BUSH TO ATTACK IRAN BY AUGUST

"... Bush administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months... the White House views the proposed air strike as a limited action to punish Iran for its involvement in Iraq... The source (is) an ambassador during the administration of president H W Bush... a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community... Two key US senators briefed on the attack... Senator Diane Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana... planned to go public with their opposition to the move..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JE28Ak01.html

"... retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community..."
= Richard Clark: Assist. Sec. of State for Politico-Military Affairs, 1989-1992 ??
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_A._Clarke

U.S. FAILS TO FIND ANY IRANIAN ARMS IN IRAQ

"The United States military command in Iraq continues to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shi'ites opposing the US occupation... But US officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim... General David Petraeus insisted last October that there is "absolutely no question" that Iran is providing RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade launchers to Iraqi Shi'ite groups. But RPG-29s are manufactured by Russia, not Iran... "

"In weapons caches reported from Shi'ite locations, not a single RPG-29 has been identified. Of the 160 RPG launchers reported in Mahdi Army caches, along with 800 RPG missiles, none were identified as Iranian, although some were identified as being Soviet-made. Only 11 were reported to be RPG-7s - a type of launcher that is made by Russia and China as well as Iran and used by 40 countries around the world."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JE24Ak02.html

ATTACK ON IRAN A VIOLATION OF U.S. CONSTITUTION

"... an attack on Iran would be a flagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States, which stipulates that treaties ratified by the Senate become the supreme law of the land; that the United Nations Charter treaty — which the Senate ratified by a vote of 89 to 2 on July 28, 1945 — expressly forbids attacks on other countries, unless they pose an imminent danger; that there is no provision allowing some other kind of “pre-emptive” or “preventive” attack against a nation that poses no imminent danger; and that Iran poses no imminent danger to the United States or its allies..."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/20/9068/

BUSH PLOT ABOUT IRANIAN ARMS FAILS

"... The Bush administration and top Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus had plotted a sequence of events that would build domestic U.S. political support for a possible strike against Iran over its "meddling" in Iraq and especially its alleged export of arms to Shiite militias.... (but) The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to endorse U.S. charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms were of Iranian origin..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42373

BUSH AND AHMADINEJAD: THE NEW BLUES BROTHERS

"Think of George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new Blues Brothers: Both believe they are on a mission from God. Both are religious fundamentalists. Ahmadinejad believes fervently in the imminent return of the Mahdi, the Shi'ite messiah, who "disappeared" and has remained hidden since the ninth century. Bush believes fervently in a coming end time and the return of Jesus Christ. But only Bush, despite his actual invasions and constant threats, gets a (sort of) free pass from the Western ideological machine, while Ahmadinejad is portrayed as a Hitlerian believer in a new Holocaust."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174926

CLINTON THREATENS TO OBLITERATE IRAN

"... Clinton threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran if the Islamic Republic was ever "reckless" enough to launch a nuclear attack on Israel... "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said..."
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080422/twl-us-vote-clinton-iran-7e07afd.html

CLINTON THE TERRORIST

"... On primary election day in Pennsylvania... (asked) how she would respond to a nuclear attack by Iran, which doesn’t have nuclear weapons, on Israel, which does, Hillary... promis(ed) to “totally obliterate them,” in an apparent reference to the population of Iran... an assertion of the right of our nation to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale... Neither the Japanese then nor the Iranian people now were in a position to hold their leaders accountable, and to approve such collective punishment of innocents is to endorse terrorism."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080422_robert_scheer_apr_23_clinton_and_iran/

IRAN IS LATEST REASON FOR IRAQ WAR

"The US rationale for war in Iraq has morphed from ousting strongman Saddam Hussein, to countering Al-Qaeda militants to its latest incarnation -- facing down what officials in President George W. Bush's administration call the Iranian "threat".

"... Brookings Institution expert Suzanne Maloney said that "disastrous Bush policies fostered a sectarian Iraq that has helped empower Iranian hardliners. "Rather than serving as an anchor for a new era of stability and American pre-eminence in the Persian Gulf, the new Iraq represents a strategic black hole, bleeding Washington of military resources and political influence while extending Iran's primacy among its neighbors."

