Much as I would like to be, I am not an omnipotent news machine. And with the almost constant planet wide media and political obsession with the Middle East I have let news from Russia to name just one slip under my radar, but a few supposedly disparate stories have all floated into focus today. They concern accusations of Kremlin involvement in several different cases of murder and poisoning of journalists, politicians and ex-spy’s known to be outspoken attackers of the Russian government.
Back in 2004 the now president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, was allegedly poisoned with dioxin in the run up to the elections. More recently Anna Politkovskaya, an award winning Russian journalist and Human rights activist who was a critic of the Kremlin’s involvement in Chechnya, was found shot dead just outside her apartment last month, and now Alexander V. Litvinenko an ex spy living in the UK and investigating the death of Anna Politkovskaya has been poisoned and is seriously ill in intensive care.
Is this an Iron Curtain knee jerk reaction from Western media, or is Russia still trying to exert political control over the now independent states of the former USSR and quietly reverting to it’s previous dalliance with control for the greater good under President Putin’s hand? (himself an ex- KGB officer).
In a mirror to US and UK politics President Putin has cited the war on terror as the reason to increase the power of intelligence agencies. Commentary on these events in the Russian media is at a minimum, the last independent media organisation in Russia was shut down 3 years ago.
Mel
Intrigue Swirls in Ex-KGB Man’s Illness
Truth Out
20th November
The British police said Sunday that they were investigating the suspected poisoning of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a Russian former K.G.B. operative living in exile in Britain who had been inquiring into the killing of a journalist in Moscow last month.
The Russian authorities had no immediate comment on suggestions in news reports that the Russian secret service had poisoned Mr. Litvinenko, who is hospitalized and seriously ill, because he had criticized former colleagues and President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Litvinenko is depicted by fellow exiles as a prominent opponent of the Kremlin, and he had told them he was looking into the killing on Oct. 7 of Anna Politkovskaya, who had made her name as a critic of the government’s policies in Chechnya and who was gunned down at her apartment building.
Details from the police and news reports had some of the hallmarks of a spy thriller in the cold war vein of John le Carré.The Sunday Times of London said the former agent had met Nov. 1 with an Italian contact identified only as Mario in a central London sushi bar.Last week, Mr. Litvinenko told reporters he began to feel sick within hours of the meeting with Mario.
“I ordered lunch, but he ate nothing,” Mr. Litvinenko said, according to The Sunday Times, which apparently interviewed him after he began to feel ill but before his condition deteriorated. “He appeared to be very nervous. He handed me a four-page document which he said he wanted me to read right away.”
“It contained a list of people, including an F.S.B. officer, who were purported to be connected with the journalist’s murder,” he said. The F.S.B., or Federal Security Service, is the successor to the K.G.B.
“I do feel very bad,” Mr. Litvinenko told The Sunday Times. “I’ve never felt like this before - like my life is hanging on the ropes.”
In a telephone interview, Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian tycoon who has had a long association with Mr. Litvinenko - dating from the late 1990s when, he and Mr. Litvinenko contended at the time, Mr. Litvinenko had balked at orders to assassinate Mr. Berezovsky - said he had visited Mr. Litvinenko in the hospital and found him “damaged terribly.”
Mr. Berezovsky said Mr. Litvinenko had been granted British citizenship, so the poisoning was “a terror attack against a British citizen in Britain.” The incident, he said, could create a problem for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has sought to cultivate close ties with Mr. Putin.
A police spokeswoman, speaking on the condition of anonymity under police rules, said specialist police officers were “investigating a suspicious poisoning.” She described Mr. Litvinenko’s condition as “serious but stable.”
John Henry, a clinical toxicologist who has been treating Mr. Litvinenko, told the BBC: “He’s got a prospect of recovering. He’s a got a prospect of dying.”
Mr. Henry, who in 2004 treated President Viktor A. Yushchenko of Ukraine, who was poisoned with dioxin, identified the suspected poison in the Litvinenko case as thallium, a toxic metal used in rat poison and insecticides. “It is tasteless, colorless and odorless,” he said. “It takes about a gram to kill you.”
Andres Virchis, a physician at Barnet Hospital in north London where Mr. Litvinenko was first treated, said Sunday that Mr. Litvinenko’s bone marrow had failed and that he was not producing any normal immune cells or white cells.As Mr. Litvinenko’s condition worsened, he began to lose his hair, Dr. Virchis said.
Mr. Litvinenko was granted asylum in Britain in 2001 after leaving Russia six years ago. In 2003 he published a book, “The F.S.B. Blows up Russia ,” accusing the Russian secret service of orchestrating a wave of explosions in apartment houses in 1999 that led to the second Chechen war.
He also claimed familiarity with the techniques of the Russian secret service. At the time of Mr. Yushchenko’s poisoning, Mr. Litvinenko said that a secret K.G.B. laboratory in Moscow, still operated by the F.S.B., specialized in the study of poisons.
“The view inside our agency was that poison is just a weapon, like a pistol,” said Mr. Litvinenko, who served in both agencies, from 1988 to 1999. “It’s not seen that way in the West, but it was just viewed as an ordinary tool.”The accounts of intrigue could not be confirmed.
