Scott Ritter: Our Most Important Mission: Prevent War with Iran

[babylonsister]

Our Most Important Mission: Prevent War with Iran

By Scott Ritter, Truthdig. Posted October 5, 2007.

If you think the Iraq war is a disaster, just wait until we start bombing Iran. The countdown to another war is both real and terrifying and it won’t be stopped so long as Iraq is in the spotlight.

The long-awaited “progress report” of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the status of the occupation of Iraq has been made, providing Americans, via the compliant media, with the spectacle of loyal Bush yes men offering faith-based analysis in lieu of fact-based assessment.

In the days and weeks that have since passed, two things have become clear: Neither Congress nor the American people (including the antiwar movement) have a plan or the gumption to confront President Bush in anything more than cosmetic fashion over the war in Iraq, and while those charged with oversight mill about looking to score cheap political points and/or save face, the administration continues its march toward conflict with Iran unimpeded.

Bush responded to the Petraeus report by indicating that he would be inclined to start reducing the level of U.S. forces in Iraq sometime soon (maybe December, maybe the spring of 2008). But the bottom line is that the troop levels in Iraq keep expanding, as does the infrastructure of perpetual occupation. The Democrats in Congress are focused on winning the White House in 2008, not stopping a failed war, and as such they not only refuse to decisively confront the president on Iraq, they are trying to out-posture him over who would be the tougher opponent of an expansionist Iran.

Here’s the danger: While the antiwar movement focuses its limited resources on trying to leverage real congressional opposition to the war in Iraq, which simply will not happen before the 2008 election, the Bush administration and its Democratic opponents will outflank the antiwar movement on the issue of Iran, pushing forward an aggressive agenda in the face of light or nonexistent opposition.

Of the two problems (the reality of Iraq, the potential of Iran), Iran is by far the more important. The war in Iraq isn’t going to expand tenfold overnight. By simply doing nothing, the Democrats can rest assured that Bush’s bad policy will simply keep failing. War with Iran, on the other hand, can still be prevented. We are talking about the potential for conflict at this time, not the reality of war. But time is not on the side of peace.

more...

http://alternet.org/waroniraq/63800/

[BridgeTheGap]

1. Too close for comfort

Air Force refused to fly weapons (nukes) to Middle East theater
>
> By Wayne Madsen
> Sept. 24, 2007
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the

B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles,
each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined
for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence
agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of

the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal
opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community..

Yesterday, the /Washington Post/ attempted to explain away the fact
that America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an
unprecedented manner by reporting that it was the result
of "security failures at multiple levels." It is now apparent that
the command and control breakdown, reported as a BENT SPEAR
incident to the Secretary of Defense and White House, was not the result of
a command and control chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a

revolt and push back by various echelons within the Air Force and
intelligence agencies against a planned U.S. attack on Iran using
nuclear and conventional weapons.

The /Washington Post/ story on BENT SPEAR may have actually been an
effort in damage control by the Bush administration. WMR has been
informed by a knowledgeable source that one of the six nuclear-armed
cruise missiles was, and may still be, unaccounted for. In that
case, the nuclear reporting incident would have gone far beyond
BENT SPEAR to a National Command Authority alert known as EMPTY QUIVER,
with the special classification of PINNACLE.

Just as this report was being prepared, /Newsweek/ reported that
Vice President Dick Cheney's recently-departed Middle East adviser,
David Wurmser, told a small group of advisers some months ago that
Cheney had considered asking Israel to launch a missile attack on
the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. Cheney reasoned that after an
Iranian retaliatory strike, the United States would have ample
reasons to launch its own massive attack on Iran. However, plans
for Israel to attack Iran directly were altered to an Israeli attack on
a supposed Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in
northern Syria.

WMR has learned that a U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and
conventional weapons was scheduled to coincide with Israel's
September 6 air attack on a reputed Syrian nuclear facility in Dayr
az-Zwar, near the village of Tal Abyad, in northern Syria, near the
Turkish border. Israel's attack, code named OPERATION ORCHARD, was
to provide a reason for the U.S. to strike Iran. The neo-
conservative propaganda onslaught was to cite the cooperation of
the George Bush's three remaining "Axis of Evil" states -- Syria, Iran,
and North Korea -- to justify a sustained Israeli attack on Syria
and a massive U.S. military attack on Iran.

WMR has learned from military sources on both sides of the Atlantic
that there was a definite connection between Israel's OPERATION
ORCHARD and BENT SPEAR involving the B-52 that flew the six
nuclear- armed cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to
Barksdale. There is also a connection between these two events as
the Pentagon's highly-classified PROJECT CHECKMATE, a compartmented

U.S. Air Force program that has been working on an attack plan for
Iran since June 2007, around the same time that Cheney was working
on the joint Israeli-U.S. attack scenario on Iran.

