At Avaaz.org they are campaigining for the start of meaningful middle east peace talks. They are also concerned about the rise in fear induced by leaders on both sides of current conflicts.
“Talk is rising of a ‘clash of civilizations’. But the problem isn’t culture, it’s politics ‘ from 9/11 to Guantanamo, Iraq to Iran. This clash is not inevitable, and we don’t want it.”
Click the play button below to watch their thought provoking video
From Counterpunch
By RAY McGOVERN – Former CIA analyst
That was one of the key questions asked of newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell at a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing on Tuesday. Why had McConnell avoided this front-burner issue in his prepared remarks? Because an honest answer would have been: “Beats the hell out of us. Despite the billions that American taxpayers have sunk into improving U.S. intelligence, we can only guess.”
But the question is certainly a fair, and urgent one. A mere three weeks into the job, McConnell can perhaps be forgiven for merely reciting the hazy forecast of his predecessor, John Negroponte, and using the obscurantist jargon that has been introduced into key national intelligence estimates (NIEs) in recent years. McConnell had these two sentences committed to memory:
“We assess that Iran seeks to develop a nuclear weapon. The information is incomplete, but we assess that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon early-to-mid-next decade.”
At that point McConnell received gratuitous reinforcement from Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. With something of a flourish, Maples bragged that it was “with high confidence” that DIA “assesses that Iran remains determined to develop nuclear weapons.”
After the judgments in the Oct. 1, 2002 NIE assessing weapons-of-mass-destruction in Iraq’judgments stated with “high confidence”‘turned out to be wrong, National Intelligence Council officials decided to fine-tune the word “assess” to cover their asses. The council took the unusual step of including a short glossary in its recent NIE on Iraq:
“When we use words such as “we assess,” we are trying to convey an analytical assessment or judgment. These assessments, which are based on incomplete or at times fragmentary information are not a fact, proof, or knowledge. Some analytical judgments are based directly on collected information; others rest on previous judgments, which serve as building blocks. In either type of judgment, we do not have “evidence” that shows something to be a fact.”
So caveat emptor. Beware the verisimilitude conveyed by “we assess.” It can have a lemming effect, as evidenced Tuesday by the automatic head bobbing that greeted Sen. Lindsay Graham’s (R, SC) clever courtroom-style summary argument at the hearing, “We all agree, then, that the Iranians are trying to get nuclear weapons.”
Quick, someone, please give Sen. Graham the National Intelligence Council’s new glossary.
Shoddy Record on Iran
Iran is a difficult intelligence target. Understood. Even so, U.S. intelligence performance “assessing” Iran’s progress toward a nuclear capability does not inspire confidence. The only quasi-virtue readily observable in the string of intelligence estimates is the kind of foolish consistency that Emerson called “the hobgoblin of little minds.” In 1995 U.S. intelligence started consistently “assessing” that Iran was “within five years” of reaching a nuclear weapons capability. But, year after year that got a little old and tired…and even embarrassing. So in 2005, when the most recent NIE was issued (and then leaked to the Washington Post), the timeline was extended and given still more margin for error. Basically, it was moved ten years out to 2015 but, in a fit of nervous caution, the estimators created the expression “early-to-mid-next decade.”
Small wonder that the commission picked by President George W. Bush to investigate the intelligence community’s performance on weapons of mass destruction complained that U.S. intelligence knows “disturbingly little” about Iran. Shortly after the most recent estimate was completed in June 2005, Robert G. Joseph, the neo-conservative who succeeded John Bolton as undersecretary of state for arms control, was asked whether Iran had a nuclear effort under way. He replied:
“I don’t know quite how to answer that because we don’t have perfect information or perfect understanding. But the Iranian record, plus what the Iranian leaders have said…lead us to conclude that we have to be highly skeptical.”
Is help on the way? A fresh national intelligence estimate on Iran has been in preparation for several months’far too leisurely a pace in present circumstances. Will it have any appreciable effect in informing policy? Don’t count on it.
By Paul Reynolds in BBC Online
With Iran defying the Security Council over its enrichment of uranium and the United States threatening further pressure, there are signs of organised grassroots opposition emerging to any military attack.
A pressure group in Britain has urged a diplomatic solution. There are stirrings among religious leaders and members of parliament. And three senior retired US military officers have said that they “strongly caution against the use of military force”. They have called on Britain to play a “vital role in securing a renewed diplomatic push”.
‘Counter-productive and dangerous’
The pressure group, called Crisis Action, brings together trade unions, charities and Christian and Muslim organisations. They include the Amicus, Unison and GMB unions, the Oxford Research Group, the Foreign Policy Centre, Pax Christi, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Parliament. The group’s document is entitled ” Time to Talk”.
It says: “The consequences of any possible future military action could be wholly counter-productive as well as highly dangerous. Diplomatic solutions to the Iranian nuclear issue must be pursued resolutely.”