Alex Goldfarb, a friend who had visited Mr. Litvinenko in the hospital, told the BBC that doctors had told him that he had only a 50-50 chance of surviving. “He looks like a ghost,” Mr. Goldfarb said.Speaking later to reporters outside London ’s University College Hospital , to which Mr. Litvinenko had been transferred, Mr. Goldfarb said the British police interviewed Mr. Litvinenko on Sunday.
“He is in a fighting mood,” Mr. Goldfarb said. Asked why Mr. Litvinenko might have been the target of an attack, Mr. Goldfarb said, “He is one of the top public enemies of the Russian F.S.B. and of Putin, particularly because of his book.”
He added that Mr. Litvinenko belonged to “the so-called London émigré circle, which was branded by Russia as a terrorist cell on British soil.”Mr. Goldfarb called the poisoning “very scary - it means there’s no limit.”
Putin’s hard men tighten grip on power
The Telegraph
20/11/2006
Darkness had just fallen on Saturday when the UAZ four-wheel drive sped down Moscow’s Lenin Avenue and drew up outside one of the grey blocks of flats that line the Russian capital’s streets. A Chechen officer, a high-ranking member of the FSB spy agency, emerged from the back of the car.
Moments later Movladi Baisarov lay dead, his body riddled with bullets fired by the Chechen special forces and Russian intelligence officers who had ambushed him. According to Russian authorities, Mr Baisarov was killed after he attempted to detonate a hand grenade. But such is the atmosphere in Russia these days, there are many who question the official explanation.
Like Alexander Litvinenko, Mr Baisarov had many enemies within the FSB and in the Kremlin-backed Chechen government. He had emerged as a leading critic and rival to Ramzan Kadyrov, the 30-year-old Chechen prime minister.
Liberal commentators in Russia have linked Mr Kadyrov to last month’s murder of the country’s most prominent investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who dedicated her career to highlighting the abuse of human rights in Chechnya, where Moscow has fought two brutal wars to suppress a separatist movement.
Mr Kadyrov has denied the accusations, suggesting that the murder was carried out to besmirch and weaken him. Whether or not the three cases are connected, former Soviet spies say there is no doubt that the Russian intelligence services have grown increasingly powerful under the stewardship of President Vladimir Putin.
“All three of these cases involve people who had many enemies within the intelligence apparatus,” said a former KGB officer. “This may be a coincidence but there can be no doubt that the FSB is both more powerful and more prepared to flex its muscles than for about 25 years.”
President Putin is a former KGB officer who served in Dresden during the Cold War. Determined to regain Russia’s superpower status — at least in the energy sector — the president has increased funding for the intelligence services fivefold since he came to power six years ago.
He has also surrounded himself with former fellow spies. Up to two-thirds of government officials are said to be drawn from the security and intelligence services and the most powerful faction in the Kremlin, known as the Siloviki, is dominated by former KGB officers.
While it would be an exaggeration to suggest that the pervasive terror of the intelligence services in Soviet times has returned, Russians are again looking over their shoulders. The Kremlin says that the increased power and funding of the intelligence services is a response to the conflict in Chechnya and the war on terror. But Siloviki hawks have also used the FSB and other agencies to enforce increasingly repressive domestic legislation and punish recalcitrant ex-Soviet satellites.
One of the most extreme allegations surrounds the pro-Western president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, who was allegedly poisoned when dioxin was slipped into his borscht in the run-up to elections in 2004. Though Mr Yushchenko survived and was carried to power on the back of the Orange Revolution, his face remains heavily disfigured as a result of the attack.
Mr Putin has centralized power both in the Kremlin and the intelligence services to such an extent that many Western critics say that democratic progress under Boris Yeltsin, his predecessor, has largely disappeared.
The independent media has been silenced, power devolved from the regions, parliament turned into a pliant tool of the Kremlin and advocacy groups critical of the authorities curtailed.
Many are now too scared to openly speak against the government or campaign against flourishing corruption as the state again assumes control of leading companies, particularly in the energy sector where Siloviki officials have been given plum positions.
Some of those who have spoken out have paid the ultimate price and some murders at least have born the hallmarks of the FSB. Yuri Shchekochikhin, Mrs Politkovskaya’s editor at Novaya Gazeta, one of the last bastions of free press in Russia, died in 2003 after he, too, was poisoned with dioxin.
In the past two months the number of contract killings of prominent officials has soared — the reforming deputy head of the central bank, a prominent mayoral candidate in Russia’s far east and another leading journalist all among the victims.
The word on the diplomatic grapevin is that more of the same should be expected as the Siloviki and their allies seek to tighten their hold on big business ahead of the 2008 election, when Mr Putin is required to stand down.
Chechen war reporter found dead
BBC
Cold War-style spy thriller could sour relations
Turkish Press
Poisoned ex-spy ’slightly worse’
BBC
Russian media shun poisoning case
BBC
Russia denies poisoned spy claims
BBC
Poisoning raises ghosts of Cold War
BBC
Here are a couple of articles I thought you may want to see, for UK readers the second piece on Bobby Kennedy was written by a journo who will be appearing on Newsnight BBC2 tonight.
[...]
Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?
The Guardian
Monday November 20, 2006
Saddam trial ‘flawed and unsound’
BBC
Monday, 20 November 2006
The trial of Saddam Hussein was so flawed that its verdict is unsound, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch says. HRW said “serious administrative, procedural and substantive legal defects” meant the 5 November trial for crimes against humanity was not fair.
