"Amerikanen bereiden zich voor op aanval Iran"

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has been carrying out secret reconnaissance missions to learn about nuclear, chemical and missile sites in Iran in preparation for possible airstrikes there, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

The effort has been under way at least since last summer, Hersh said on CNN's "Late Edition."

In an interview on the same program, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said the story was "riddled with inaccuracies."

"I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact," Bartlett said.

Iran has refused to dismantle its nuclear program, which it insists is legal and is intended solely for civilian purposes. (Full story)

Hersh said U.S. officials were involved in "extensive planning" for a possible attack -- "much more than we know."

"The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids," he wrote in "The New Yorker" magazine, which published his article in editions that will be on newsstands Monday.

Hersh is a veteran journalist who was the first to write about many details of the abuses of prisoners Abu Ghraib in Baghdad.

He said his information on Iran came from "inside" sources who divulged it in the hope that publicity would force the administration to reconsider.

"I think that's one of the reasons some of the people on the inside talk to me," he said.

Hersh said the government did not answer his request for a response before the story's publication, and that his sources include people in government whose information has been reliable in the past.

Hersh said Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld view Bush's re-election as "a mandate to continue the war on terrorism," despite problems with the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Last week, the effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- the Bush administration's stated primary rationale for the war -- was halted after having come up empty.

The secret missions in Iran, Hersh said, have been authorized in order to prevent similar embarrassment in the event of military action there. (Full story)

"The planning for Iran is going ahead even though Iraq is a mess," Hersh said. "I think they really think there's a chance to do something in Iran, perhaps by summer, to get the intelligence on the sites."

He added, "The guys on the inside really want to do this."

Hersh identified those inside people as the "neoconservative" civilian leadership in the Pentagon. That includes Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith -- "the sort of war hawks that we talk about in connection with the war in Iraq."

And he said the preparation goes beyond contingency planning and includes detailed plans for air attacks:

"The next step is Iran. It's definitely there. They're definitely planning ... But they need the intelligence first."
Emphasizing 'diplomatic initiatives'

Bartlett said the United States is working with its European allies to help persuade Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons.

Asked if military action is an option should diplomacy fail, Bartlett said, "No president at any juncture in history has ever taken military options off the table."

But Bush "has shown that he believes we can emphasize the diplomatic initiatives that are under way right now," he said.

Hersh said U.S. officials believe that a U.S. attack on Iran might provoke an uprising by Iranians against the hard-line religious leaders who run the government. Similar arguments were made ahead of the invasion of Iraq, when administration officials predicted U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators.

And Hersh said administration officials have chosen not to include conflicting points of view in their deliberations -- such as predictions that any U.S. attack would provoke a wave of nationalism that would unite Iranians against the United States.

"As people say to me, when it comes to meetings about this issue, if you don't drink the Kool-Aid, you can't go to meetings," he said. "That isn't a message anybody wants to hear."

The plans are not limited to Iran, he said.

"The president assigned a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other special forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia," he wrote.

Under the secret plans, the war on terrorism would be led by the Pentagon, and the power of the CIA would be reduced, Hersh wrote in his article.

"It's sort of a great victory for Donald Rumsfeld, a bureaucratic victory," Hersh told CNN.

He said: "Since the summer of 2002, he's been advocating, 'Let me run this war, not the CIA. We can do it better. We'll send our boys in. We don't have to tell their local military commanders. We don't have to tell the ambassadors. We don't have to tell the CIA station chiefs in various countries. Let's go in and work with the bad guys and see what we can find out.'"

Hersh added that the administration has chipped away at the CIA's power and that newly appointed CIA Director Porter Goss has overseen a purge of the old order.

"He's been committing sort-of ordered executions'" Hersh said. "He's been -- you know, people have been fired, they've been resigning."

The target of the housecleaning at the CIA, he said, has been intelligence analysts, some of whom are seen as "apostates -- as opposed to being true believers."

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 07:54 schreef BloodhoundFromHell het volgende:
De Amerikanen willen Irak als springplank gebruikenom door te stoten naar Iran. Volgens het Pentagon is de oorlog in Irak slechts een klein onderdeel van een groots plan. Uit een artikel blijkt dat Amerikaanse commando's al in Irak zijn om militaire installaties te saboteren en het regome te verzwakken om later in een allesvernietigende aanval het land te kunnen overrompelen:
[..]

bron: http://www.nu.nl/news.jsp?n=469094&c=23

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 08:01 schreef HarigeKerel het volgende:
Dat zou mooi zijn, dan nog even Libanon en Syrie opruimen en je kunt vanuit Libanon zo naar China rijden over Amerikaans gebied

Alexander zou het zo gewild hebben!

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 09:02 schreef MikeyMo het volgende:
time will tell

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...dat de oorlog in Irak slechts "een van de operaties in de oorlog tegen Irak" is...

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 08:02 schreef DrWolffenstein het volgende:
Duh, door 11 september is het duidelijk geworden dat streng gelovige islamieten en kapitalisten / globalisten niet op 1 aarde naast elkaar kunnen leven. 1 groep zal ten onder moeten gaan teneinde rust in de wereld te brengen.

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The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 08:01 schreef HarigeKerel het volgende:
Dat zou mooi zijn, dan nog even Libanon en Syrie opruimen en je kunt vanuit Libanon zo naar China rijden over Amerikaans gebied

Alexander zou het zo gewild hebben!

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 10:38 schreef Hallulama het volgende:
Nogmaals, de enige optie is een precisie aanval, met behulp van de Tomahawk raketjes b.v., zaak is om het Iraanse arsenaal dan dusdanig te verlammen dat terugslaan niet mogelijk is, en vervolgens eventuele verdere nucleaire ambities onmogelijk te makenen, hiermee zou de missie dan volbracht zijn.