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080414/twl-us-iran-iraq-bush-politics-unrest-7e07afd.html

U.S. SET TO ATTACK IRAN, BEGIN MID-EAST WAR

"... (on) April 8, US Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus and ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will stress in their report to Congress that Iran is waging war on America in Iraq... the US is set to attack Iranian military facilities... the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Force is heading for the Persian Gulf... Russian military and intelligence officials have been leaking claims of intensified American military movements around Iranian shores... (here are) Washington’s intentions as combined with Israel’s military steps:
1. US is preparing to attack the Iranian military installations linked to subversion in Iraq. The operation will widen out into strikes on the Islamic Republic’s suspect nuclear sites.
2. Israel will use the chance for a concurrent attack on Syria.
3. Israel will attack Hizballah’s strongholds in Lebanon.
4. A broad, coordinated US-Israeli offensive will be mounted against Iran, Syria and Hizballah..."
--DEBKAfile (Israel), April 7, 2008
http://www.debka.com/index.php

U.S. COMMANDER AFFIRMS NO WAR ON IRAN

"... CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon confirms his public statements last fall ruling out war against Iran... That was the second time in less than a week and the third time in seven weeks that Fallon had publicly declared that there would be no war against Iran. In an interview with Al-Jazeera television in September... he had said, "This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me which is not helpful and not useful".
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41500

BOLTON ENCOURAGES ISRAEL TO ATTACK IRAN

"At a lecture in Herzliya, Israel... the former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said: “One can say with some assurance that in the next year the use of force by the United States is highly unlikely. This increases the pressure on Israel in that period of time... the time to take the plan of action is before Iran acquires the weapons”... Bolton was of the view that Iran’s response “will be a lot more measured than people think.”
--DEBKAfile (Israel), Wednesday, January 23, 2008
http://www.debka.com/index.php

RUSSIA TO DEFEND IRAN WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS

"Russia's military chief of staff (Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky) said Saturday that Moscow could use nuclear weapons in preventive strikes to protect itself and its allies (like Iran)... "
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i1fg9K4w_OQvYX65kemvhiOOJTZAD8U92Q881

"... The China-Iran-Russia alliance can be considered as Beijing's and Moscow's counterpunch to Washington's global ambitions. From this perspective, Iran is integral to thwarting the Bush administration's foreign policy goals. This is precisely why Beijing and Moscow have strengthened their economic and diplomatic ties with Tehran. It is also why Beijing and Moscow are providing Tehran with increasingly sophisticated weapons..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GF04Ad07.html

IRAQI POLICE SAY IRAN NOT INTERFERRING

Iraqi Police Commander in Basra Dismisses Accusations Against Iran
Al-Alam Television
Thursday, January 17, 2008
(Text of report by state-run Iranian Arabic-language television news channel Al-Alam)
The commander of Basra Police, Staff Maj-Gen Jalil Khalaf, has described the US-British accusations that Iran is meddling in Iraqi affairs and undermining the security situation as nothing more than a political game. He said the Iraqi security services have not obtained any evidence pointing to a negative Iranian interference in southern Iraq... The commander of Basra Police, Staff Maj-Gen Jalil Khalaf, described the US and British accusations against Iran as nothing more than a political game, saying that the Iraqi security services have not found any evidence which would point to an Iranian interference in southern Iraq... As regards the countries (concerned), it is their problem and this is politics."
http://www.juancole.com/2008/01/basra-police-chief-denies-iran-mischief.html

HOW PENTAGON PLANTED SPEEDBOAT STORY

"... the Navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that U.S. warships would "explode" in "a few seconds"... Pentagon officials had all day Sunday, Jan. 6, to discuss what to do about the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz. The result was a decision to play it up as a major incident... The decision came just as President George W. Bush was about to leave on a Middle East trip aimed in part at rallying Arab states to join the United States in an anti-Iran coalition... A separate audio recording of a voice, which came across the VHS channel open to anyone with access to it, was spliced into a video.. That was a political decision... made in the office of the secretary of defence. That decision involved a high risk of getting caught in an obvious attempt to mislead."

"... The decision to treat the Jan. 6 incident as evidence of an Iranian threat reveals a chasm between the interests of political officials in Washington and Navy officials in the Gulf. Asked whether the Navy's reporting of the episode was distorted by Pentagon officials, Cmdr Robertson of 5th Fleet Public Affairs would not comment directly. But she said, "There is a different perspective over there."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40801

GOD AND CONSTITUTION

The Iranian Constitution:
"Article 1
The form of government of Iran is that of an Islamic Republic...
Article 2
The Islamic Republic is a system based on belief in the One God... Allah, His exclusive sovereignty and the right to legislate, and the necessity of submission to His commands...
Article 4
All civil, penal financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political, and other laws and regulations must be based on Islamic criteria..."
--Iranian Constitution
http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/Government/constitution-1.html

The Afghan Constitution:
"Article Three Ch. 1, Art. 3
In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."
http://www.afghansite.com/afghanistan/afghanConstitution.asp

A Proposed Amendment to the US Constitution:

"... I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."
--Mike Huckabee

"... Ours will.. be a worldview with... with God at the center... will dominate public policy, the laws we make, and every other detail of our existence."
--Mike Huckabee, book titled "Character Is the Issue: How People With Integrity Can Revolutionize America", 1997.