The Iraqi government has dismissed the report, telling the BBC that the trial was both “just and fair”. The ex-Iraqi leader has two weeks to lodge an appeal but his lawyer claims he has been blocked from doing so.
Appeal controversy
Chief defence lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi told the BBC his team had been prevented from filing appeal papers. Under Iraqi law it must be done within a month of sentencing. However, the chief prosecutor, Jafaar al-Mousawi, has told the BBC it was a fair trial.
He said the appeal would be automatic because a death sentence had been passed - and that the relevant papers had been sent to the appeal court. Mr al-Mousawi’s claims that the trial was fair were echoed by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
“We believe strongly that the trial was fair and Saddam Hussein had every right to defend himself,” he told the BBC.
“The procedure, I think, in the court, was witnessed by the whole world.”
“It wasn’t something done behind closed doors or through summary justice, as was the case during his rule. And we stand really by the court’s verdict, and we believe the trial was just and fair.”
Historical record
Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants all faced charges of crimes against humanity relating to the deaths of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail following an assassination attempt on the Iraqi leader in 1982. Two of his co-defendants also received death sentences.
Saddam Hussein is now being tried on a different set of charges relating to a military campaign against ethnic Kurds in the late 1980s, in which more than 180,000 people are alleged to have died.
The New York-based HRW group said the trials were among the most important since the Nazi trials in Nuremberg after World War II. They “represent the first opportunity to create a historical record concerning some of the worst cases of human rights violations, and to begin the process of a methodical accounting of the policies and decisions that give rise to these events”, the report said.
The BBC’s David Loyn in Baghdad says HRW’s disappointment is the greater because it considers the Iraqi court to have failed to take account of the international significance of this trial and the one currently under way.
Supporters of war crimes trials say that they can improve healing after conflict, our correspondent says, but like so much else in post-Saddam Iraq, his trial does not seem to have achieved that lofty ambition.
Lawyers murdered
HRW based its scathing assessment on extensive observation of court proceedings, and interviews with judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and court administrators involved. The trial took just over one year to complete and was the first case brought before the Iraqi High Tribunal.
Proceedings were marked by frequent outbursts by both judges and defendants. Three defence lawyers were murdered, three judges left the five-member panel and the original chief judge was replaced. Defence lawyers boycotted proceedings but HRW said court-appointed counsel that took their place lacked adequate training in international law.
In addition, important documents were not given to defence lawyers in advance, no written transcript was kept and paperwork was lost, said HRW. The defence was also prevented from cross-examining witnesses and the judges made asides that pre-judged Saddam Hussein.
‘Indefensible penalty’
The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority decided that the Dujail trial would be held by an Iraqi court in Iraq, ruling out an international tribunal or a mixed Iraqi-international court under UN auspices, the HRW report said.
Because Iraqi lawyers and judges had been isolated from international criminal law, this decision resulted in a court that lacked the expertise to prosecute crimes against humanity on its own, the report said.
Defence counsel come under criticism in the report for trying to use the court as a political platform. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government was guilty of influencing the independence of the judges, the report said, to the extent that the first chief judge resigned.
“Under such circumstances the soundness of the verdict is questionable,” HRW concludes.
“In addition, the imposition of the death penalty - an inherently cruel and inhumane punishment - in the wake of an unfair trial is indefensible.”
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. home orange owner county ca loansloan car oregon usedloan extended over creditpa forgive student loan educsavinga loan and pacific panpatriot loans home on act requirementswashington day pay loan advancewith check pay day loan Mapporn bi blackbisexual black gay pornporn black bitchporn blond teen blackporn girls booty blackporn black free boybubble black butt pornblack cat porn Map
November 20th, 2006
Sy Hersch is considered a rogue reporter … you know, the kind who actually digs dirt and breaks stories … and once again, he gives us a heads up on the “need-to-know’s” and cautions us on what we need to be vigilant against. I’ve come to think of him like a prophet … what doesn’t come true is because we heeded the warnings.
The nice thing about the recent election is the opportunity to write [for me at least] to representatives that might actually LISTEN to what I have to say — so I don’t plan to let up now. Some of these people might be wondering if the current PC “moderate no-change-ness” is actually true … it ain’t. Keep the pressure on, dearhearts. The days of the mind-numbing casualness with which people like Cheney made planet-altering decisions is over … as long as WE SAY IT IS. Make sure to take opportunity to have your say, loudly and repeatedly.
Jude
THE NEXT ACT
Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?
SEYMOUR M. HERSH, New Yorker
Issue of 2006-11-27, Posted 2006-11-20
A month before the November elections, Vice-President Dick Cheney was sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats won both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power? At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: cutting “shorteners” on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions, Cheney said, and thus stop Congress from getting in its way.The White House’s concern was not that the Democrats would cut off funds for the war in Iraq but that future legislation would prohibit it from financing operations targeted at overthrowing or destabilizing the Iranian government, to keep it from getting the bomb. “They’re afraid that Congress is going to vote a binding resolution to stop a hit on Iran, à la Nicaragua in the Contra war,” a former senior intelligence official told me.
