the investigators did not accuse the defence secretary of specifically prescribing "creative" techniques, but they said he regularly monitored the progress of the al-Kahtani interrogation by telephone, and they argued he had helped create the conditions that allowed abuse to take place.

"Where is the throttle on this stuff?" asked Lt Gen Schmidt, an air force officer who said in sworn testimony to the inspector general that he had concerns about the duration and repetition of harsh interrogation techniques. He said that in his view: "There were no limits."

... in the wake of the inspector general's report, Human Rights Watch said: "The question at this point is not whether secretary Rumsfeld should resign, it's whether he should be indicted. General Schmidt's sworn statement suggests Rumsfeld may have been perfectly aware of the abuses inflicted on Mr al-Qahtani."

The Pentagon also issued a statement in response to publication of the report. A spokeswoman said: "We've gone over this countless times, and yet some still choose to print fiction versus fact. Twelve reviews, to include one done by an independent panel, all confirm the department of defence did not have a policy that encouraged or condoned abuse. To suggest otherwise is simply false."

The investigators found Mr Rumsfeld was "talking weekly" with Gen [Goeffrey] Miller about the al-Qahtani interrogation. In December 2002, the defence secretary approved 16 harsh interrogation techniques for use on Mr al-Qahtani, including forced nudity, and "stress positions". However approval was revoked in 2003.

Gen Miller insisted he was unaware of details of the interrogation, but Gen Schmidt said he found that "hard to believe" in view of Mr Rumsfeld's evident interest in its progress. Gen James Hill, former head of Southern Command, recalled Gen Miller recommending continuation of the interrogation, saying "We think we're right on the verge of making a breakthrough." Gen Hill then passed on the request to Mr Rumsfeld. "The secretary said, 'Fine,'" Gen Hill remembered.

Source: The Guardian UK
Quotes: From article titled, "Britain took part in mock Iran invasion"

British officers took part in a US war game aimed at preparing for a possible invasion of Iran, despite repeated claims by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, that a military strike against Iran is inconceivable.

The war game, codenamed Hotspur 2004, took place at the US base of Fort Belvoir in Virginia in July 2004.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman played down its significance yesterday. "These paper-based exercises are designed to test officers to the limit in fictitious scenarios. We use invented countries and situations using real maps," he said.

The disclosure of Britain's participation came in the week in which the Iranian crisis intensified, with a US report that the White House was contemplating a tactical nuclear strike and Tehran defying the United Nations security council.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who sparked outrage in the US, Europe and Israel last year by calling for Israel to be wiped off the face of the Earth, created more alarm yesterday. He told a conference in Tehran in support of the Palestinians: "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

The senior British officers took part in the Iranian war game just over a year after the invasion of Iraq. It was focused on the Caspian Sea, with an invasion date of 2015. Although the planners said the game was based on a fictitious Middle East country called Korona, the border corresponded exactly with Iran's and the characteristics of the enemy were Iranian.

The MoD's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, which helped run the war game, described it on its website as the "year's main analytical event of the UK-US Future Land Operations Interoperability Study" aimed at ensuring that both armies work well together. The study "was extremely well received on both sides of the Atlantic".

Source: The Guardian UK
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq's interior ministry refusing to deploy US-trained police"

Iraq's interior ministry is refusing to deploy thousands of police recruits who have been trained by the US and the UK and is hiring its own men and putting them on the streets, according to western security advisers.

The disclosure highlights growing US and British concern about the role of militias in sectarian killings, and their links to senior Iraqi politicians. "You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms - you have to have the state with a monopoly on power," Condoleeza Rice, the US secretary of state, said at the end of her two-day visit to Baghdad yesterday.

"We have sent very, very strong messages repeatedly, and not just on this visit, that one of the first things ... is that there is going to be a reining in of the militias... It's got to be one of the highest priorities."

The interior ministry, which is controlled by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), has not deployed any graduates of the civilian police assistance training team (CPATT), a joint US/UK unit, for the past three months.