Zie 't maar als een soort tik op de vingers

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 08:02 schreef DrWolffenstein het volgende:

[..]

Duh, door 11 september is het duidelijk geworden dat streng gelovige islamieten en kapitalisten / globalisten niet op 1 aarde naast elkaar kunnen leven. 1 groep zal ten onder moeten gaan teneinde rust in de wereld te brengen.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 09:59 schreef Mr.Spock het volgende:
Het wachten is op Wouter Bos die ons verteld dat we er maar aan moeten wennen dat ook Islamitische heilstaten over kernwapens beschikken.

Amerika heeft de ondankbare taak onze shit op te mogen ruimen, de nucleaire erfenis van Nederlandsche naiviteit t.o.v onze moslimbroeders.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 10:39 schreef Dagonet het volgende:
Waarmee je Iran het recht geeft om Irak binnen te vallen, de overwerkte Amerikanen daar het land uit te trappen en Irak in te nemen.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 10:42 schreef thabit het volgende:

[..]

Zulke ideeen hadden de Nazi's ook.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 09:59 schreef Mr.Spock het volgende:
Ik zal er niet rouwig om zijn als Iran van de kaart geveegd wordt. Islamitische landen met kernwapens is een dodelijke cocktail. Daarnaast hoop ik dat de lezers hier begrijpen dat de VS ONZE rotzooi aan het opruimen is. Via Pakistan hebben Noord-Korea en Iran kernwapens gekregen uit ultra-centrifuge technologie die in Almelo weggegeven werd aan een Islamitische wetenschapper. De gevolgen van het Linkse allochtonen knuffelen zijn ook "globally" merkbaar.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:19 schreef VivaLaRevolution het volgende:

[..]

En ik ben bang dat er nog veel te veel mensen met dat soort ideeen rondlopen aan de overkant van de oceaan (hier dus blijkbaar ook)

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 09:51 schreef Days-Of-Wild het volgende:
Lijkt me zeer onwaarschijnlijk. Tenzij de Amerikaanse legerleiding nog dommer is dan ik al dacht. Of ze willen gewoon heel veel problemen hebben, meer dan ze aankunnen en de wereld meeslepen, ja dan is het een goed idee.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:23 schreef VivaLaRevolution het volgende:
En waarom mag zo'n mafkees als Bush wel kernwapens hebben en islamitische landen niet. Ik vraag me af wie er agresiever optreden namelijk...

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:10 schreef vdo28 het volgende:
Aan de ene kant vind ik dat de V.S moet kappen hiermee, aan de andere kant als je hoort hoe het er in Iran aan toegaat (ook van kennissen die daar wegkomen) heb ik zo'n idee dat ze wel "bevrijd" mogen worden.

Maar als ze dan net zo moeten leven als in Irak nu gebeurt..., tja dan weet ik het ook niet.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:38 schreef Noca het volgende:

[..]

Je "bevrijdt" een land echt niet als je er een paar bommen op gooit hoor.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:36 schreef speknek het volgende:

[..]

Ik ben bang dat er nog veel meer mensen met zulke ideeën rondlopen in ongeschoolde dictaturen in het Midden-Oosten, maar hier ook nog kennelijk .

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:23 schreef VivaLaRevolution het volgende:

[..]

Even voor de duidelijkheid: in Iran wonen ook mensen, net zoals jij. En waarom mag zo'n mafkees als Bush wel kernwapens hebben en islamitische landen niet. Ik vraag me af wie er agresiever optreden namelijk...

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:46 schreef Posdnous het volgende:
Jij vind het raar dat ze zo denken in Islamitische landen .

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:54 schreef sanniejj het volgende:

[..]
Hopelijk bemoeit de VN zich er niet mee deze keer, want die doen net zo hard mee met die fundimentalisten (blix die bewust bewijsmateriaal achter hield om het niet te laten escaleren)

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:56 schreef speknek het volgende:

[..]

Nee hoor, als ik een debiel was en honderd procent van de dag gehersenspoeld werd door de staatstelevisie zou ik ook zo gaan denken. Maar waarom de mensen hier hun ratio verliezen?

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:56 schreef speknek het volgende:

[..]

Nee hoor, als ik een debiel was en honderd procent van de dag gehersenspoeld werd door de staatstelevisie zou ik ook zo gaan denken. Maar waarom de mensen hier hun ratio verliezen?

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 08:01 schreef HarigeKerel het volgende:
Dat zou mooi zijn, dan nog even Libanon en Syrie opruimen en je kunt vanuit Libanon zo naar China rijden over Amerikaans gebied

Alexander zou het zo gewild hebben!

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:54 schreef sanniejj het volgende:
Ben benieuwd of ze deze keer het bewijsmateriaal wel openbaar willen maken. In de kwestie irak lag het te gevoelig met alle gevolgen van dien. Het bewijsmateriaal was eigenlijk net wat te weinig om een doorslag te kunnen zien en mensen over de streep te trekken.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 12:04 schreef Posdnous het volgende:
Want het is natuurlijk volkomen logisch dat andere landen allerlei wapens mogen hebben en jij niet, omdat zij willen dat jouw land en cultuur zo worden ingericht als bij hen het geval is.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 12:07 schreef Dagonet het volgende:
Ooit wel eens naar de Amerikaanse tv gekeken? Over hersenspoeling gesproken .

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En geen enkel land is te vertrouwen met kernwapens.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 12:32 schreef speknek het volgende:
Ohja, volstrekt vergelijkbaar .

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 12:32 schreef speknek het volgende:

[..]

Cultuurrelativist. Het is inderdaad volstrekt logisch dat psychopatische dictators geen massavernietiginswapens mogen.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 12:36 schreef Dagonet het volgende:
Ah, een expert die precies weet wat er in beide landen uitgezonden wordt.