VOICE ON U.S. VIDEO IS "FILIPINO MONKEY"

"... "I am coming at you. You will explode in a few minutes" - that was what the American navy men heard. An indignant Washington announced the US Navy was on the verge of firing ... But the Iranian footage of the "incident" makes a laughing stock of the US administration. The funny thing is, it was an incident that didn't happen. Commander Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, put a brave face, while admitting, "We don't know for sure where they [threats] came from. It could have been a shore station." Chief of Naval Operations in the Pentagon, Admiral Gary Roughhead, backed up explaining, "Based on my experience in operating in that part of the world, where there is a lot of maritime activity, trying to discern is very hard to do."

"Filipino Monkey" is the code name given by the US Navy to a mysterious but profane voice which often challenges it in the Strait of Hormuz. The voice could be, if The Seattle Times newspaper is to be believed, "likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps in, shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets". US Navy women are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment...."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA16Ak02.html

SPEEDBOAT VIDEO FABRICATED

US video on official DoD site first was blocked so it would not play completely and now has been taken down:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/briefingslide.aspx?briefingslideid=320

Same US video posted to YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNMqbjwxHV4&NR=1

The Iranians said the US video was compiled using earlier file pictures of the speedboats, and the audio was been fabricated so clumsily that the pictures and voices in the video are not even synchronized. The Pentagon admits the video is a fabrication in the sense that the video and the audio were recorded separately and then combined. And they can't even be sure where the audio came from. The foreign-accented voice was recorded from the internationally recognized channel for ship-to-ship communications, and Navy officials have said they are still trying to determine if the transmission came from the speedboats or elsewhere.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10iran.html?bl&ex=1200200400&en=ab0fa0fbe1b14f9c&ei=5087%0A
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011000692_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008011001831

A video of the routine encounter was recorded by the Iranians and posted on YouTube:

S-300 MISSILES ADDED TO NUCLEAR SITE DEFENSES

"... (Iran) just signed a contract for the supply of another Russian anti-air weapon, the highly sophisticated S-300, rated the most effective killer of ballistic missiles on the market... Moscow has designed the multi-layer air defense system to make Iran proof against Israel’s AirAir ForceForce and the ballistic missiles in its armory... While TOR-M1 can locate and destroy moving targets at low altitudes, the S-300 system uniquely zaps high-flying, medium-range ballistic missiles of the type which is the backbone of Israel’s surface missile units at a distance of 1-40 km. Together, they lend Iran air superiority over any missiles and aircraft. Another of S-300’s significant features is its advanced guidance method which relies on a single phased array radar to trace missiles in the air. This reduces its deployment time to five minutes; secondly, the missiles are sealed rounds and require no maintenance over their lifetime..."
--DEBKAfile (Israel), December 26, 2007
http://www.debka.com/index.php

TOR-1 MISSILE BATTERIES INSTALLED AT NUCLEAR SITES

"The head of the Russian Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation announced the imminent installment of sophisticated Russian TOR-M1 missile batteries at Iran’s nuclear installations... the multi-functional, multiple layer hardware substantially upgrades the shield protecting Iran’s banned uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Isfahan, as well as Bushehr, from many types or air and missile attack.
The TOR-M1 is designed to intercept “stealth” aircraft, helicopters and drones as well as laser-guided precision bombs, rockets and cruise missiles... it can destroy any of these incoming objects 12 km before they make contact with target.... Its 3D pulse Doppler electronic beam feeds data on 48 targets simultaneously to the system’s firing computers, selecting the ten most dangerous and responding in 5-8 seconds..."
--DEBKAfile (Israel), December 25, 2007
http://www.debka.com/index.php

THREE U.S. CARRIER STRIKE GROUPS AND TWO MARINE CARRIERS OFF IRAN

"... in recent months, the USS Enterprise was the only US nuclear carrier cruising Gulf waters with its strike force. On Nov. 5, a second nuclear carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman set out quietly from its Norfolk base for the Gulf with 7,500 sailors and marines aboard the carrier and its strike force. It will be followed by the USS Nimitz. All three carrier groups are escorted by fast nuclear submarines, cruisers and missile destroyers... (also present are) the two US Marine carriers the USS Wasp and the USS Kearsage, with thousands of marines and landing craft on their decks...."
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1314