U.S. Funding Terror Attacks In Iran

WTF, I thought that they were the ones that were...............

By Sherwood Ross

The recent surge of terrorist violence in Iran likely is being funded in part by the Bush administration with the support of Congress.
According to a report in the July 7-14 issue of The New Yorker magazine, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says the U.S. reportedly has been funding the Iranian dissident terrorist group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or M.E.K.; the Kurdish separatist Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK; and, according to some sources, the Jundallah, or Iranian People’s Resistance Movement.

“Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere,” retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner is quoted by Hersh as stating. “There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.” Gardiner has taught strategy at the National War College and is monitoring the violence in Iran.
The bloodshed in Iran likely has been underwritten by the U.S. Congress which last year acceded to a request from Bush “to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran,” Hersh writes, “designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.” Bush asked for $400 million for the work.
“The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Ara and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations,” Hersh added, noting that “Clandestine operations against Iran are not new” and U.S. Special Operations Forces “have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year.”
Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, Hersh noted, and the Iranian government conceded an explosion in the southern city of Shiraz had been a terrorist act. That blast killed a dozen people and injured more than 200. Hersh said it could not be learned if there was any specific U.S. involvement in that incident.
However, the M.E.K., which has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, in recent years “has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States,” Hersh writes, and some of the newly authorized covert fund money may well flow into their coffers. A Pentagon consultant who was not named told Hersh, “The (Bush) Administration is desperate for results.”
As for the Kurdish PJAK, reportedly getting U.S. covert funding, Hersh quotes Gardiner as noting there has been a marked increase in the number of their armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets. PJAK fighters last May attacked Revolutionary Guards and in June attacked Iranian border guards.
A former senior intelligence official indicated to Hersh that Vice President Cheney’s office “set up priorities for categories of targets (in Iran) and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.”
The official added, “There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates.”
The official was also quoted as saying there had been a meeting in Cheney’s office and “The subject was how to create a casus belli (an event to justify a declaration of war) between Tehran and Washington.”
Hersh also wrote that Admiral William Fallon, who until recently headed the U.S. Central Command with oversight for Iraq and Afghanistan, “resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran.”
Retired Marine General John Sheehan, formerly commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, told Hersh that when Fallon “tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.”
Hersh quoted a Pentagon consultant as stating, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”
In sum, while the Bush regime claims the Iranians are behind attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, (an assertion fraught with what the New York Times delicately called “significant uncertainties,”) there is no longer any question Bush is doing just that inside Iran; that Cheney is looking for a cause to start a war; and that the White House will fire any flag officer that dares to stand in its way. #

(Sherwood Ross is a resident of Miami, Fla., who writes on military and political subjects. He has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and for wire services. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com).Authors Bio: Sherwood Ross has worked as a publicist for the City of Chicago and as a public relations consultant to New York City. He worked as news director for the National Urban League; as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and a workplace columnist for Reuters. He has also been a media consultant to colleges, universities, law schools and more than 100 national magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Business Week, and Foreign Policy. Ross also was a talk show host at WOL Radio, Washington, D.C., and holds an award for "best spot news coverage" for Chicago radio stations. He is the author "Gruening of Alaska,"(Best)and several plays, including "Baron Jiro," produced at Live Arts Theatre, Charlottesville, Va., and "Yamamoto's Decision," read at the National Press Club, where he is a member. His favorite quotations are from the Sermon on The Mount.

Enough already!