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Propaganda is propaganda en wordt niet minder slecht omdat het toevallig in jouw straatje past.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 12:36 schreef Posdnous het volgende:
En het enige land dat van overheidswege daadwerkelijk een spoor van vernieling en ellende in de wereld heeft achtergelaten kunnen we wel vertrouwen met kernwapens.

Juist ja.

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En cultuurelativist? Jij bent hier degene die puur denkt uit zijn Westerse denkparadigma. Dat er in andere delen van de wereld uiteraard volstrekt anders tegen deze zaak wordt aangekeken is schijnbaar nogal moeilijk te bevatten.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 12:36 schreef Posdnous het volgende:

[..]

En het enige land dat van overheidswege daadwerkelijk een spoor van vernieling en ellende in de wereld heeft achtergelaten kunnen we wel vertrouwen met kernwapens.

Juist ja.

En cultuurelativist? Jij bent hier degene die puur denkt uit zijn Westerse denkparadigma. Dat er in andere delen van de wereld uiteraard volstrekt anders tegen deze zaak wordt aangekeken is schijnbaar nogal moeilijk te bevatten.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 13:43 schreef Hallulama het volgende:
Je kan landen die minder ver ontwikkeld zijn (cultureel/mentaal gezien) niet verbieden dezelfde fouten te maken als wij gemaakt hebben.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 13:35 schreef GewoneMan het volgende:

[..]

ja er is natuurlijk niks mis met regeringen die meisjes/vrouwen stenigen omdat ze verkracht zijn. en de daders vrijuit laten gaan. trainingskampen voor terroristen moeten ook kunnen en een land met een beleid als iran moet ook kernwapens hebben natuurlijk.

Openbare terechtstelling verkrachters in Iran
Eerwraak in Iran kost 45 jonge vrouwen het leven
Iran: Misbruikt en ter dood veroordeeld (2)
Tiener opgehangen in Iran

zo even een paar linkjes geplaatst om aan te geven wat een geweldig land het is. moeten we vooral niks aan doen, zeker als ze ook nog eens kernwapens kunnen maken...

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 14:02 schreef Posdnous het volgende:
Ben benieuwd wanneer ze in Afrika wat dictators en rebellen gaan aanpakken die het volk afslachten....maar dat gebeurt toch niet.
Maar ze helepen het volk toch? proest.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 13:55 schreef Hallulama het volgende:
Ik bedoelde het als commentaar op het volgende:

"Openbare terechtstelling verkrachters in Iran
Eerwraak in Iran kost 45 jonge vrouwen het leven
Iran: Misbruikt en ter dood veroordeeld (2)
Tiener opgehangen in Iran"

En waarom zou Iran in HEMELSNAAM een atoombom op Amsterdam willen gooien? Leg me dat eerst maar eens uit (de wereld is een spiegel he, wil jij soms een atoombom op Teheran gooien ofzo?).

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 14:34 schreef speknek het volgende:

[..]

Somalië, Liberia?

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 14:42 schreef Posdnous het volgende:
Maar dat zijn nu niet bepaald de enige landen waar het volk wordt uitgebuit en dictatoriaal bestuurd.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 14:48 schreef Kletz het volgende:
dat wordt dus van de zomer wellicht 24/7 CNN kijken

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 14:42 schreef Posdnous het volgende:
Maar dat zijn nu niet bepaald de enige landen waar het volk wordt uitgebuit en dictatoriaal bestuurd.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 14:51 schreef speknek het volgende:

[..]

Maar je bent het er dus wel mee eens dat landen waar het volk uitgebuit wordt en dictatoriaal bestuurd, dat die geholpen moeten worden?

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 15:19 schreef Lithion het volgende:

[..]

Oh, dus de VS moeten óf elk land waar het volk wordt uitgebuit en dictatoriaal bestuurd wordt aanpakken, óf geen enkele?
Zou het misschien niet verstandiger zijn om per land te bekijken wat de mogelijkheden zijn en welke strategie gevolgd moet worden? Of is dat té genuanceerd voor je?

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 15:51 schreef Kogando het volgende:
Go Bush, Go Bush..

Niet vergeten, de belangen van Amerika zijn onze belangen.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 11:23 schreef VivaLaRevolution het volgende:
En waarom mag zo'n mafkees als Bush wel kernwapens hebben en islamitische landen niet. Ik vraag me af wie er agresiever optreden namelijk...

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 15:08 schreef Ciurlizza het volgende:
Dat wordt oorlog

Het ene na het andere Islamitische regime wordt ten val gebracht!

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14 January 2005

The Left Betrayed My Country - Iraq
by Naseer Flayih Hasan

»International Relations - War on Terrorism
Before the last war, we Iraqis spent decades cut off from the outside world. Not only did the Baathist regime prevent us from traveling during the Iran-Iraq conflict and the period of the sanctions, but they punished anyone possessing satellite television. And of course, internet access was strictly limited. Because of our isolation, most of us had little idea or sense about life beyond our borders.

We did believe, however, that democracy and human rights were important factors in Western civilization. So it came as a shock to us when millions of people began demonstrating across the world against America's build-up to the invasion of our country. We supposed the protests were by people who had no idea about the terrible atrocities that the regime had inflicted upon us for decades. We assumed that once they learned what had happened in Iraq, they would change their minds, or modify their opposition to the war.

My first clue that this would not happen was a few weeks after Baghdad fell. I had befriended a French reporter who had begun to realize that the situation in Iraq was not how the international media or the so-called "peace camp" described it. I noticed, however, that whenever he tried to voice his doubts to colleagues, they argued that he was wrong. Soon afterwards, I met a Dutch woman on Mutinabi Street, where booksellers lay out their wares on Friday morning. I asked her how long she'd been in Iraq and, through a translator, she answered, "-Three months."

