|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Matt Miller
$16.50
By Peter Longerich
$22
|
|
|
|
|
Contrary to the official “diplomatic solution” line, Seymour Hersh reports that Washington is stepping up plans for a possible airstrike on Iran. According to Reuters, Hersh’s story in the April 17 issue of The New Yorker reports that a former senior defense official said the planning was, in Hersh’s words, “based on the belief that a bombing campaign against Iran would humiliate the leadership and lead the Iranian public to overthrow it.” The ex-official reportedly added that he was shocked to hear the strategy.
|
|
Former intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter cuts through a recent L.A. Times story which claimed that “Iran could manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within three years.” He provides a rather technical, but extremely convincing, argument for why it is unlikely that Iran could pose a nuclear threat anytime soon. (video: h/t Crooks and Liars)
|
|
The former secretary of state writes that the White House’s “penchant for painting its perceived adversaries” with a “sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences” in the Middle East.
|
|
The pretense has been shattered. The U.S. is explicitly accusing Iran of supplying money and training to anti-U.S. fighters in Iraq.
|
|
Jon Stewart lays it out in technicolor: Bush had no solid backing for his claim that Iran is providing the deadly Iraqi roadside bombs. (As Truthdig also pointed out two days ago.)
|
|
Dwayne Powell —
|
|
In an updated version of his national security strategy, the president gives no ground on the policy that led us into Iraq, and identifies Iran as being the country that poses the biggest challenge to the U.S.
|
From pravda.ru
|
As part of Bush & Co.‘s campaign to turn Iran into the next imminent threat, Condoleezza Rice calls Tehran a “central banker for terrorism.”
So, just to get this straight: Iran is the new Iraq, which was the new Afghanistan, which was the new Russia?
|
From Helene C. Stikkel / U.S. DoD
|
Remember how Bush claimed on Monday that Iran was providing many of the roadside bombs killing U.S. troops in Iraq? Well, the U.S.’ top military commander just told the Pentagon that there is no proof for such a claim.
Usually it’s someone opposed to Bush’s policies who makes him look so foolish—not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Truthdig’s Juan Cole was all over this apparently bogus claim yesterday.
|
Khalid Mohammed / AP
|
By Robert Scheer — “If such constant mayhem is taken as a sign of progress, three years after the U.S. invasion, then Bush will surely be thrilled by what the future holds.”
|
|
The president asserts that many of the roadside bombs in Iraq—which have proved so deadly to U.S. forces—originate in Iran.
This is part and parcel of Bush & Co.‘s efforts to portray Tehran as the next big boogeyman.
Check out Truthdig’s Juan Cole on Bush’s campaign to frame Iran.
|
Karen Spector
|
By Juan Cole — Truthdig’s Middle Eastern affairs expert argues that the Iranian nuclear issue “has not reached the point of crisis, and therefore other motivations must be sought for the Bush administration’s breathless rhetoric.”
UPDATE: Cole says that Bush’s recent linking of Iran to Iraqi roadside bombs is “wholly implausible.”
|
|
Tehran ratchets up the war of words with the U.S. over American-led action to bring Iran before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions against its nuclear program.
We’re being threatened by the country Bush didn’t invade and whose surrogates we put in power in Iraq.
|
|
America’s top envoy to Iraq: “The possibility is there” for sectarian violence to lead to civil war and all-out war in the region.
A BBC reporter in Baghdad: “It gives me no pleasure today to forecast further doom and gloom here in Iraq. But, as in Iran in 1978, the facts on the street contradict the assertions of the generals, the politicians and the diplomats.”
|
|
Bush’s historic deal with India will shield some Indian nuclear plants from international inspections. A proliferation expert tells the N.Y. Times that this will allow India to “amass as many nuclear weapons as it wants. This is Santa Claus negotiating.”
|
|
The L.A. Times charts how America’s war in Iraq has made Iran the dominant power in the region, with a stronger nuclear program, strengthened ties to Hamas and a burgeoning core of anti-U.S. Shiites.
Posted on Feb 21, 2006
READ MORE 
|
|
Francis Fukuyama, one of the leading neocon intellectuals who argued the case for the Iraq war, admits in a blockbuster N.Y. Times Magazine essay that it is “very hard to see how [the removal of Saddam Hussein, and a few spillover benefits] justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent.”
Andrew Sullivan, another leading pro-war conservative, echoes Fukuyama’s comment and points out three areas where neocons were tragically wrong.
|
|
Tony Blankley —
As I understand the profound concern of the ever-alert White House reporters, they smell a constitutional crisis because the shooting party failed to alert the media of the accidental shooting down in Corpus Christi, Texas.
|
From moviereporter.net
|
China is set to plumb Iranian oil fields in a $100-billion deal, complicating U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran and providing Iran more money to pursue its nuclear ambitions.
Can someone please call Stephen Gaghan to figure this one out for us? Or maybe this is a case for Truthdig’s Orville Schell, who knows a thing or two about China?
|
|
The secretary of state gets a grilling when she requests $75 million from the Senate for democracy-building activities in Iran.