PROJECT CHECKMATE was leaked in an article by military analyst Eric

Margolis in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, the /Times of
London/, is a program that involves over two dozen Air Force
officers and is headed by Brig. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem and his
chief civilian adviser, Dr. Lani Kass, a former Israeli military
intelligence officer who, astoundingly, is now involved in planning

a joint U.S.-Israeli massive military attack on Iran that involves
a "decapitating" blow on Iran by hitting between three to four
thousand targets in the country. Stutzriem and Kass report directly

to the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Moseley, who has
also been charged with preparing a report on the B-52/nuclear
weapons incident.

Kass' area of speciality is cyber-warfare, which includes
ensuring "information blockades," such as that imposed by the
Israeli government on the Israeli media regarding the Syrian air
attack on the alleged Syrian "nuclear installation." British
intelligence sources have reported that the Israeli attack on Syria

was a "true flag" attack originally designed to foreshadow a U.S.
attack on Iran. After the U.S. Air Force push back against
transporting the six cruise nuclear-armed AGM-129s to the Middle
East, Israel went ahead with its attack on Syria in order to help
ratchet up tensions between Washington on one side and Damascus,
Tehran, and Pyongyang on the other.

The other part of CHECKMATE's brief is to ensure that a
media "perception management" is waged against Syria, Iran, and
North Korea. This involves articles such as that which appeared
with
Joby Warrick's and Walter Pincus' bylines in yesterdays /Washington

Post/. The article, titled "The Saga of a Bent Spear," quotes a
number of seasoned Air Force nuclear weapons experts as saying that

such an incident is unprecedented in the history of the Air Force.
For example, Retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, the former
chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, said he has been in
the "nuclear business" since 1966 and has never been aware of an
incident "more disturbing."

Command and control breakdowns involving U.S. nuclear weapons are
unprecedented, except for that fact that the U.S. military is now
waging an internal war against neo-cons who are embedded in the
U.S. government and military chain of command who are intent on using
nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive war with Iran.

CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD would have provided the cover for a

pre-emptive U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran had it not been for
BENT SPEAR involving the B-52. In on the plan to launch a pre-emptive
attack on Iran involving nuclear weapons were, according to our
sources, Cheney, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley; members
of the CHECKMATE team at the Pentagon, who have close connections
to Israeli intelligence and pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington,
including the Hudson Institute; British Foreign Secretary David
Miliband, a political adviser to Tony Blair prior to becoming a
Member of Parliament; Israeli political leaders like Prime Minister

Ehud Olmert and Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu; and French Foreign

Minister Bernard Kouchner, who did his part last week to ratchet up

tensions with Iran by suggesting that war with Iran was a
probability. Kouchner retracted his statement after the U.S. plans
for Iran were delayed.

Although the Air Force tried to keep the B-52 nuclear incident from
the media, anonymous Air Force personnel leaked the story
to /Military Times/ on September 5, the day before the Israelis
attacked the alleged nuclear installation in Syria and the day
planned for the simultaneous U..S. attack on Iran. The leaking of
classified information on U.S. nuclear weapons disposition or
movement to the media, is, itself, unprecedented. Air Force
regulations require the sending of classified BEELINE reports to
higher Air Force authorities on the disclosure of classified Air
Force information to the media.

In another highly unusual move, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has
asked an outside inquiry board to look into BENT SPEAR, even before
the Air Force has completed its own investigation, a virtual vote
of no confidence in the official investigation being conducted by
Major General Douglas Raaberg, chief of air and space operations at the
Air Combat Command.

Gates asked former Air Force Chief of Staff, retired General Larry
Welch, to lead a Defense Science Board task force that will also
look into the BENT SPEAR incident. The official Air Force
investigation has reportedly been delayed for unknown reasons.
Welch is President and CEO of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), a

federally-funded research contractor that operates three research
centers, including one for Office of Science and Technology Policy
in the Executive Office of the President and another for the
National Security Agency. One of the board members of IDA is Dr.
Suzanne H. Woolsey of the Paladin Capital Group and wife of former
CIA director and arch-neocon James Woolsey.

WMR has learned that neither the upper echelons of the State
Department nor the British Foreign Office were privy to OPERATION
ORCHARD, although Hadley briefed President Bush on Israeli spy
satellite intelligence that showed the Syrian installation was a
joint nuclear facility built with North Korean and Iranian
assistance. However, it is puzzling why Hadley would rely on
Israeli imagery intelligence (IMINT) from its OFEK (Horizon) 7 satellite
when considering that U.S. IMINT satellites have greater
capabilities.