"-So you were here during the war?"

"-Yes!" she said. "To see the crimes of the Americans!"

I was stunned. After a moment, I replied,

"- What about the crimes of the regime? It killed millions of Iraqis. Do you know that if the regime was still in power, the conversation we're having now would result in our torture or death?"

Her face turned red and she angrily responded,

"-Soon will come the day that the Americans will do worse."

She then went on to accuse me of not knowing what the true facts were in Iraq-and that she could see the situation better than me!

She was not the only "humanitarian" who expressed such outrageous opinions. One afternoon, I was speaking to some members of the American anti-war group "Voices in the Wilderness." One of the group's members declared that the Iraqi Governing Council (then in power at the time) were "traitors." I was shocked. Most of the Council were people whom we Iraqis knew had suffered and sacrificed in a long struggle against the regime. Some represented opposition parties who had lost ten of thousand of members in that struggle. Others came from families who had lost up to 30 loved ones to the Baathists.

After those, and many other, experiences, we finally comprehended how little we had in common with these "peace activists" who constantly decried American crimes, and hated to listen to us talk about the terrible long nightmare that ended with the collapse of the regime. We came to understand how these "humanitarians" experienced a sort of pleasure when terrorists or former remnants of the regime created destruction in Iraq-just so they could feel that they were right, and the Americans wrong!

Worse, we realized it was hopeless to make them grasp our feelings. We believed-and still believe - that America's removal of the regime opened a new way for democracy. At the same time, we have no illusions that the U.S. came to Iraq on a white horse to save our people. We understand this war is all about national interests, and that America's interests are mainly about defeating terrorism. At this moment, though, U.S. interests are doing more to bring about democracy and freedom in Iraq than, say, the policies of France and Russia-countries which also care little for the Iraqi people and, worse, did their best to save Saddam from destruction until the last moment.

It's worth noting, as well, that the general attitude of peace activists I met was tension and anger. They were impossible to reason with. This was because, on one hand, the sometimes considerable risks they took to oppose the war made them unable to accept the fact that their cause was not as noble as they believed. Then, too, their dogmatic anti-American attitudes naturally drew them to guides, translators, drivers and Iraqi acquaintances who were themselves supporters of the regime. These Iraqis, in turn, affected the peace activists until they came to share almost the same judgments and opinions as the terrorists and defenders of Saddam.

This was very disappointing for someone like me, who thought for decades that the Left was generally the progressive power in the world. You can imagine how aghast I was when my French reporter friend told me that the Communist Party in his country actually considers the "insurgents" to be the equivalent of the French Gaullists! [the French Gaullists were safely in London and now they are Saddam's best friends - must mean the Franch Resistance] Or how troubling it is to hear Jacques Chirac take satisfaction from the violence wreaked by the terrorists-those bloody monsters that we Iraqis know so well-because they justify France's original opposition to the war.

And so I have become disillusioned, at least with the Leftists I met in Iraq. So noble in their rhetoric, they looked to the stars, yet ignored what was happening around them, caring only about what was inside their minds. So glorious in their ideals, their thoughts were inflexible and their deeds unnecessary, even harmful. In the end, they proved to me how dogma and fanaticism had transform peace activists into-lifeless peace "statues."

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 15:43 schreef Posdnous het volgende:
Nee, het gaat er om dat het hele 'volk redden en helpen' onzin is om hun eigen belangen te regelen.

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Nota bene de landen waar iedereen je er van verdenkt puur op de olie uit te zijn en niemand van de bevolking je hulp wil vind jij de geschikte kandidaat-dictatuur om wel eens even humanitair bezig te zijn, merkwaardig.

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Op maandag 17 januari 2005 15:08 schreef Ciurlizza het volgende:
Dat wordt oorlog

Het ene na het andere Islamitische regime wordt ten val gebracht!

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THE COMING WARS
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
What the Pentagon can now do in secret.
Issue of 2005-01-24 and 31
Posted 2005-01-17

George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

Bush and Cheney may have set the policy, but it is Rumsfeld who has directed its implementation and has absorbed much of the public criticism when things went wrong—whether it was prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib or lack of sufficient armor plating for G.I.s’ vehicles in Iraq. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for Rumsfeld’s dismissal, and he is not widely admired inside the military. Nonetheless, his reappointment as Defense Secretary was never in doubt.

Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”

For more than a year, France, Germany, Britain, and other countries in the European Union have seen preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon as a race against time—and against the Bush Administration. They have been negotiating with the Iranian leadership to give up its nuclear-weapons ambitions in exchange for economic aid and trade benefits. Iran has agreed to temporarily halt its enrichment programs, which generate fuel for nuclear power plants but also could produce weapons-grade fissile material. (Iran claims that such facilities are legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or N.P.T., to which it is a signator, and that it has no intention of building a bomb.) But the goal of the current round of talks, which began in December in Brussels, is to persuade Tehran to go further, and dismantle its machinery. Iran insists, in return, that it needs to see some concrete benefits from the Europeans—oil-production technology, heavy-industrial equipment, and perhaps even permission to purchase a fleet of Airbuses. (Iran has been denied access to technology and many goods owing to sanctions.)

The Europeans have been urging the Bush Administration to join in these negotiations. The Administration has refused to do so. The civilian leadership in the Pentagon has argued that no diplomatic progress on the Iranian nuclear threat will take place unless there is a credible threat of military action. “The neocons say negotiations are a bad deal,” a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) told me. “And the only thing the Iranians understand is pressure. And that they also need to be whacked.”