The CPATT was designed to put the police on a fair footing after Saddam Hussein's 30-year dictatorship. Its goal is to train 134,000 officers by the end of the year and ensure an equitable ethnic and sectarian balance.

Senior ministry officials say they refuse to deploy the graduates because they have no control over the CPATT's selection process.

No figures are available for the police's religious and ethnic make-up outside Kurdistan, partly because there is no central data base, but estimates put it at 80% Shia. Until recently the special police and commando units were 99% Shia, according to a CPATT spokesperson.

Source: Zaman
Quotes: From article titled, "Al-Zarqawi's Position Rendered Interior"

An Iraqi member of al-Qaeda has taken over the position of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Jordanian born gang leader of the terror organization in Iraq, reporters said.

Al-Qaeda commander in Iraq requested al-Zarqawi relinquish his political position to focus solely on the group’s military activities after making a series of poor judgments that damaged the image of rebellion, said Jordanian Hudayfa Azzam, son of Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s radical mentor.

In accordance with the decision, Abdullah bin Rashed al-Baghdadi was chosen almost two weeks ago by al-Zarqawi to undertake this new role in Iraq, Azzam said.

Al-Zarqawi made a series of political mistakes for which he was criticized both inside and outside Iraq, said Jordanian, Hudayfa.

Al-Zarqawi took a misstep when he came up with the idea of launching attacks against Iraq’s neighboring countries as an Iraqi leader of independent group, Azzam added.

Who: Kazim Jalali, Spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s Commission of Foreign Affairs
Source: Zaman
Quotes: From article titled, "US will Find Another Excuse to Target Iran"

The United States is firm in its plans to launch a military operation against Iran, said Kazim Jalali, a spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s Commission of Foreign Affairs, adding the United States would find another reason for its military operation even if the nuclear plants were immediately shut down.

There are peaceful motives behind the nuclear projects in Iran, said Jalali, when he asserted that the use of nuclear weapons is outlawed according to Islam too. The Western news media distorted what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said about Israel, Jalali argued.

Jalali was hosted in Turkey by the Political Thought Platform. Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, Jalali told Zaman, and added that the treaty accords certain rights to produce and utilize nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

There are nuclear projects in Iran that allow international monitoring, said Jalali.

“For the past three years, 1,700 international overseers have been granted official permission to inspect Iran’s nuclear projects. One is most unlikely to see any other instances of this. Iran received an order from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to relinquish its works on nuclear energy within a period of two months. Iran put on hold its nuclear works of its own accord when the government here conferred with the European Union member countries on the Paris Pact. With a blind eye to our efforts, they asked us for a sheer abandonment of nuclear projects.

The nuclear works in Tehran are only used as a pretext by the United States to do away with the Islamic regime of Iran, Jalali said.

“The United States will always have a reason to strike Iran in spite of an assertion from the government here to close soon all the nuclear plants.”

Although there is a common awareness of the presence of nuclear weapons in Israel, there is no objection to Israeli right to own such weaponry, said Jalali.

The Iranian government will definitely not disown its peaceful nuclear projects, Jalali concluded.

Who: Hans Blix, Former UN Chief Weapons Inspector and Former Head of International Atomic Energy Association
Source: The Houston Chronicle
Quotes: From article titled, "Blix: Iran Years Away From Nuclear Bomb"

Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Monday that Iran is a least five years away from developing a nuclear bomb, leaving time to peacefully negotiate a settlement.

Blix, attending an energy conference in western Norway, said he doubted the U.S. would resort to invading Iran.

"But there is a chance that the U.S. will use bombs or missiles against several sites in Iran," he was quoted by Norwegian news agency NTB as saying. "Then, the reactions would be strong, and would contribute to increased terrorism."

"We have time on our side in this case. Iran can't have a bomb ready in the next five years," Blix was quoted as saying.

Blix, also a former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, urged the United States to take its time, as it is doing in a similar nuclear standoff with North Korea.

"The U.S. has given itself time and is negotiating with North Korea, while Iran got a very short deadline," he was quoted as saying.