The Air Force's "information warfare" campaign against media
reports on CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD also affected international
reporting of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
resolution asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under

IAEA controls, similar to those that the United States wants
imposed on Iran and North Korea. The resolution also called for a nuclear-
free zone throughout the Middle East. The IAEA's resolution,
titled "Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East," was
passed by the 144-member IAEA General Meeting on September 20 by a
vote of 53 to 2, with 47 abstentions. The only two countries to
vote against were Israel and the United States.. However, the story
carried from the IAEA meeting in Vienna by Reuters, the Associated
Press, and Agence France Press, was that it was Arab and Islamic
nations that voted for the resolution.

This was yet more perception management carried out by CHECKMATE,
the White House, and their allies in Europe and Israel with the
connivance of the media. In fact, among the 53 nations that voted
for the resolution were China, Russia, India, Ireland, and Japan.
The 47 abstentions were described as votes "against" the resolution

even though an abstention is neither a vote for nor against a
measure. America's close allies, including Britain, France,
Australia, Canada, and Georgia, all abstained.

Suspiciously, the IAEA carried only a brief item on the resolution
concerning Israel's nuclear program and a roll call vote was not
available either at the IAEA's web site -- www.iaea.org -- or in
the media.

The perception management campaign by the neocon operational cells
in the Bush administration, Israel and Europe was designed to keep
a focus on Iran's nuclear program, not on Israel's. Any international

examination of Israel's nuclear weapons program would likely bring
up Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, a covert from
Judaism to Christianity, who was kidnapped in Rome by a Mossad "honey trap"
named Cheryl Bentov (aka, Cindy) and a Mossad team in 1986 and held
against his will in Israel ever since.

Vanunu's knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons program would
focus on the country's own role in nuclear proliferation, including
its program to share nuclear weapons technology with apartheid
South Africa and Taiwan in the late 1970s and 1980s. The role of Ronald
Reagan's Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Ken
Adelman in Israeli's nuclear proliferation during the time frame
1983-1987 would also come under scrutiny. Adelman, a member of the
Reagan-Bush transition State Department team from November 1980 to
January 1981, voiced his understanding for the nuclear weapons
programs of Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan in a June 28, 1981
/New York Times/ article titled, "3 Nations Widening Nuclear Contacts."
The journalist who wrote the article was Judith Miller. Adelman
felt that the three countries wanted nuclear weapons because of their
ostracism from the West, the third world, and the hostility from
the Communist countries. Of course, today, the same argument can be
used by Iran, North Korea, and other "Axis of Evil" nations so
designated by the neocons in the Bush administration and other governments.

There are also news reports that suggest an intelligence
relationship between Israel and North Korea. On July 21, 2004, New
Zealand's /Dominion Post/ reported that three Mossad agents were
involved in espionage in New Zealand. Two of the Mossad agents,
Uriel Kelman and Elisha Cara (aka Kra), were arrested and
imprisoned by New Zealand police (an Israeli diplomat in Canberra, Amir Lati,
was expelled by Australia and New Zealand intelligence identified a
fourth Mossad agent involved in the New Zealand espionage operation
in Singapore). The third Mossad agent in New Zealand, Zev William
Barkan (aka Lev Bruckenstein), fled New Zealand -- for North Korea.


New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff revealed that Barkan, a
former Israeli Navy diver, had previously worked at the Israeli
embassy in Vienna, which is also the headquarters of the IAEA. He
was cited by the /Sydney Morning Herald/ as trafficking in
passports stolen from foreign tourists in Thailand, Myanmar,
Laos, and Cambodia. New Zealand's One News reported that Barkan was
in North Korea to help the nation build a wall to keep its citizens
from leaving.

The nuclear brinkmanship involving the United States and Israel and
the breakdown in America's command and control systems have every
major capital around the world wondering about the Bush
administration's true intentions.

NOTE: WMR understands the risks to informed individuals in
reporting the events of August 29/30, to the present time, that concern the
discord within the U.S. Air Force, U.S. intelligence agencies, and
other military services. Any source with relevant information and
who wishes to contact us anonymously may drop off sealed
correspondence at or send mail via the Postal Service to: Wayne
Madsen, c/o The Front Desk, National Press Club, 13th Floor, 529
14th St., NW, Washington, DC, 20045.

[babylonsister]

2. FYI: Your source is not a very popular one around here; he's wrong

as often as he's right from what I see. Plus, there's a 6-para. rule on DU. :hi:

[BridgeTheGap]

3. Thanks for the info

intriguing theory, though.
Anything that the military puts out (including "leaks") has to be suspect. Maybe all this is just "saber rattling," intended to scare Iran into compliance.