The core problem is that Iran has successfully hidden the extent of its nuclear program, and its progress. Many Western intelligence agencies, including those of the United States, believe that Iran is at least three to five years away from a capability to independently produce nuclear warheads—although its work on a missile-delivery system is far more advanced. Iran is also widely believed by Western intelligence agencies and the I.A.E.A. to have serious technical problems with its weapons system, most notably in the production of the hexafluoride gas needed to fabricate nuclear warheads.

A retired senior C.I.A. official, one of many who left the agency recently, told me that he was familiar with the assessments, and confirmed that Iran is known to be having major difficulties in its weapons work. He also acknowledged that the agency’s timetable for a nuclear Iran matches the European estimates—assuming that Iran gets no outside help. “The big wild card for us is that you don’t know who is capable of filling in the missing parts for them,” the recently retired official said. “North Korea? Pakistan? We don’t know what parts are missing.”

One Western diplomat told me that the Europeans believed they were in what he called a “lose-lose position” as long as the United States refuses to get involved. “France, Germany, and the U.K. cannot succeed alone, and everybody knows it,” the diplomat said. “If the U.S. stays outside, we don’t have enough leverage, and our effort will collapse.” The alternative would be to go to the Security Council, but any resolution imposing sanctions would likely be vetoed by China or Russia, and then “the United Nations will be blamed and the Americans will say, ‘The only solution is to bomb.’”

A European Ambassador noted that President Bush is scheduled to visit Europe in February, and that there has been public talk from the White House about improving the President’s relationship with America’s E.U. allies. In that context, the Ambassador told me, “I’m puzzled by the fact that the United States is not helping us in our program. How can Washington maintain its stance without seriously taking into account the weapons issue?”

The Israeli government is, not surprisingly, skeptical of the European approach. Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister, said in an interview last week in Jerusalem,with another New Yorker journalist, “I don’t like what’s happening. We were encouraged at first when the Europeans got involved. For a long time, they thought it was just Israel’s problem. But then they saw that the [Iranian] missiles themselves were longer range and could reach all of Europe, and they became very concerned. Their attitude has been to use the carrot and the stick—but all we see so far is the carrot.” He added, “If they can’t comply, Israel cannot live with Iran having a nuclear bomb.”

In a recent essay, Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (and a supporter of the Administration), articulated the view that force, or the threat of it, was a vital bargaining tool with Iran. Clawson wrote that if Europe wanted coöperation with the Bush Administration it “would do well to remind Iran that the military option remains on the table.” He added that the argument that the European negotiations hinged on Washington looked like “a preëmptive excuse for the likely breakdown of the E.U.-Iranian talks.” In a subsequent conversation with me, Clawson suggested that, if some kind of military action was inevitable, “it would be much more in Israel’s interest—and Washington’s—to take covert action. The style of this Administration is to use overwhelming force—‘shock and awe.’ But we get only one bite of the apple.”

There are many military and diplomatic experts who dispute the notion that military action, on whatever scale, is the right approach. Shahram Chubin, an Iranian scholar who is the director of research at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, told me, “It’s a fantasy to think that there’s a good American or Israeli military option in Iran.” He went on, “The Israeli view is that this is an international problem. ‘You do it,’ they say to the West. ‘Otherwise, our Air Force will take care of it.’” In 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor, setting its nuclear program back several years. But the situation now is both more complex and more dangerous, Chubin said. The Osirak bombing “drove the Iranian nuclear-weapons program underground, to hardened, dispersed sites,” he said. “You can’t be sure after an attack that you’ll get away with it. The U.S. and Israel would not be certain whether all the sites had been hit, or how quickly they’d be rebuilt. Meanwhile, they’d be waiting for an Iranian counter-attack that could be military or terrorist or diplomatic. Iran has long-range missiles and ties to Hezbollah, which has drones—you can’t begin to think of what they’d do in response.”

Chubin added that Iran could also renounce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “It’s better to have them cheating within the system,” he said. “Otherwise, as victims, Iran will walk away from the treaty and inspections while the rest of the world watches the N.P.T. unravel before their eyes.”

The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.

Some of the missions involve extraordinary coöperation. For example, the former high-level intelligence official told me that an American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and is now working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and technicians who had dealt with Iranian counterparts. (In 2003, the I.A.E.A. disclosed that Iran had been secretly receiving nuclear technology from Pakistan for more than a decade, and had withheld that information from inspectors.) The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations. The task-force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices—known as sniffers—capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.

Getting such evidence is a pressing concern for the Bush Administration. The former high-level intelligence official told me, “They don’t want to make any W.M.D. intelligence mistakes, as in Iraq. The Republicans can’t have two of those. There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.” The official added that the government of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has won a high price for its coöperation—American assurance that Pakistan will not have to hand over A. Q. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, to the I.A.E.A. or to any other international authorities for questioning. For two decades, Khan has been linked to a vast consortium of nuclear-black-market activities. Last year, Musharraf professed to be shocked when Khan, in the face of overwhelming evidence, “confessed” to his activities. A few days later, Musharraf pardoned him, and so far he has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. or American intelligence to interview him. Khan is now said to be living under house arrest in a villa in Islamabad. “It’s a deal—a trade-off,” the former high-level intelligence official explained. “‘Tell us what you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.’ It’s the neoconservatives’ version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They want to prove that Bush is the anti-terrorism guy who can handle Iran and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the black market for nuclear proliferation.”

The agreement comes at a time when Musharraf, according to a former high-level Pakistani diplomat, has authorized the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons arsenal. “Pakistan still needs parts and supplies, and needs to buy them in the clandestine market,” the former diplomat said. “The U.S. has done nothing to stop it.”

There has also been close, and largely unacknowledged, coöperation with Israel. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon said that the Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran. (After Osirak, Iran situated many of its nuclear sites in remote areas of the east, in an attempt to keep them out of striking range of other countries, especially Israel. Distance no longer lends such protection, however: Israel has acquired three submarines capable of launching cruise missiles and has equipped some of its aircraft with additional fuel tanks, putting Israeli F-16I fighters within the range of most Iranian targets.)