In late 1982, Edward P. Boland, a Democratic representative, introduced the first in a series of “Boland amendments,” which limited the Reagan Administration’s ability to support the Contras, who were working to overthrow Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government. The Boland restrictions led White House officials to orchestrate illegal fund-raising activities for the Contras, including the sale of American weapons, via Israel, to Iran. The result was the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-eighties. Cheney’s story, according to the source, was his way of saying that, whatever a Democratic Congress might do next year to limit the President’s authority, the Administration would find a way to work around it. (In response to a request for comment, the Vice-President’s office said that it had no record of the discussion.)
In interviews, current and former Administration officials returned to one question: whether Cheney would be as influential in the last two years of George W. Bush’s Presidency as he was in its first six. Cheney is emphatic about Iraq. In late October, he told Time, “I know what the President thinks,” about Iraq. “I know what I think. And we’re not looking for an exit strategy. We’re looking for victory.” He is equally clear that the Administration would, if necessary, use force against Iran. “The United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime,” he told an Israeli lobbying group early this year. “And we join other nations in sending that regime a clear message: we will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
On November 8th, the day after the Republicans lost both the House and the Senate, Bush announced the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the nomination of his successor, Robert Gates, a former director of Central Intelligence. The move was widely seen as an acknowledgment that the Administration was paying a political price for the debacle in Iraq. Gates was a member of the Iraq Study Group—headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman—which has been charged with examining new approaches to Iraq, and he has publicly urged for more than a year that the U.S. begin direct talks with Iran. President Bush’s decision to turn to Gates was a sign of the White House’s “desperation,” a former high-level C.I.A. official, who worked with the White House after September 11th, told me. Cheney’s relationship with Rumsfeld was among the closest inside the Administration, and Gates’s nomination was seen by some Republicans as a clear signal that the Vice-President’s influence in the White House could be challenged. The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former high-level C.I.A. official said, was that “the President’s father, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker”—former aides of the first President Bush—”piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision.”
Critical decisions will be made in the next few months, the former C.I.A. official said. “Bush has followed Cheney’s advice for six years, and the story line will be: ‘Will he continue to choose Cheney over his father?’ We’ll know soon.” (The White House and the Pentagon declined to respond to detailed requests for comment about this article, other than to say that there were unspecified inaccuracies.)
A retired four-star general who worked closely with the first Bush Administration told me that the Gates nomination means that Scowcroft, Baker, the elder Bush, and his son “are saying that winning the election in 2008 is more important than the individual. The issue for them is how to preserve the Republican agenda. The Old Guard wants to isolate Cheney and give their girl, Condoleezza Rice”—the Secretary of State—”a chance to perform.” The combination of Scowcroft, Baker, and the senior Bush working together is, the general added, “tough enough to take on Cheney. One guy can’t do it.”
Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term, told me that he believed the Democratic election victory, followed by Rumsfeld’s dismissal, meant that the Administration “has backed off,” in terms of the pace of its planning for a military campaign against Iran. Gates and other decision-makers would now have more time to push for a diplomatic solution in Iran and deal with other, arguably more immediate issues. “Iraq is as bad as it looks, and Afghanistan is worse than it looks,” Armitage said. “A year ago, the Taliban were fighting us in units of eight to twelve, and now they’re sometimes in company-size, and even larger.” Bombing Iran and expecting the Iranian public “to rise up” and overthrow the government, as some in the White House believe, Armitage added, “is a fool’s errand.”
“Iraq is the disaster we have to get rid of, and Iran is the disaster we have to avoid,” Joseph Cirincione, the vice-president for national security at the liberal Center for American Progress, said. “Gates will be in favor of talking to Iran and listening to the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the neoconservatives are still there”—in the White House—”and still believe that chaos would be a small price for getting rid of the threat. The danger is that Gates could be the new Colin Powell—the one who opposes the policy but ends up briefing the Congress and publicly supporting it.”
Other sources close to the Bush family said that the machinations behind Rumsfeld’s resignation and the Gates nomination were complex, and the seeming triumph of the Old Guard may be illusory. The former senior intelligence official, who once worked closely with Gates and with the President’s father, said that Bush and his immediate advisers in the White House understood by mid-October that Rumsfeld would have to resign if the result of the midterm election was a resounding defeat. Rumsfeld was involved in conversations about the timing of his departure with Cheney, Gates, and the President before the election, the former senior intelligence official said. Critics who asked why Rumsfeld wasn’t fired earlier, a move that might have given the Republicans a boost, were missing the point. “A week before the election, the Republicans were saying that a Democratic victory was the seed of American retreat, and now Bush and Cheney are going to change their national-security policies?” the former senior intelligence official said.
“Cheney knew this was coming. Dropping Rummy after the election looked like a conciliatory move—’You’re right, Democrats. We got a new guy and we’re looking at all the options. Nothing is ruled out.’ ” But the conciliatory gesture would not be accompanied by a significant change in policy; instead, the White House saw Gates as someone who would have the credibility to help it stay the course on Iran and Iraq. Gates would also be an asset before Congress. If the Administration needed to make the case that Iran’s weapons program posed an imminent threat, Gates would be a better advocate than someone who had been associated with the flawed intelligence about Iraq. The former official said, “He’s not the guy who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he’ll be taken seriously by Congress.”