Source: The Washington Post
Quotes: From article titled, "U.S. Plan to Build Iraq Clinics Falters -
Contractor Will Try to Finish 20 of 142 Sites"

A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.

Parsons, according to the Corps, will walk away from more than 120 clinics that on average are two-thirds finished. Auditors say the project serves as a warning for other U.S. reconstruction efforts due to be completed this year.

Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps commander overseeing reconstruction in Iraq, said he still hoped to complete all 142 clinics as promised and was seeking emergency funds from the U.S. military and foreign donors. "I'm fairly confident," McCoy said.

Coming with little public warning, the 86 percent shortfall of completions dismayed the World Health Organization's representative for Iraq. "That's not good. That's shocking," Naeema al-Gasseer said by telephone from Cairo. "We're not sending the right message here. That's affecting people's expectations and people's trust, I must say."

Stuart Bowen, the top U.S. auditor for reconstruction, warned in a telephone interview from Washington that other reconstruction efforts may fall short like that of Parsons. "I've been consumed for a year with the fear we would run out of money to finish projects," said Bowen, the inspector general for reconstruction in Iraq.

The Corps of Engineers says the campaign so far has renovated or built 3,000 schools, upgraded 13 hospitals and created hundreds of border forts and police stations. Major projects this summer, the Corps says, should noticeably improve electricity and other basic services, which have fallen below prewar levels despite the billions of dollars that the United States already has expended toward reconstruction here.

In January, Bowen's office calculated the American reconstruction effort would be able to finish only 300 of 425 promised electricity projects and 49 of 136 water and sanitation projects.

Doctors in Baghdad's hospitals still cite dirty water as one of the major killers of infants. The city's hospitals place medically troubled newborns two to an incubator, when incubators work at all.

Early in the occupation, U.S. officials mapped out the construction of 300 primary-care clinics, said Gasseer, the WHO official. In addition to spreading basic health care beyond the major cities into small towns, the clinics were meant to provide training for Iraq's medical professionals. "Overall, they were considered vital," she said.

Faced with a growing insurgency, U.S. authorities in 2004 took funding away from many projects to put it into building up Iraqi security forces.

"During that period, very little actual project work, dirt-turning, was being done," Bowen said. At the same time, "we were paying large overhead for contractors to remain in-country." Overhead has consumed 40 percent to 50 percent of the clinic project's budget, McCoy said.

In 2005, plans were scaled back to build 142 primary clinics by December of that year, an extended deadline. By December, however, only four had been completed, reconstruction officials said. Two more were finished weeks later. With the money almost all gone, the Corps of Engineers and Parsons reached what both sides described as a negotiated settlement under which Parsons would try to finish 14 more clinics by early April and then leave the project.

"I can't say this isn't going to happen again, because we really haven't gotten a grasp" of the cost of finishing the many pending projects, Bowen said.

Source: The Independent UK via Truthout.org
Quotes: From article titled, "Mosul Slips Out of Control as the Bombers Move In"

When the 3,000 men of the mainly Kurdish 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Division of the Iraqi Army go on patrol it is at night, after the rigorously enforced curfew starts at 8pm. Their vehicles, bristling with heavy machine guns, race through the empty streets of the city, splashing through pools of sewage, always trying to take different routes to avoid roadside bombs. "The government cannot control the city," said Hamid Effendi, an experienced ex-soldier who is Minister for Peshmerga Affairs in the Kurdistan Regional Government.

He is influential in the military affairs of Mosul province with its large Kurdish minority, although it is outside the Kurdish region. He believes: "The Iraqi Army is only a small force in Mosul, the Americans do not leave their bases much and some of the police are connected to the terrorists." In the days since a suicide bomber killed 43 young men waiting to join the Iraqi army at a recruitment centre near Mosul last week soldiers in the city have been expecting a second attack.

"We are not leaving the base in daytime because we know other bombers are waiting for us," said a soldier at a base near Mosul's city centre.

Saadi Pire, until recently the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Mosul, says bluntly that the 12,000 police "are police by day and terrorists by night. They should all be dismissed and other police brought in from outside."