Most of the money would go toward round-the-clock TV programming in Farsi. And while that’s probably not a bad idea, it’s hard to imagine that any amount of TV would meaningfully distract attention from the spectacle of the American occupation of Iraq.
|
|
The largely ineffectual interim leader is now set to take formal control of the country. He is backed by theocratic Shiites in Iran and the rabidly anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr in Iraq. A theocratic state, virulently hostile to U.S. interests? Right now Ahmad Chalabi is almost starting to look good in comparison. | story
Posted on Feb 12, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
In his first-ever interview with a Western publication, Iran’s foreign minister vows immediate retaliation over a move to refer his nation’s nuclear weapons activities to the United Nations Security Council. | story
Well, at least we can count on the support of the newly pro-West Iraqi government to back us up if things get messy next-door. Oh, wait….
Posted on Feb 2, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
A Brown University professor writes: “Every aspect of Iran’s current nuclear development was approved and encouraged by Washington in the 1970s.” | column
|
AP
|
The rebuilding of Iraq was hobbled and mismanaged from the get-go, according to an official history of the program leaked to the New York Times. | story
The Kurds, in exchange for a quasi-autonomous secular state of their own, will allow Shiite theocracy to dominate the rest of the country. Hardly the neocon fantasy of a secular, united and American-friendly Iraq. | story
Meanwhile, a mass exodus of Iraq’s professional, educated class is resulting in a brain drain, just when the country needs its thinkers most. | story
Also, an influential cleric who has led uprisings against the U.S. says that his militia would defend Iran if it was attacked. | story
Posted on Jan 23, 2006
READ MORE
|
Khalid Mohammed / AP
|
The parliamentary results are confirmed: Shiites will dominate both the Sunnis and the Kurds in Iraq. So while the U.S. tries to intimidate Iran over its nukes, Iranian-bred theocratic Shiites—those most hostile to our interests—are in the ascendancy in Iraq. So much for the neocons’ “Field of Dreams” scenario for creating democracy in Iraq: “If you break it, they will come.” | story
- Also, read Juan Cole on how Bush created a theocracy in Iraq. | column
- And read Robert Scheer on Iran’s victory in Iraq. | item
Update: A former Pentagon analyst is sentenced to 12 years-plus for leaking confidential documents in an attempt to get the U.S. to take the threat of Iran more seriously. | story
Update No. 2: Iran and Iraq are already linking arms on the construction of electricity facilities.
Posted on Jan 20, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
This New York Times piece spells out how fiendishly hard it’s going to be to threaten Iran over its nukes while simultaneously guzzling its oil. | story
It’s sort of like admonishing a drug dealer for selling heroin to kids, and then scoring a dime bag of blow for yourself.
|
|
CNN had mistranslated the Iranian president as saying Iran had a right to use nuclear “weapons,” rather than nuclear “technology.” | story
Posted on Jan 17, 2006
READ MORE
|
Bill Haber / AP
|
Ohio Rep. Bob Ney lobbied Colin Powell to ease sanctions on Iran—at the behest of a crooked lobbyist. | story
Iran and dirty lobbying: Can you even imagine a more sordid combo? No wonder Ney just stepped down from his leadership post. | story
|
|
The Iranian president, while claiming that his nuclear research is peaceful, slammed the “double standards” of the West and those who seek to “make peace for themselves by creating war for others.” | story
Perhaps he’s right, but this guy is also a Holocaust denier.
Update: And now he wants to hold a debate on the scale and consequences of the Holocaust.
|
Haraz Ghanbari / AP
|
Bush and the new German chancellor are pushing diplomacy on the Iranian nuclear issue. | story
If this seems in stark contrast with the president’s Iraq policy, read Truthdig’s Robert Scheer or Juan Cole—who argue that we’ve lost leverage over Iran because the Iraq war has empowered the Shiites in both countries to link arms against us.
Posted on Jan 12, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
The former president lashes out at the int’l community over its stance on Iranian nuclear research. | story
Posted on Jan 10, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
U.N. warns that world is running out of patience with Tehran | more
Posted on Jan 9, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
No excuse given, Iranian team leader reportedly heads back to Tehran. | more
Posted on Jan 5, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
Declares stance “nonnegotiable” more
Posted on Jan 4, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
My enemy’s enemy was my friend. . . . In the early 1980s, the U.S. was shaking hands with Saddam Hussein after he had committed crimes for which he’s now on trial.
Posted on Dec 9, 2005
READ MORE 
|
|
The big winners in Iraq will be Iran’s ayatollahs, sponsors of their fellow Shiite theocrats who are the main U.S. surrogates on the ground in Iraq. To make sure, they’ve arranged a double whammy:
|
|
By Juan Cole — Retracing the steps of Shiite religious leaders and parties who have come to dominate the post-invasion process.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Lock Up Washington
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