By Frank Scott Online Journal Contributing Writer

While a cowardly congress avoids prosecuting George W. Bush for using the constitution as toilet paper and getting us into war by twisting facts even more than his syntax, more serious problems await their failure to act as representatives of the American people.
Problems such as: Should we bomb Iran for Israel, or pay Israel to bomb Iran and either way suffer the consequences? Should we resolve this dilemma with the present regime, or wait for the new executive staff next year? How long can the international community -- the USA, Israel, a British lapdog and a French poodle -- tolerate the mad killer in Tehran who threatens to exterminate Jews, sodomize puppies and rape white women in his demonic campaign to rule the world. Or something like that.
Our political paparazzi spread stories of Ahmadinejad and Iran that are almost that blatantly idiotic. As madmen press for us to murder more people in their quest for a divinity that will leave them chosen survivors of a nuclear holocaust, our corporate congress acts as willing servant. It is only aroused to action when Zionists snap their fingers, or when neocons wave a flag.
No wonder so many are swept up in a passionate hope that dulls the senses, but at least seems to offer some light at a very dark time. It is necessary to be asleep to experience a dream, but now we need to be comatose to imagine an American Dream of prosperity, peace and justice, let alone a self-focused one of personal success. A fully awakened people have to confront the present crisis before it becomes an American Nightmare.
The constant leaking of information about planned attacks on Iran indicate that groups within the establishment, supportive of empire but opposed to its present madness, are trying to avoid disaster. But the ruling fanatics are also hard at work, and with the most spineless opposition our nation has ever known -- if they’d been around during the American revolution we’d all be speaking with British accents -- there is a vital need to come out of our political slumber, or mythical dreams will become factual nightmares.
While it’s easy to see that attacking Iran could be more insanely destructive than the slaughter we have caused in Iraq, that is only apparent to those with some sense remaining after having our heads beaten to a pulp by distortions of reality. Our irrational consciousness controllers claim that Iran threatens mankind, especially Jewish mankind, and this based on evidence as convincing as proof of how many angels dance on the head of a pin.
When Ahmadinejad quoted his Imam and said that the rulers of Israel, like those of the Soviet Union, would vanish into history, it somehow became a threat of holocaust revival, endlessly repeated by those incapable of coherent reasoning in English, let alone the Persian spoken by Ahmadinejad.
At a time of confusion and fear, many Americans who hardly believe much their government and its controlling institutions say, seem ready to swallow any bilge shoved into their heads if it’s about the Islamic world. This may be a time for the doubters of much that they are told, most of the time, to become disbelievers in everything they are told, all the time.
Given that we are supposedly a nation of believers, it might be better if we prayed for guidance from immaterial forces before letting hysterical crackpots push us into supporting material action of ever more murderous intolerance and stupidity.
Iran is neither a threat to America, nor is its nuclear program any of our business. Especially since our business involves being the only nation to have ever used nukes, arming ourselves with more of them, and remaining silent about the mass murder potential of the primary source of moronic fables about Iran. That would be AIPAC -- the American Jewish lobby -- and Israel, where Mordechai Vanunu spent years in prison for trying to tell the world that it is as great a threat to humanity as is the USA. Why? It is founded on a myth of perpetual threat of annihilation at the hands of the rest of the world, so that any defense against that threat, however irrational, is deemed logical and even divine.
For the moment, the paranoia is focused on Iran, but it once was Iraq and soon could be any nation or group that incurs the animosity of Israel’s American lobby. And it doesn't take much beyond honest criticism to incur the highly financed rage of that lobby and its sentiment of pending doom, based on biblical legend more than historic reality. If descendants of Native Americans and African slaves had the same psychological aberration, Americans might never be allowed to sleep again.
A public almost desperate to see the Bush regime fade away seems to have been lulled into a state of greater passivity than usual. But the incredible nature of proposed war on Iran may be, hopefully, pushing many closer to action. If that only involves a gentile sector of the ruling class, relief will be brief, at best. If it means a breakthrough in desires and demands for a truly democratic society run by a majority of citizens and not their minority rulers, we may not only avert short-term disaster but bring on real long term-hope for progress.
If we remain angry, confused and lashing out at innocent scapegoats instead of challenging real power, an outlook that can seem personally bleak could soon turn into one of social disaster. It is long past the time for Americans to say we’ve had enough and we can’t take it anymore. That means ending the dictatorship of corporate wealth and Zionism, and beginning a democracy of all the people. Can we? We’d better.

Copyright © 2008 Frank Scott. All rights reserved.Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears in the Coastal Post, a monthly publication from Marin County, California, and on numerous web sites, and on his shared blog at legalienate.blogspot.com. Contact him at frankscott@comcast.net.