“They believe that about three-quarters of the potential targets can be destroyed from the air, and a quarter are too close to population centers, or buried too deep, to be targeted,” the consultant said. Inevitably, he added, some suspicious sites need to be checked out by American or Israeli commando teams—in on-the-ground surveillance—before being targeted.

The Pentagon’s contingency plans for a broader invasion of Iran are also being updated. Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military’s war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran. Updating the plan makes sense, whether or not the Administration intends to act, because the geopolitics of the region have changed dramatically in the last three years. Previously, an American invasion force would have had to enter Iran by sea, by way of the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman; now troops could move in on the ground, from Afghanistan or Iraq. Commando units and other assets could be introduced through new bases in the Central Asian republics.

It is possible that some of the American officials who talk about the need to eliminate Iran’s nuclear infrastructure are doing so as part of a propaganda campaign aimed at pressuring Iran to give up its weapons planning. If so, the signals are not always clear. President Bush, who after 9/11 famously depicted Iran as a member of the “axis of evil,” is now publicly emphasizing the need for diplomacy to run its course. “We don’t have much leverage with the Iranians right now,” the President said at a news conference late last year. “Diplomacy must be the first choice, and always the first choice of an administration trying to solve an issue of . . . nuclear armament. And we’ll continue to press on diplomacy.”

In my interviews over the past two months, I was given a much harsher view. The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act. “We’re not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers here,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “They’ve already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it.”

The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership. “Within the soul of Iran there is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement,” the consultant told me. “The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse”—like the former Communist regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz share that belief, he said.

“The idea that an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would produce a popular uprising is extremely illinformed,” said Flynt Leverett, a Middle East scholar who worked on the National Security Council in the Bush Administration. “You have to understand that the nuclear ambition in Iran is supported across the political spectrum, and Iranians will perceive attacks on these sites as attacks on their ambitions to be a major regional player and a modern nation that’s technologically sophisticated.” Leverett, who is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, warned that an American attack, if it takes place, “will produce an Iranian backlash against the United States and a rallying around the regime.”

Rumsfeld planned and lobbied for more than two years before getting Presidential authority, in a series of findings and executive orders, to use military commandos for covert operations. One of his first steps was bureaucratic: to shift control of an undercover unit, known then as the Gray Fox (it has recently been given a new code name), from the Army to the Special Operations Command (socom), in Tampa. Gray Fox was formally assigned to socom in July, 2002, at the instigation of Rumsfeld’s office, which meant that the undercover unit would have a single commander for administration and operational deployment. Then, last fall, Rumsfeld’s ability to deploy the commandos expanded. According to a Pentagon consultant, an Execute Order on the Global War on Terrorism (referred to throughout the government as gwot) was issued at Rumsfeld’s direction. The order specifically authorized the military “to find and finish” terrorist targets, the consultant said. It included a target list that cited Al Qaeda network members, Al Qaeda senior leadership, and other high-value targets. The consultant said that the order had been cleared throughout the national-security bureaucracy in Washington.

In late November, 2004, the Times reported that Bush had set up an interagency group to study whether it “would best serve the nation” to give the Pentagon complete control over the C.I.A.’s own élite paramilitary unit, which has operated covertly in trouble spots around the world for decades. The panel’s conclusions, due in February, are foregone, in the view of many former C.I.A. officers. “It seems like it’s going to happen,” Howard Hart, who was chief of the C.I.A.’s Paramilitary Operations Division before retiring in 1991, told me.

There was other evidence of Pentagon encroachment. Two former C.I.A. clandestine officers, Vince Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, who publish Intelligence Brief, a newsletter for their business clients, reported last month on the existence of a broad counter-terrorism Presidential finding that permitted the Pentagon “to operate unilaterally in a number of countries where there is a perception of a clear and evident terrorist threat. . . . A number of the countries are friendly to the U.S. and are major trading partners. Most have been cooperating in the war on terrorism.” The two former officers listed some of the countries—Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Malaysia. (I was subsequently told by the former high-level intelligence official that Tunisia is also on the list.)

Giraldi, who served three years in military intelligence before joining the C.I.A., said that he was troubled by the military’s expanded covert assignment. “I don’t think they can handle the cover,” he told me. “They’ve got to have a different mind-set. They’ve got to handle new roles and get into foreign cultures and learn how other people think. If you’re going into a village and shooting people, it doesn’t matter,” Giraldi added. “But if you’re running operations that involve finesse and sensitivity, the military can’t do it. Which is why these kind of operations were always run out of the agency.” I was told that many Special Operations officers also have serious misgivings.

Rumsfeld and two of his key deputies, Stephen Cambone, the Under-secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, will be part of the chain of command for the new commando operations. Relevant members of the House and Senate intelligence committees have been briefed on the Defense Department’s expanded role in covert affairs, a Pentagon adviser assured me, but he did not know how extensive the briefings had been.

“I’m conflicted about the idea of operating without congressional oversight,” the Pentagon adviser said. “But I’ve been told that there will be oversight down to the specific operation.” A second Pentagon adviser agreed, with a significant caveat. “There are reporting requirements,” he said. “But to execute the finding we don’t have to go back and say, ‘We’re going here and there.’ No nitty-gritty detail and no micromanagement.”

The legal questions about the Pentagon’s right to conduct covert operations without informing Congress have not been resolved. “It’s a very, very gray area,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a West Point graduate who served as the C.I.A.’s general counsel in the mid-nineteen-nineties. “Congress believes it voted to include all such covert activities carried out by the armed forces. The military says, ‘No, the things we’re doing are not intelligence actions under the statute but necessary military steps authorized by the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to “prepare the battlefield.”’” Referring to his days at the C.I.A., Smith added, “We were always careful not to use the armed forces in a covert action without a Presidential finding. The Bush Administration has taken a much more aggressive stance.”