Once Gates is installed at the Pentagon, he will have to contend with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Rumsfeld legacy—and Dick Cheney. A former senior Bush Administration official, who has also worked with Gates, told me that Gates was well aware of the difficulties of his new job. He added that Gates would not simply endorse the Administration’s policies and say, “with a flag waving, ‘Go, go’ “—especially at the cost of his own reputation. “He does not want to see thirty-five years of government service go out the window,” the former official said. However, on the question of whether Gates would actively stand up to Cheney, the former official said, after a pause, “I don’t know.”
Another critical issue for Gates will be the Pentagon’s expanding effort to conduct clandestine and covert intelligence missions overseas. Such activity has traditionally been the C.I.A.’s responsibility, but, as the result of a systematic push by Rumsfeld, military covert actions have been substantially increased. In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.” (The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in northern and southeastern Iran.) The government consultant said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group “equipment and training.” The group has also been given “a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S.” (An Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel was involved.)
Such activities, if they are considered military rather than intelligence operations, do not require congressional briefings. For a similar C.I.A. operation, the President would, by law, have to issue a formal finding that the mission was necessary, and the Administration would have to brief the senior leadership of the House and the Senate. The lack of such consultation annoyed some Democrats in Congress. This fall, I was told, Representative David Obey, of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that finances classified military activity, pointedly asked, during a closed meeting of House and Senate members, whether “anyone has been briefing on the Administration’s plan for military activity in Iran.” The answer was no. (A spokesman for Obey confirmed this account.)
The Democratic victories this month led to a surge of calls for the Administration to begin direct talks with Iran, in part to get its help in settling the conflict in Iraq. British Prime Minister Tony Blair broke ranks with President Bush after the election and declared that Iran should be offered “a clear strategic choice” that could include a “new partnership” with the West. But many in the White House and the Pentagon insist that getting tough with Iran is the only way to salvage Iraq. “It’s a classic case of ‘failure forward,’” a Pentagon consultant said. “They believe that by tipping over Iran they would recover their losses in Iraq—like doubling your bet. It would be an attempt to revive the concept of spreading democracy in the Middle East by creating one new model state.”
The view that there is a nexus between Iran and Iraq has been endorsed by Condoleezza Rice, who said last month that Iran “does need to understand that it is not going to improve its own situation by stirring instability in Iraq,” and by the President, who said, in August, that “Iran is backing armed groups in the hope of stopping democracy from taking hold” in Iraq. The government consultant told me, “More and more people see the weakening of Iran as the only way to save Iraq.”
The consultant added that, for some advocates of military action, “the goal in Iran is not regime change but a strike that will send a signal that America still can accomplish its goals. Even if it does not destroy Iran’s nuclear network, there are many who think that thirty-six hours of bombing is the only way to remind the Iranians of the very high cost of going forward with the bomb—and of supporting Moqtada al-Sadr and his pro-Iran element in Iraq.” (Sadr, who commands a Shiite militia, has religious ties to Iran.)
In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neoconservative, argued that the Administration had little choice. “Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office,” he wrote. The President would be bitterly criticized for a preëmptive attack on Iran, Muravchik said, and so neoconservatives “need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes.”
The main Middle East expert on the Vice-President’s staff is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Like many in Washington, Wurmser “believes that, so far, there’s been no price tag on Iran for its nuclear efforts and for its continuing agitation and intervention inside Iraq,” the consultant said. But, unlike those in the Administration who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney’s office “want to end the regime,” the consultant said. “They argue that there can be no settlement of the Iraq war without regime change in Iran.”
The Administration’s planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to comment on this story.)
The C.I.A.’s analysis, which has been circulated to other agencies for comment, was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites, and on other empirical evidence, such as measurements of the radioactivity of water samples and smoke plumes from factories and power plants. Additional data have been gathered, intelligence sources told me, by high-tech (and highly classified) radioactivity-detection devices that clandestine American and Israeli agents placed near suspected nuclear-weapons facilities inside Iran in the past year or so. No significant amounts of radioactivity were found.
A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the C.I.A. analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it. The White House’s dismissal of the C.I.A. findings on Iran is widely known in the intelligence community. Cheney and his aides discounted the assessment, the former senior intelligence official said. “They’re not looking for a smoking gun,” the official added, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning. “They’re looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish the mission.” The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency also challenged the C.I.A.’s analysis. “The D.I.A. is fighting the agency’s conclusions, and disputing its approach,” the former senior intelligence official said. Bush and Cheney, he added, can try to prevent the C.I.A. assessment from being incorporated into a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nuclear capabilities, “but they can’t stop the agency from putting it out for comment inside the intelligence community.” The C.I.A. assessment warned the White House that it would be a mistake to conclude that the failure to find a secret nuclear-weapons program in Iran merely meant that the Iranians had done a good job of hiding it. The former senior intelligence official noted that at the height of the Cold War the Soviets were equally skilled at deception and misdirection, yet the American intelligence community was readily able to unravel the details of their long-range-missile and nuclear-weapons programs. But some in the White House, including in Cheney’s office, had made just such an assumption—that “the lack of evidence means they must have it,” the former official said.
Iran is a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, under which it is entitled to conduct nuclear research for peaceful purposes. Despite the offer of trade agreements and the prospect of military action, it defied a demand by the I.A.E.A. and the Security Council, earlier this year, that it stop enriching uranium—a process that can produce material for nuclear power plants as well as for weapons—and it has been unable, or unwilling, to account for traces of plutonium and highly enriched uranium that have been detected during I.A.E.A. inspections. The I.A.E.A. has complained about a lack of “transparency,” although, like the C.I.A., it has not found unambiguous evidence of a secret weapons program.