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The Fouth of July Lie

A Fresh Look at Holidays

by Butler Shafferby Butler Shaffer

I have long been a critic of the state’s co-option of holidays to serve governmental purposes, thus negating the messages these holidays originally served. July 4th – designed to celebrate independence from the state – has been refashioned as a holiday for revelling in the state’s favorite activity, war. Television treats us to a seemingly endless supply of John Wayne films, urging us to embrace the contradictory idea that submitting ourselves to increased state power is the way to promote our liberty! It is such twisted thinking that leads those who refuse to examine the content of their minds to bleat about the soldiers who "fight for our freedom." What nonsense. Shall we next be told that Sunset Boulevard hookers are peddling virtue?
Just how far we have contorted our thinking about "independence day" is reflected in most people’s thinking about fireworks. Like private gun-ownership, our personal use of fireworks represents too much power in the hands of individuals. And so, we confine ourselves to the absurdity of having the state celebrate our liberty and independence for us!
Memorial Day is another holiday corrupted by statism. Originally begun as a day for remembering the dead – particularly those who had died in war – it, too, has been twisted into a day for celebrating – not condemning – warfare. Back to the film files for more John Wayne flicks. Like his neocon successors who never heard a gunshot fired in anger, Wayne remains a hero to the statists for having bravely and selflessly defended the back-lot of Republic Pictures during World War II.
The November 11th Armistice Day holiday of my childhood – which celebrated the end of a war – has metamorphosed into Veterans Day, with thousands of war veterans donning their American Legion caps or U.S.S. Missouri baseball caps to praise the war system, rather than its albeit temporary cessation. More John Wayne celluloid makes it to the television screens. In such fictionalized accounts, young and impressionable minds learn the righteousness not only of obedience to authority, but of throwing oneself upon a live hand grenade.
And for what could we be more thankful on that fourth Thursday in November than living in a nation ruled by an all-powerful state that protects us from the savage hordes menacing us from such lands as Grenada, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Iraq, or any other enemy-of-the-month selected by establishment rulers? Nor does New Year’s Day go unused by the state, it being the date on which most of the new regulations on our lives take effect, as well as the beginning of a new tax year.
Even Christmas – the day, not that many decades ago, that was virtually synonymous with "peace" – has given rise to Christmas cards depicting flag-draped Santa Clauses, and homes decorated in red, white, and blue lights. And as children unwrap their "G.I. Joe" toys or their warrior-based computer games, the ballad "Onward Christian Soldiers" may be heard on a local radio station.
Even as modernly practiced, there is one nice thing about national holidays: they provide a day off work for government employees. With this thought in mind, I propose a further expansion of such holidays, to the end that all 365 days of the year be taken up in honoring someone, or some event, or some group of people who should be accorded the same recognition as those now favored. I have a few samples to get our thinking started.
When a holiday for Martin Luther King was first being considered, I suggested other renowned blacks as more suitable honorees, Frederick Douglass being my choice. If there was an insistence upon selecting a more recent candidate, I would have preferred Malcolm X, who – particularly near the end of his life – saw the deeper basis of social conflict than the simplistic "black-versus-white" model upon which most of us have settled, and which is becoming a focal point in this year’s presidential campaign. So, indulge my thinking for the purpose of having additional national holidays for Douglass and Malcolm.
In this age of hyphenated ego-boundary identities, religious, ethnic, and nationality groups could take up the cause for honoring their specific associations. The Christians and Jews already have their holidays (a word which, itself, stems from "holy days") recognized. But what about Muslims, Buddhists, Shintoists, Hindus, and the many other religions that are not recognized with a holiday? At a time when politicians like to talk about diversity, why are the members of these religions left out? And what about atheists? Shouldn’t Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s birthday also be recognized, as a confirmation of the non-establishment clause of the 1st Amendment?
Just imagine what could be done to shrink governmental behavior by recognizing nationality groups for a national holiday? Lithuanian Day, Cinco de Mayo, Norwegian Day, Kenya Day, Thailand Day, . . . on and on to encompass all nationalities as well as sub-nationalities (e.g., not just Iraq Day, but Shiite Day, Sunni Day, etc.). Yugoslavia – which has since decentralized into five separate nations – and Czechoslovakia – which has fragmented into the Czech Republic and Slovakia – could multiply the numbers, just as the collapse of the Soviet Union has breathed new life into a great many independent nations.
And why have we limited America’s presidential nominees to a single President’s Day? How about a day to honor each of them? My favorite – and the only one I would choose to honor – would be William Henry Harrison, a man who caught pneumonia on inauguration day and died a month later! Grover Cleveland would probably be entitled to two such days, his having served two non-consecutive terms.
You get the picture. Occupations, genders, lifestyles, belief systems, etc., etc., could each be recognized. Instead of a generic "Labor Day," what about a day recognizing farmers, who produce the food that sustains us? Furthermore, what about a day to honor those whose work is far more central to our well-being than rock stars and athletes, namely, those who dispose of the entropic wastes of our world (e.g., garbage and trash collectors, undertakers, and plumbers)? Such people – along with farmers – do the work many of us despise and yet, without their efforts, we would be inundated in waste (have you ever lived in New York City during a garbage-collectors’ strike?).
Let us have a paid holiday for everyone, in honor of all these e pluribus unum groups we like to imagine have created America. If all 365 days could be filled up, this would mean that all government employees would continue to get paid: they just wouldn’t show up for work to do anything. The benefit of paying such people to stay out of our way would be a wonderful first step toward a total dismantling of the state. We would still be stuck with paying their salaries but, on the other hand, we would have put an end to their ceaseless meddling. Enough of these people might become so bored with having no work to perform, they might quit their government jobs and go into the marketplace with the rest of us! To paraphrase an old Vietnam War saying, "what if they created a government, but nobody came?"
July 4, 2008
Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival.
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