In his conversation with me, Smith emphasized that he was unaware of the military’s current plans for expanding covert action. But he said, “Congress has always worried that the Pentagon is going to get us involved in some military misadventure that nobody knows about.”

Under Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, U.S. military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities. Some operations will likely take place in nations in which there is an American diplomatic mission, with an Ambassador and a C.I.A. station chief, the Pentagon consultant said. The Ambassador and the station chief would not necessarily have a need to know, under the Pentagon’s current interpretation of its reporting requirement.

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”

One of the rationales for such tactics was spelled out in a series of articles by John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, and a consultant on terrorism for the rand corporation. “It takes a network to fight a network,” Arquilla wrote in a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s, the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These “pseudo gangs,” as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists’ camps. What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today’s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult.

“If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda,” Arquilla wrote, referring to John Walker Lindh, the twenty-year-old Californian who was seized in Afghanistan, “think what professional operatives might do.”

A few pilot covert operations were conducted last year, one Pentagon adviser told me, and a terrorist cell in Algeria was “rolled up” with American help. The adviser was referring, apparently, to the capture of Ammari Saifi, known as Abderrezak le Para, the head of a North African terrorist network affiliated with Al Qaeda. But at the end of the year there was no agreement within the Defense Department about the rules of engagement. “The issue is approval for the final authority,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “Who gets to say ‘Get this’ or ‘Do this’?”

A retired four-star general said, “The basic concept has always been solid, but how do you insure that the people doing it operate within the concept of the law? This is pushing the edge of the envelope.” The general added, “It’s the oversight. And you’re not going to get Warner”—John Warner, of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee—“and those guys to exercise oversight. This whole thing goes to the Fourth Deck.” He was referring to the floor in the Pentagon where Rumsfeld and Cambone have their offices.

“It’s a finesse to give power to Rumsfeld—giving him the right to act swiftly, decisively, and lethally,” the first Pentagon adviser told me. “It’s a global free-fire zone.”

The Pentagon has tried to work around the limits on covert activities before. In the early nineteen-eighties, a covert Army unit was set up and authorized to operate overseas with minimal oversight. The results were disastrous. The Special Operations program was initially known as Intelligence Support Activity, or I.S.A., and was administered from a base near Washington (as was, later, Gray Fox). It was established soon after the failed rescue, in April, 1980, of the American hostages in Iran, who were being held by revolutionary students after the Islamic overthrow of the Shah’s regime. At first, the unit was kept secret from many of the senior generals and civilian leaders in the Pentagon, as well as from many members of Congress. It was eventually deployed in the Reagan Administration’s war against the Sandinista government, in Nicaragua. It was heavily committed to supporting the Contras. By the mid-eighties, however, the I.S.A.’s operations had been curtailed, and several of its senior officers were courtmartialled following a series of financial scandals, some involving arms deals. The affair was known as “the Yellow Fruit scandal,” after the code name given to one of the I.S.A.’s cover organizations—and in many ways the group’s procedures laid the groundwork for the Iran-Contra scandal.

Despite the controversy surrounding Yellow Fruit, the I.S.A. was kept intact as an undercover unit by the Army. “But we put so many restrictions on it,” the second Pentagon adviser said. “In I.S.A., if you wanted to travel fifty miles you had to get a special order. And there were certain areas, such as Lebanon, where they could not go.” The adviser acknowledged that the current operations are similar to those two decades earlier, with similar risks—and, as he saw it, similar reasons for taking the risks. “What drove them then, in terms of Yellow Fruit, was that they had no intelligence on Iran,” the adviser told me. “They had no knowledge of Tehran and no people on the ground who could prepare the battle space.”

Rumsfeld’s decision to revive this approach stemmed, once again, from a failure of intelligence in the Middle East, the adviser said. The Administration believed that the C.I.A. was unable, or unwilling, to provide the military with the information it needed to effectively challenge stateless terrorism. “One of the big challenges was that we didn’t have Humint”—human intelligence—“collection capabilities in areas where terrorists existed,” the adviser told me. “Because the C.I.A. claimed to have such a hold on Humint, the way to get around them, rather than take them on, was to claim that the agency didn’t do Humint to support Special Forces operations overseas. The C.I.A. fought it.” Referring to Rumsfeld’s new authority for covert operations, the first Pentagon adviser told me, “It’s not empowering military intelligence. It’s emasculating the C.I.A.”

A former senior C.I.A. officer depicted the agency’s eclipse as predictable. “For years, the agency bent over backward to integrate and coördinate with the Pentagon,” the former officer said. “We just caved and caved and got what we deserved. It is a fact of life today that the Pentagon is a five-hundred-pound gorilla and the C.I.A. director is a chimpanzee.”

There was pressure from the White House, too. A former C.I.A. clandestine-services officer told me that, in the months after the resignation of the agency’s director George Tenet, in June, 2004, the White House began “coming down critically” on analysts in the C.I.A.’s Directorate of Intelligence (D.I.) and demanded “to see more support for the Administration’s political position.” Porter Goss, Tenet’s successor, engaged in what the recently retired C.I.A. official described as a “political purge” in the D.I. Among the targets were a few senior analysts who were known to write dissenting papers that had been forwarded to the White House. The recently retired C.I.A. official said, “The White House carefully reviewed the political analyses of the D.I. so they could sort out the apostates from the true believers.” Some senior analysts in the D.I. have turned in their resignations—quietly, and without revealing the extent of the disarray.