Last week, Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced that Iran had made further progress in its enrichment research program, and said, “We know that some countries may not be pleased.” He insisted that Iran was abiding by international agreements, but said, “Time is now completely on the side of the Iranian people.” A diplomat in Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. has its headquarters, told me that the agency was skeptical of the claim, for technical reasons. But Ahmadinejad’s defiant tone did nothing to diminish suspicions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“There is no evidence of a large-scale covert enrichment program inside Iran,” one involved European diplomat said. “But the Iranians would not have launched themselves into a very dangerous confrontation with the West on the basis of a weapons program that they no longer pursue. Their enrichment program makes sense only in terms of wanting nuclear weapons. It would be inconceivable if they weren’t cheating to some degree. You don’t need a covert program to be concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We have enough information to be concerned without one. It’s not a slam dunk, but it’s close to it.”
There are, however, other possible reasons for Iran’s obstinacy. The nuclear program—peaceful or not—is a source of great national pride, and President Ahmadinejad’s support for it has helped to propel him to enormous popularity. (Saddam Hussein created confusion for years, inside and outside his country, about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, in part to project an image of strength.) According to the former senior intelligence official, the C.I.A.’s assessment suggested that Iran might even see some benefits in a limited military strike—especially one that did not succeed in fully destroying its nuclear program—in that an attack might enhance its position in the Islamic world. “They learned that in the Iraqi experience, and relearned it in southern Lebanon,” the former senior official said. In both cases, a more powerful military force had trouble achieving its military or political goals; in Lebanon, Israel’s war against Hezbollah did not destroy the group’s entire arsenal of rockets, and increased the popularity of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The former senior intelligence official added that the C.I.A. assessment raised the possibility that an American attack on Iran could end up serving as a rallying point to unite Sunni and Shiite populations. “An American attack will paper over any differences in the Arab world, and we’ll have Syrians, Iranians, Hamas, and Hezbollah fighting against us—and the Saudis and the Egyptians questioning their ties to the West. It’s an analyst’s worst nightmare—for the first time since the caliphate there will be common cause in the Middle East.” (An Islamic caliphate ruled the Middle East for over six hundred years, until the thirteenth century.)
According to the Pentagon consultant, “The C.I.A.’s view is that, without more intelligence, a large-scale bombing attack would not stop Iran’s nuclear program. And a low-end campaign of subversion and sabotage would play into Iran’s hands—bolstering support for the religious leadership and deepening anti-American Muslim rage.”
The Pentagon consultant said that he and many of his colleagues in the military believe that Iran is intent on developing nuclear-weapons capability. But he added that the Bush Administration’s options for dealing with that threat are diminished, because of a lack of good intelligence and also because “we’ve cried wolf” before.
As the C.I.A.’s assessment was making its way through the government, late this summer, current and former military officers and consultants told me, a new element suddenly emerged: intelligence from Israeli spies operating inside Iran claimed that Iran has developed and tested a trigger device for a nuclear bomb. The provenance and significance of the human intelligence, or HUMINT, are controversial. “The problem is that no one can verify it,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “We don’t know who the Israeli source is. The briefing says the Iranians are testing trigger mechanisms”—simulating a zero-yield nuclear explosion without any weapons-grade materials—”but there are no diagrams, no significant facts. Where is the test site? How often have they done it? How big is the warhead—a breadbox or a refrigerator? They don’t have that.” And yet, he said, the report was being used by White House hawks within the Administration to “prove the White House’s theory that the Iranians are on track. And tests leave no radioactive track, which is why we can’t find it.” Still, he said, “The agency is standing its ground.”
The Pentagon consultant, however, told me that he and other intelligence professionals believe that the Israeli intelligence should be taken more seriously. “We live in an era when national technical intelligence”—data from satellites and on-the-ground sensors—”will not get us what we need. HUMINT may not be hard evidence by that standard, but very often it’s the best intelligence we can get.” He added, with obvious exasperation, that within the intelligence community “we’re going to be fighting over the quality of the information for the next year.” One reason for the dispute, he said, was that the White House had asked to see the “raw”—the original, unanalyzed and unvetted—Israeli intelligence.
Such “stovepiping” of intelligence had led to faulty conclusions about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction during the buildup to the 2003 Iraq war. “Many Presidents in the past have done the same thing,” the consultant said, “but intelligence professionals are always aghast when Presidents ask for stuff in the raw. They see it as asking a second grader to read ‘Ulysses.’ ”
HUMINT can be difficult to assess. Some of the most politically significant—and most inaccurate—intelligence about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction came from an operative, known as Curveball, who was initially supplied to the C.I.A. by German intelligence. But the Pentagon consultant insisted that, in this case, “the Israeli intelligence is apparently very strong.” He said that the information about the trigger device had been buttressed by another form of highly classified data, known as MASINT, for “measuring and signature” intelligence. The Defense Intelligence Agency is the central processing and dissemination point for such intelligence, which includes radar, radio, nuclear, and electro-optical data. The consultant said that the MASINT indicated activities that “are not consistent with the programs” Iran has declared to the I.A.E.A. “The intelligence suggests far greater sophistication and more advanced development,” the consultant said. “The indications don’t make sense, unless they’re farther along in some aspects of their nuclear-weapons program than we know.”
