U.S. Funding Armed Groups to Overthrow Iranian Government:

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.aina.org/news/20070317151234.htm

BERKELEY, United States (IPS) -- Author of the upcoming book "The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis", due for release in September from Polipoint Press, Reese Erlich recently spent three weeks investigating Kurdish resistance organisations in Iran and Iraq's Kurdish region. He tells IPS that "the United States is officially funding armed groups to overthrow the Islamic government" in Tehran.

In an interview with IPS's Omid Memarian, Erlich, who has covered the Middle East as a freelance journalist for the past 20 years and co-wrote 2003's "Target Iraq", says that Washington's strategy is primarily focused on media propaganda -- such as websites and satellite television and radio stations -- but also includes covert military training.

The Iranian government has itself accused opposition groups of destabilising the border region, and recently warned Kurdish Iraqi officials to expel armed bandits and anti-Iranian groups from their province, or face military incursions.

IPS: What do the Kurdish opposition groups look like? What constitutes the daily life of these small groups who are fighting an established government?

Reese Erlich (RE): The Kurdish compounds are like small villages. They have barracks for the single men peshmurga. Political cadres live with their families in small homes, much like Iraqi Kurds in that area. They have meeting halls and offices. PJAK's conditions are much more like guerrillas, living in the cold mountains with more rudimentary huts.

I described one PJAK leader as the "very model of a modern guerrilla general." He has a cell phone, internet access and satellite TV. The women guerrillas claim they only watch news programmes, but I got them to admit they also like movies with Brad Pitt and Mel Gibson.

IPS: Is the U.S. support limited to media or does it include other activities, such as military operations?

RE: Secretly, U.S. intelligence services are also sponsoring armed attacks within Iran. I discovered the U.S. and Israeli support for PJAK in Kurdistan and from so-called former MEK members. The U.S. asks a Mujahedin-e Khalq Organisation (MEK or MKO) member if they have left and if they support democracy. If they answer yes, they can be trained and armed for clandestine actions inside Iran.

[seemslikeadream]

1. Report: U.S. Sponsoring Kurdish Guerilla Attacks Inside Iran

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/27/1356250

AMY GOODMAN: We are going to turn now to Reese Erlich, an independent radio producer and journalist, who reports on Iran, in the latest issue of Mother Jones, and is the author of the forth-coming book The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy in the Middle East Crisis. I spoke with him yesterday in San Francisco and asked what effect the Security Council sanctions will have on Iran.

REESE ERLICH: I think the newest U.N. sanctions were clearly sponsored and passed only because of U.S. pressure. They don't do a lot to actually effectively impact Iran that much. They increase the freezing of some Iranian individuals' assets, a few other things. They also, it might be noted, reiterate the U.N. call to make all of the Middle East nuclear free and that includes Israel. And I'm sure that's not something the Bush administration is going to trumpet when it talks about those latest U.N. sanctions. Again, I think in the wider context, the sanctions that passed by the U.N. are part of an escalating effort to pressure Iran to basically toe the line for U.S. interests in the area.

AMY GOODMAN: In the latest edition of Mother Jones, you have a piece where you talk about the Iranian/Kurdish guerrillas. Explain who and where they are.

REESE ERLICH: In Northern Iraq there are three Iranian Kurdish groups that operate and that have compounds and do political organizing. Keep in mind that the Kurdish people of Iran face a great deal of oppression, they're not allowed to learn in their own language in the schools. They face discrimination. They're a great deal poorer than the rest of Iran. So the Kurdish people have very legitimate grievances against the government in Tehran. The U.S. has taken advantage of that.

In the case of one group, the P.K.K. or the Kurdistan Workers Party and they are along with Israel sponsoring them to carry out guerrilla raids inside Iran and its part of a much wider plan by the United States to foment discontent and actual terrorist activities by ethnic Iranians in various parts of Iran. And when I was in northern Iraq, I was able to determine that that kind of activity is going on from Iraqi soil under the Kurdish controlled areas of Iraq, into Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you get to the guerrilla camp?

REESE ERLICH: Well, it's quite interesting, two cell phone calls and a drive up into the mountains. One of the arguments by the Kurdish regional government of Iraq and of the United States is that they can't find these guerrillas because it's so inhospitable territory that no one can find them. They're operating from secret bases, et cetera. But all I did was drive up into the closest Iraqi village and asked the local driver and they say oh, yeah, which of the guerrilla camp do you want to see and we'll take you right up to them. So they are very easy to find.

AMY GOODMAN: So now, explain the difference. Explain the P.K.K. and the P.J.A.K.