The White House solidified its control over intelligence last month, when it forced last-minute changes in the intelligence-reform bill. The legislation, based substantially on recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, originally gave broad powers, including authority over intelligence spending, to a new national-intelligence director. (The Pentagon controls roughly eighty per cent of the intelligence budget.) A reform bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 96-2. Before the House voted, however, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld balked. The White House publicly supported the legislation, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert refused to bring a House version of the bill to the floor for a vote—ostensibly in defiance of the President, though it was widely understood in Congress that Hastert had been delegated to stall the bill. After intense White House and Pentagon lobbying, the legislation was rewritten. The bill that Congress approved sharply reduced the new director’s power, in the name of permitting the Secretary of Defense to maintain his “statutory responsibilities.” Fred Kaplan, in the online magazine Slate, described the real issues behind Hastert’s action, quoting a congressional aide who expressed amazement as White House lobbyists bashed the Senate bill and came up “with all sorts of ludicrous reasons why it was unacceptable.”

“Rummy’s plan was to get a compromise in the bill in which the Pentagon keeps its marbles and the C.I.A. loses theirs,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Then all the pieces of the puzzle fall in place. He gets authority for covert action that is not attributable, the ability to directly task national-intelligence assets”—including the many intelligence satellites that constantly orbit the world.

“Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing so they can ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘What are your priorities?’ Now he can keep all of the mattress mice out of it.”

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Op dinsdag 18 januari 2005 03:05 schreef HeyFreak het volgende:
je vergeet syrie

Amerika in oorlog met Syrië?

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Pentagon lashes out at Iran claim

Pentagon officials on Monday lashed out at a US magazine report which claimed they were preparing for possible strikes on Iran by carrying out secret reconnaissance missions inside the country, saying the article contained "fantastic claims" about programmes that do not exist.



The article, written by veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh for The New Yorker magazine, claims that President George W. Bush plans to drastically expand the war on terrorism, and has already signed executive orders authorising secret commando operations against terrorist targets in as many as ten middle eastern and south Asian nations, including Iran.


The Iranian operation, which the article claims has been underway since last summer, intends to identify as many three dozen Iranian military or nuclear sites for US missile attacks or commando raids.

Lawrence DiRita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said in a statement on Monday that many of the facts upon which the story is based are inaccurate. Neither he nor Dan Bartlett, the White House spokesman, commented directly on the commando operations claim, however.

"Mr Hirsch's sources feed him with rumour, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programmes that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made," the Mr DiRita said.

It is rare for the Pentagon to issue such a long and detailed response to a single news account; Mr DiRita's two-page statement includes four specific refutations of claims made in the piece, including an alleged post-election meeting between Donald Rumsfeld and the joint chiefs of staff in which the defence secretary claimed the 2004 US election was a referendum on aggressive action in the Middle East.

It is also rare that defence officials single out a specific journalist for such vitriol. In one part of his statement, Mr DiRita appears to accuse Mr Hersh of anti-Semitism. Mr Hersh reported that Douglas Feith, the number three civilian at the Pentagon, has worked with Israeli military planners to find targets in Iran, a claim the Pentagon said built on "the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists". Mr Feith is Jewish. The Pentagon said not such contacts exist.

Despite the denials, European diplomats, who are currently engaged in negotiations with Iran to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions, were startled by the report, saying that in private discussions US officials have strongly backed the European initiative.

"No one can say if this is correct or incorrect," said one European Union diplomat. "The US administration has never shared any information like this with us. On the contrary, in our last meetings, it has supported EU policy on Iran."

Among the allegations specifically refuted by the Pentagon is a claim that two senior Pentagon officials - one military and one civilian - have been inserted into the chain of command for commando operations. "His assertion is outrageous, and constitutionally specious."

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Op dinsdag 18 januari 2005 13:47 schreef MartijnA3 het volgende:
Mocht Amerika Iran aanvallen, dan zouden ze nog wel eens voor een verrassing kunnen komen te staan. De Iraanse Luchtmacht is nog aardig modern en Iran heeft kruisraketten, ballistische raketten die Amerikaanse troepen in Irak zouden kunnen treffen, veel luchtafweer en een zeer geavanceerd radarsysteem, met dank aan China. Verder zijn ze in het bezit van Biologische en Chemische wapens en wie weet al een paar kernbommetjes....

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Op dinsdag 18 januari 2005 13:51 schreef HarigeKerel het volgende:
De Iraanse luchtmacht beschikt over de oudste F14's en een paar oude vliegtuigen van Irak die al meer dan 10 jaar niet gevlogen hebben.

Die maken geen schijn van kans.
Iran moet het hebben van poppetjes met dynamiet.

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Op dinsdag 18 januari 2005 14:02 schreef sp3c het volgende:
Iran bezit vrij veel op papier relatief modern materiaal.

Hoe dit materiaal zich meet met westers materiaal is niet duidelijk maar ik zou er echt niet al te makkelijk over nadenken, de afgelopen oorlog in Irak wordt hiermee vergeleken een picknick.
Als de Amerikanen dit ook alleen willen doen doen zullen ze de rest van hun operaties over de hele wereld moeten afronden voor ze hieraan beginnen anders worden ze er gewoon uitgetrapt.

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Op dinsdag 18 januari 2005 14:11 schreef GewoneMan het volgende:
misschien wordt het wel een jihad?

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Op dinsdag 18 januari 2005 15:18 schreef Posdnous het volgende:

[..]

Jihad .

Zij worden aangevallen hoor.

quote:

Op dinsdag 18 januari 2005 13:51 schreef HarigeKerel het volgende:
De Iraanse luchtmacht beschikt over de oudste F14's en een paar oude vliegtuigen van Irak die al meer dan 10 jaar niet gevlogen hebben.

Die maken geen schijn van kans.
Iran moet het hebben van poppetjes met dynamiet.