He thinks that Mosul, the northern capital of Iraq with a population of 1.7 million, could erupt at any moment. He points out that it is difficult to pacify because so much of Saddam Hussein's army - some 250,000 soldiers and 30,000 officers - was recruited from there.

General Muthafar Deirky, the ebullient commander of the 3rd Brigade, is more confident about the government's grip the city. He has been stationed there since 11 November 2004 when, in one of the least publicised disasters of the US occupation of Iraq, insurgents captured the city as the police and army deserted en masse. Some 11,000 weapons and vehicles worth $40m (£23m) were lost.

The American media was almost entirely embedded with the US Marines who were engaged in the bloody battle for Fallujah, population 350,000, so the outside world did not notice that the anti-American resistance had captured a city five times as large.

General Deirky, a peshmerga veteran, was called in a panic by the army commander in Baghdad who told him that "Mosul was under the control of terrorists". He gathered 700 men and, having fought off two ambushes, advanced into the city just in time to prevent the capture of the television station. He was dismayed to discover that out of an 1,800-strong Iraqi Army unit all but 30 Kurds had deserted.

He claims that the situation is very different today when the people of Mosul "welcome us, hate the terrorists and give us information about them". But the general's own account of recent events in the city show the depth of the divisions between Arabs and Kurds as well the Arab hostility to the occupation.

In reality, Mosul city, like so many places in Iraq, is an ethnic minefield which the US has sought to negotiate with varying success since the overthrow of Saddam in 2003. At first US commanders did not want Kurdish forces in the city fearing the reaction of the Arabs.

General David Petraeus of the 101st Airborne tried to bring on board the Sunni Arabs but when he left this policy languished. Since November 2004 Arabs in the province claim that the US has simply joined forces with the Kurds after the mass desertion of the Arab police and army.

"The Americans are now just one more of the tribes of Mosul," said one Arab source alleging that the CIA got all its information from Kurdish intelligence.

Who: Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister
Source: The Washington Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Russian official contradicts West on Tehran"

Russia's top diplomat embarrassed his Western partners yesterday, even as U.S. officials said they had deliberately toned down their remarks about Russia in recent weeks while seeking Moscow's support for U.N. Security Council action on Iran.

Moments after the Western powers insisted to reporters that they were on the same page with Russia and China regarding the Iranian nuclear threat, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov contradicted them, saying he saw no evidence that Iran's program had a military component or that it posed a threat.

"Before we call any situation a threat, we need facts, especially in a region like the Middle East, where so many things are happening," Mr. Lavrov said after a meeting with his counterparts from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and China.

"We prefer very strongly to base our specific actions on specific facts, and in this particular case the facts could be provided by the [International Atomic Energy Agency]," he said. "So far, they have not been provided."

U.S. officials, who along with their European allies say Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian program, chose not to react publicly to Mr. Lavrov's comments.


The Western ministers were not much happier with what they heard at yesterday's press conference from China's vice foreign minister, Dai Bingguo, who attended the meeting instead of his boss.

"The Chinese side feels that there has already been enough turmoil in the Middle East," he said. "We do not want to see new turmoil being introduced to the region, because that would not serve the interests of any party and would only be very detrimental to the interests of the people in Middle East."

Even so, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her European colleagues said the Security Council is united against Iran, citing a council statement issued in New York late Wednesday that demanded that Tehran stop uranium enrichment and return to negotiations within 30 days.

"Russia doesn't believe that sanctions could achieve the purposes of settlement of various issues," Mr. Lavrov said.

Even the IAEA director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said yesterday that sanctions are a bad idea. "We need to lower the pitch," he said. "My message to Iran: The international community is getting impatient, and you need to respond by arming me with information."

Source: The Sunday Times UK
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq terror backlash in UK 'for years'"

SPY chiefs have warned Tony Blair that the war in Iraq has made Britain the target of a terror campaign by Al-Qaeda that will last “for many years to come.”

A leaked top-secret memo from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) says the war in Iraq has “exacerbated” the threat by radicalising British Muslims and attracting new recruits to anti-western terror attacks.