In early 2004, John Bolton, who was then the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control (he is now the United Nations Ambassador), privately conveyed to the I.A.E.A. suspicions that Iran was conducting research into the intricately timed detonation of conventional explosives needed to trigger a nuclear warhead at Parchin, a sensitive facility twenty miles southeast of Tehran that serves as the center of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization. A wide array of chemical munitions and fuels, as well as advanced antitank and ground-to-air missiles, are manufactured there, and satellite imagery appeared to show a bunker suitable for testing very large explosions.
A senior diplomat in Vienna told me that, in response to the allegations, I.A.E.A. inspectors went to Parchin in November of 2005, after months of negotiation. An inspection team was allowed to single out a specific site at the base, and then was granted access to a few buildings there. “We found no evidence of nuclear materials,” the diplomat said. The inspectors looked hard at an underground explosive-testing pit that, he said, “resembled what South Africa had when it developed its nuclear weapons,” three decades ago. The pit could have been used for the kind of kinetic research needed to test a nuclear trigger. But, like so many military facilities with dual-use potential, “it also could be used for other things,” such as testing fuel for rockets, which routinely takes place at Parchin. “The Iranians have demonstrated that they can enrich uranium,” the diplomat added, “and trigger tests without nuclear yield can be done. But it’s a very sophisticated process—it’s also known as hydrodynamic testing—and only countries with suitably advanced nuclear testing facilities as well as the necessary scientific expertise can do it. I’d be very skeptical that Iran could do it.”
Earlier this month, the allegations about Parchin reëmerged when Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest newspaper, reported that recent satellite imagery showed new “massive construction” at Parchin, suggesting an expansion of underground tunnels and chambers. The newspaper sharply criticized the I.A.E.A.’s inspection process and its director, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, for his insistence on “using very neutral wording for his findings and his conclusions.”
Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran who is the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a conservative think tank, told me that the “biggest moment” of tension has yet to arrive: “How does the United States keep an Israeli decision point—one that may come sooner than we want—from being reached?” Clawson noted that there is evidence that Iran has been slowed by technical problems in the construction and operation of two small centrifuge cascades, which are essential for the pilot production of enriched uranium. Both are now under I.A.E.A. supervision. “Why were they so slow in getting the second cascade up and running?” Clawson asked. “And why haven’t they run the first one as much as they said they would? Do we have more time?
“Why talk about war?” he said. “We’re not talking about going to war with North Korea or Venezuela. It’s not necessarily the case that Iran has started a weapons program, and it’s conceivable—just conceivable—that Iran does not have a nuclear-weapons program yet. We can slow them down—force them to reinvent the wheel—without bombing, especially if the international conditions get better.”
Clawson added that Secretary of State Rice has “staked her reputation on diplomacy, and she will not risk her career without evidence. Her team is saying, ‘What’s the rush?’ The President wants to solve the Iranian issue before leaving office, but he may have to say, ‘Darn, I wish I could have solved it.’ ”
Earlier this year, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert created a task force to coördinate all the available intelligence on Iran. The task force, which is led by Major General Eliezer Shkedi, the head of the Israeli Air Force, reports directly to the Prime Minister. In late October, Olmert appointed Ephraim Sneh, a Labor Party member of the Knesset, to serve as Deputy Defense Minister. Sneh, who served previously in that position under Ehud Barak, has for years insisted that action be taken to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. In an interview this month with the Jerusalem Post, Sneh expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of diplomacy or international sanctions in curbing Iran:
The danger isn’t as much Ahmadinejad’s deciding to launch an attack but Israel’s living under a dark cloud of fear from a leader committed to its destruction. . . . Most Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will . . . I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button. That’s why we must prevent this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs.
A similar message was delivered by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader, in a speech in Los Angeles last week. “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs,” he said, adding that there was “still time” to stop the Iranians.
The Pentagon consultant told me that, while there may be pressure from the Israelis, “they won’t do anything on their own without our green light.” That assurance, he said, “comes from the Cheney shop. It’s Cheney himself who is saying, ‘We’re not going to leave you high and dry, but don’t go without us.’ ” A senior European diplomat agreed: “For Israel, it is a question of life or death. The United States does not want to go into Iran, but, if Israel feels more and more cornered, there may be no other choice.”
A nuclear-armed Iran would not only threaten Israel. It could trigger a strategic-arms race throughout the Middle East, as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt—all led by Sunni governments—would be compelled to take steps to defend themselves. The Bush Administration, if it does take military action against Iran, would have support from Democrats as well as Republicans. Senators Hillary Clinton, of New York, and Evan Bayh, of Indiana, who are potential Democratic Presidential candidates, have warned that Iran cannot be permitted to build a bomb and that—as Clinton said earlier this year—”we cannot take any option off the table.” Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has also endorsed this view. Last May, Olmert was given a rousing reception when he addressed a joint session of Congress and declared, “A nuclear Iran means a terrorist state could achieve the primary mission for which terrorists live and die—the mass destruction of innocent human life. This challenge, which I believe is the test of our time, is one the West cannot afford to fail.”