REESE ERLICH: The P.K.K. is the mother organization if you will. It was founded by Oshelan, the Turkish Kurd who is now in jail, charged with terrorism. The P.K.K. by the way, is listed on the United States State Department List of Terrorist Organizations. The P.J.A.K., the Party for Free Life of Kurdistan is the Iranian affiliate. The P.K.K., about two years ago split into four parties in each of the countries where is the Kurds live. In Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. So the P.J.A.K. is the Iranian affiliate. Basically they're still part of the same organization. In order to get to the P.J.A.K. interviews that I did, you had to go through two P.K.K. based camps with walkie-talkies and soldiers and guerillas and so on. For all intents and purposes they're the same thing.

[seemslikeadream]

2. Reese Erlich: The US and Iran - The Real Story

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6906119868285777096&q=Reese+Erlich&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0


Foreign correspondent Reese Erlich, author of the soon-to-be-published book, "The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of US Policy and the Middle ... all » East Crisis," speaks about his recent trips to Iran researching his book.

Reese Erlich's history in journalism goes back 39 years. He first worked as a staff writer and research editor for Ramparts, an investigative reporting magazine published in San Francisco from 1963 to 1975. Today he works as a full-time print and broadcast, freelance reporter. He reports regularly for CBC, ABC (Australia), Radio Deutche Welle and National Public Radio. His articles appear in the San Francisco Chronicle, St. Petersburg Times and the Dallas Morning News. His television documentaries have aired on PBS stations nationwide.

Erlich’s book, Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You, co-authored with Norman Solomon, became a best seller in 2003. His latest book, The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis, will be in bookstores in October 2007. (Forward by Robert Scheer.)

His magazine articles have appeared in San Francisco Magazine, California Monthly, California Lawyer, Mother Jones, The Progressive, The Nation, AARP’s Segunda Juventud, and he has worked as a consultant to National Geographic.

In June 2005 he traveled to Iran with Norman Solomon and Sean Penn. Erlich’s photos accompanied Penn’s 5-part series about the trip that appeared in the SF Chronicle and in an A&E documentary of Penn.

In 2004 Erlich’s radio special “Children of War: Fighting, Dying, Surviving,” won a Clarion Award presented by the Association for Women in Communication and second and third place from the National Headliner Awards. His article about the U.S. use of depleted uranium ammunition was voted the eighth most-censored story in America for 2002-2003 by Project Censored at Sonoma State University. In 2002 his radio documentary, “The Russia Project,” hosted by Walter Cronkite, won the Depth Reporting Prize for Broadcast Journalism awarded by the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. «

[seemslikeadream]

3. US envoy says Iraq report will sound warning on Iran

US envoy says Iraq report will sound warning on Iran


http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAR670980.htm

BAGHDAD, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Washington's envoy to Iraq warned Americans on Thursday that pulling U.S. troops out of the country could open the door to a "major Iranian advance" that would threaten U.S. interests in the region.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker also accused Tehran of seeking to weaken the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government so that it could "by one means or another control it". Iran has denied U.S. charges that it is arming and training Shi'ite militias in Iraq.

Crocker and the top U.S. general in Iraq, General David Petraeus are due to present a pivotal report to Congress in September on progress on the military and political fronts and make recommendations on the way forward.

Opinion polls suggest most Americans have turned against the four-year war and Democrats in Congress want President George W. Bush to start pulling out U.S. troops as soon as possible. Bush, however, has resisted such calls.

[tnlefty]

4. I don't really have a response...

:kick: Insanity abounds.

[kineneb]

5. flashback to 1953

only without "success". Won't work. Persians have Long Memories. (I know this personally, half my family is from Iran.)

[seemslikeadream]

6. could you please tell georgie that?

:hi:

[kineneb]

7. wish I could

I would have told them the whole "adventure" in the ME was going to...blow up in their face (sorry).

Except for Iran/Persia which has been a Real Country (nation-state) for ~2500 years, the rest of the ME is very tribal. Their loyalty is to the tribe first, then maybe to whatever "country" in which they happen to live. Persians have a loyalty to country first, their family, then maybe the government. They think in the long term, which is what one would do if their country was several thousand years old.


Iraq was held together by everyone's hatered of Saddam, much like Tito held the Balkins together. Without that center, the pieces flew apart. The US military is an occupying force standing in the middle of a civil/tribal war.

[seemslikeadream]

8. a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action agains

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=183922

Brzezinski doesn’t waste any time setting off his own fire works. This phrase appears in the third paragraph (see full text below). He posits a possible justification for attacking Iran; clearly outside the bounds of rationality and built upon a foundation of myths. .

Look at the use of “terrorist act in the U.S.” in the context of his prepared statement:


If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.. (.pdf of Brzezinski’s testimony)

Note: The emphasis by underlining and the use of quotation marks around defensive is found in the original copy and presumed to be that of Dr. Brzezinski.


The remarkable wording is that Iran is “blamed.”

“…blamed on Iran…” Does that mean that they did it?