One of its spokesmen is Sir Richard Dalton, who was British ambassador in Iran until March 2006, though he is not a signatory to the document and differs on one significant aspect. But he agrees that the military approach is not the way forward.
“There is no legal basis for an attack,” he said. “The negotiating road is hard but could be improved if Iran was offered a regional security assurance and the United States became more directly involved to reduce the issues between themselves and Iran.” However he did not agree with the suggestion in the Crisis Action document that the Security Council demand for a suspension of enrichment by Iran as a pre-condition for talks is a “fundamental” obstacle.
Boston Herald: Dems to Bush: Don’t attack Iran without Congress OK
WASHINGTON – Democratic leaders in Congress lobbed a warning shot yesterday at the White House not to launch an attack against Iran without first seeking approval from lawmakers.
‘The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization,’ Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid told the National Press Club.
The administration has accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs and contributing technology and bomb-making materials for insurgents to use against U.S. and Iraqi security forces. President Bush said last week the United States will ‘seek out and destroy’ networks providing that support. While top administration officials have said they have no plans to attack Iran itself, they have declined to rule it out.
This week, the administration sent another aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf – the second to deploy in the region. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the buildup was intended to impress on Iran that the four-year war in Iraq has not made America vulnerable. The United States also is deploying anti-missile Patriot missiles in the region.
The United States has accused Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that Iran would not back down over its nuclear program, which Tehran says is being developed only to produce energy.
A new report from Chatham House looks at Iran and its neighbours in this new era of conflict and uncertainty ushered in by the polices of Bush and Blair.
“There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East. The United States, with Coalition support, has eliminated two of Iran’s regional rival governments ‘ the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in April 2003 ‘ but has failed to replace either with coherent and stable political structures. The outbreak of conflict on two fronts in June’July 2006 between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, and Israel and Hizbullah in Lebanon has added to the regional dimensions of this instability…
..Iranian regional foreign policy, which is often portrayed as mischievous and destabilizing, is in fact remarkably pragmatic on the whole and generally aims to avoid major upheaval or confrontation.
Iran’s core foreign policy concerns are:
‘ regional hegemony, particularly economic and cultural, within its sphere of influence;
‘ an extension of the sphere of influence;
‘ regional stability;
‘ to see Iraq unified but unable to pose a military threat;
‘ an obsession with the US but uncertainty how to deal with it.”
Following a speech in the US yesterday by Tony Blair, LFCM comments on the ‘new’ vision for UK foreign policy?
Click here to read
Craig Murray, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan and critic of the government’s foreign policy, said that no-one should underestimate the possibility of military strikes against Iran.
“Margaret Beckett was basically saying: ‘We don’t have any intentions to invade Iran at this present moment but we might change our intentions tomorrow,'” Mr Murray said. If he were the Iranian ambassador to London he would be “very worried” by the phraseology.
From The Scotsman
MARGARET Beckett, the new Foreign Secretary, has defended her decision not to rule out military action against Iran.
While her predecessor, Jack Straw, had said an invasion of the country was “inconceivable”, Mrs Beckett has refused to go as far.
Instead, she has used the non-committal phrase that there was “no intention” to mount an attack on the Tehran regime over its nuclear programme.
Her remarks came as western diplomats reported that international weapons inspectors had discovered new traces of highly enriched uranium on nuclear equipment in Iran.
The Foreign Secretary had insisted that her semantics did not represent any shift in policy, even though it was not as unequivocal as the language used by Mr Straw.
“It is quite deliberately different,” she told The World at One on BBC Radio 4.
She said she had decided within hours of her appointment last week that she would avoid the terms used by Mr Straw to avoid being the subject of “nit-picking analysis”.
Seymour Hersh publishes today in the New Yorker on the Bush adminstrations plans for war on Iran and the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.
The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups….
A BBC interview with Seymour Hersh, in which he comments on the importance of Blair in facilitating a possible attack, can also be heard here
By Mike Whitney in OpEd News
In less than 24 hours the Bush administration won impressive victories on both domestic and foreign policy fronts. At home, the far-right Federalist Society alum, Sam Alito, has overcome the feeble resistance from Democratic senators; ensuring his confirmation to the Supreme Court sometime late on Tuesday. Equally astonishing, the administration has coerced both Russia and China into bringing Iran before the United Nations Security Council although (as Mohamed ElBaradei says) ‘There’s no evidence of a nuclear weapons program.’ The surprising capitulation of Russia and China has forced Iran to abandon its efforts for further negotiations; cutting off dialogue that might diffuse the volatile situation.
‘We consider any referral or report of Iran to the Security Council as the end of diplomacy,’ Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told state television.
The administration’s success with Iran ends the diplomatic charade and paves the way for war.