Despite such rhetoric, Leslie Gelb, a former State Department official who is a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said he believes that, “when push comes to shove, the Israelis will have a hard time selling the idea that an Iranian nuclear capability is imminent. The military and the State Department will be flat against a preëmptive bombing campaign.” Gelb said he hoped that Gates’s appointment would add weight to America’s most pressing issue—”to get some level of Iranian restraint inside Iraq. In the next year or two, we’re much more likely to be negotiating with Iran than bombing it.”
The Bush Administration remains publicly committed to a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear impasse, and has been working with China, Russia, France, Germany, and Britain to get negotiations under way. So far, that effort has foundered; the most recent round of talks broke up early in November, amid growing disagreements with Russia and China about the necessity of imposing harsh United Nations sanctions on the Iranian regime. President Bush is adamant that Iran must stop all of its enrichment programs before any direct talks involving the United States can begin.
The senior European diplomat told me that the French President, Jacques Chirac, and President Bush met in New York on September 19th, as the new U.N. session was beginning, and agreed on what the French called the “Big Bang” approach to breaking the deadlock with Iran. A scenario was presented to Ali Larijani, the chief Iranian negotiator on nuclear issues. The Western delegation would sit down at a negotiating table with Iran. The diplomat told me, “We would say, ‘We’re beginning the negotiations without preconditions,’ and the Iranians would respond, ‘We will suspend.’ Our side would register great satisfaction, and the Iranians would agree to accept I.A.E.A. inspection of their enrichment facilities. And then the West would announce, in return, that they would suspend any U.N. sanctions.” The United States would not be at the table when the talks began but would join later. Larijani took the offer to Tehran; the answer, as relayed by Larijani, was no, the diplomat said. “We were trying to compromise, for all sides, but Ahmadinejad did not want to save face,” the diplomat said. “The beautiful scenario has gone nowhere.”
Last week, there was a heightened expectation that the Iraq Study Group would produce a set of recommendations that could win bipartisan approval and guide America out of the quagmire in Iraq. Sources with direct knowledge of the panel’s proceedings have told me that the group, as of mid-November, had ruled out calling for an immediate and complete American withdrawal but would recommend focussing on the improved training of Iraqi forces and on redeploying American troops. In the most significant recommendation, Baker and Hamilton were expected to urge President Bush to do what he has thus far refused to do—bring Syria and Iran into a regional conference to help stabilize Iraq.
It is not clear whether the Administration will be receptive. In August, according to the former senior intelligence official, Rumsfeld asked the Joint Chiefs to quietly devise alternative plans for Iraq, to preëmpt new proposals, whether they come from the new Democratic majority or from the Iraq Study Group. “The option of last resort is to move American forces out of the cities and relocate them along the Syrian and Iranian border,” the former official said. “Civilians would be hired to train the Iraqi police, with the eventual goal of separating the local police from the Iraqi military.
The White House believes that if American troops stay in Iraq long enough—with enough troops—the bad guys will end up killing each other, and Iraqi citizens, fed up with internal strife, will come up with a solution. It’ll take a long time to move the troops and train the police. It’s a time line to infinity.”
In a subsequent interview, the former senior Bush Administration official said that he had also been told that the Pentagon has been at work on a plan in Iraq that called for a military withdrawal from the major urban areas to a series of fortified bases near the borders. The working assumption was that, with the American troops gone from the most heavily populated places, the sectarian violence would “burn out.” “The White House is saying it’s going to stabilize,” the former senior Administration official said, “but it may stabilize the wrong way.”
One problem with the proposal that the Administration enlist Iran in reaching a settlement of the conflict in Iraq is that it’s not clear that Iran would be interested, especially if the goal is to help the Bush Administration extricate itself from a bad situation.
“Iran is emerging as a dominant power in the Middle East,” I was told by a Middle East expert and former senior Administration official. “With a nuclear program, and an ability to interfere throughout the region, it’s basically calling the shots. Why should they coöperate with us over Iraq?” He recounted a recent meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who challenged Bush’s right to tell Iran that it could not enrich uranium. “Why doesn’t America stop enriching uranium?” the Iranian President asked. He laughed, and added, “We’ll enrich it for you and sell it to you at a fifty-per-cent discount.”
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
methadone xanax and
In addition to the cost benefits, methadone xanax and feature is the music editor that lets the user easily pick the part of the song they wish to set as a methadone xanax and .
xanax cats and
A single satellite can provide coverage to xanax cats and greater area than terrestrial base stations.
vicodin xanax interaction
[citation needed] Emirates has announced plans to allow limited vicodin xanax interaction usage on some flights.
underground buying xanax
In 2006 underground buying xanax value of underground buying xanax paid media content exceeded internet paid media content and was worth 31 Billion dollars (source Informa 2007).
and mixing xanax ambien
This law goes into effect on July 1, 2008 with and mixing xanax ambien fine for the first offense and $50 fines for each subsequent conviction.
xanax getting xr
Studies have found vastly different relative risks (RR).
xanax cheap pharmacies online
[36] Also xanax cheap pharmacies online from the xanax cheap pharmacies online proliferates the bacteria on the key pad.
of daily and xanax wine glass
Like all high structures, cellular antenna masts pose of daily and xanax wine glass to low flying aircraft.
average xanax of presciption dose
First trial payments using average xanax of presciption dose to pay for a Coca Cola vending machine were set in Finland in 1998.
.5 xanax
Around 80% of .5 xanax population enjoys .5 xanax coverage as of 2006.
November 20th, 2006