The four-page memo, entitled International Terrorism: Impact of Iraq, contradicts Blair’s public assurances by concluding that the invasion of Iraq has fomented a jihad or holy war against Britain.

It states: “It has reinforced the determination of terrorists who were already committed to attacking the West and motivated others who were not.”

It adds: “Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalisation of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the UK as legitimate.”

The memo was approved by Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, John Scarlett, the chief of MI6, and Sir David Pepper, head of GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre.

The leak of the JIC’s official assessment — marked “top secret” — will alarm Blair as it appears to be directed at undermining the public statements in which he has denied that the war in Iraq has increased the terror threat from Al-Qaeda.

The JIC report contradicts ... ministerial statements. It says: “There is a clear consensus within the UK extremist community that Iraq is a legitimate jihad and should be supported. Iraq has re-energised and refocused a wide range of networks in the UK.”

Written in April last year and circulated to Blair and other senior ministers before the July attacks, it says: “We judge that the conflict in Iraq has exacerbated the threat from international terrorism and will continue to have an impact in the long term. It has reinforced the determination of terrorists who were already committed to attacking the West and motivated others who were not.”

The document says the war is providing an “additional motivation for attacks” against Britain; is “increasing Al-Qaeda’s potential”; and “energising” terrorist networks engaged in holy war. Equally worrying, Iraq is being used as a “training ground and base” for terrorists to return to carry out attacks in Britain and elsewhere.

The JIC is the senior intelligence body in Britain and is responsible for issuing assessments of the gravity of threats to Britain’s national security.

“Some jihadists who leave Iraq will play leading roles in recruiting and organising terrorist networks, sharing their skills and possibly conducting attacks. It is inevitable that some will come to the UK,” it says.

Source: The Telegraph UK
Quotes: From article titled, "Government in secret talks about strike against Iran"

The Government is to hold secret talks with defence chiefs tomorrow to discuss possible military strikes against Iran.

A high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran.

It is believed that an American-led attack, designed to destroy Iran's ability to develop a nuclear bomb, is "inevitable" if Teheran's leaders fail to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment programme.

Tomorrow's meeting will be attended by Gen Sir Michael Walker, the chief of the defence staff, Lt Gen Andrew Ridgway, the chief of defence intelligence and Maj Gen Bill Rollo, the assistant chief of the general staff, together with officials from the Foreign Office and Downing Street.

The United States government is hopeful that the military operation will be a multinational mission, but defence chiefs believe that the Bush administration is prepared to launch the attack on its own or with the assistance of Israel, if there is little international support. British military chiefs believe an attack would be limited to a series of air strikes against nuclear plants - a land assault is not being considered at the moment.

But confirmation that Britain has started contingency planning will undermine the claim last month by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that a military attack against Iran was "inconceivable".

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, insisted, during a visit to Blackburn yesterday, that all negotiating options - including the use of force - remained open in an attempt to resolve the crisis.

A senior Foreign Office source said: "Monday's meeting will set out to address the consequences for Britain in the event of an attack against Iran. The CDS [chiefs of defence staff] will want to know what the impact will be on British interests in Iraq and Afghanistan which both border Iran. The CDS will then brief the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on their conclusions in the next few days.

"If Iran makes another strategic mistake, such as ignoring demands by the UN or future resolutions, then the thinking among the chiefs is that military action could be taken to bring an end to the crisis. The belief in some areas of Whitehall is that an attack is now all but inevitable.

There will be no invasion of Iran but the nuclear sites will be destroyed. This is not something that will happen imminently, maybe this year, maybe next year. Jack Straw is making exactly the same noises that the Government did in March 2003 when it spoke about the likelihood of a war in Iraq.

"Then the Government said the war was neither inevitable or imminent and then attacked."

Military chiefs also plan tomorrow to discuss fears that an attack within Iran will "unhinge" southern Iraq - where British troops are based - an area mainly populated by Shia Muslims who have strong political and religious links to Iran.

They are concerned that this could delay any withdrawal of troops this year or next. There could also be consequences for British and US troops in Afghanistan, which borders Iran.