IO Deeds of War – Page 168 – Public Intelligence Blog

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Top US Nuclear Expert Tells Obama: There Is No Weapons Threat From Iran

January 16, 2012 • 1:29AM

The former director of U.S. programs for production of nuclear materials and components for nuclear weapons, Clinton Bastin, sent an open letter to President Obama the morning of January 13, explaining that there is no weapons threat from Iran's fully safeguarded nuclear power and research programs. A copy of the letter, which the nuclear scientist also sent to the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, was made available to 21st Century Science & Technology magazine yesterday. It is reproduced below in full.

Bastin, who has served in leading positions in government since the 1950s, laid out the case on Iran in greater detail in an interview with 21st Century Science Nov. 18, 2011. The interview, which devastates the arguments for an Iranian nuclear weapons threat, is available at the 21st Century Science and Technology website.

Read letter.

Phi Beta Iota: The Iranians certainly have nuclear weapons ambitions. Bearing in mind that Zbigniew Brzezinski personally approved the Pakistani (Sunni) nuclear weapons program, it hardly seems fair to deprive the Iranian (Shi'ite) community of their own nuclear weapons program–from where we sit, they fear the Saudis and Pakistanis vastly more than they fear the USA. The bottom line is that the White House is not making decisions based on intelligence with integrity.

UPDATE 22 March 2012. The Iran situation appears to be theater:

1. To meet oil futures bets made by Israel, Iran, and Wall Street [the high end — some sources say that oil futures were also bought at the low end such that the oil producing countries are not receiving any kick from the higher prices]

2. To distract everyone from Israel pressing forward with more settlements and more atrocities against the Palestinians.

Iran oil futures at Phi Beta Iota

Chuck Spinney: No War with Iran, Settlements Open Game?

Iran at Phi Beta Iota

2012/01/142012/01/14

Eagle: IRAN Gulf of Tonkin False Flag Attack Underway?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

IRAN: US/Israeli False Flag Attack May Be Underway

Jim Fetzer and Joshua Blakeney

Veterans Today, 14 January 2012

Several warnings of an imminent “false flag” attack by the Israeli-influenced United States on one of its own warships, which will be attributed to Iran, have been reported by several reliable sources. In recent years “false-flag” terrorism has been utilized multiple times by US and Israeli political actors to provide pretexts for otherwise unjustifiable, anti-Islamic military excursions. The plan is to justify an all-out assault on Iran based upon a new fabricated “Pearl Harbor”.

Continue reading “Eagle: IRAN Gulf of Tonkin False Flag Attack Underway?”

2012/01/122012/01/12

Bert Laden – The Story Continues

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

Another SEAL Book, Another Version, Colonel Mustard With A Mallot in the Music Room?

Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

Veterans Today, 12 January 2012

The Murdoch papers are carrying a new version of the bin Laden saga. This one contains much of the fiction of the last 25, leaving out much as well. Nothing is new, just a set of lies with some reason for them to be retold. We know what that reason is, nobody takes a word of it seriously anymore, not the first stories, not the sea burial, not the execution of the world’s most valuable intelligence asset.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Bert Laden – The Story Continues”

2012/01/112012/01/11

Marcus Aurelius: Paul Pillar on Intelligence & Policy

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Think Again: Intelligence

I served in the CIA for 28 years and I can tell you: America's screw-ups come from bad leaders, not lousy spies.

Paul Pillar

Foreign Policy, Jan/Feb 2012

“Presidents Make Decisions Based on Intelligence.”

Not the big ones. From George W. Bush trumpeting WMD reports about Iraq to this year's Republican presidential candidates vowing to set policy in Afghanistan based on the dictates of the intelligence community, Americans often get the sense that their leaders' hands are guided abroad by their all-knowing spying apparatus. After all, the United States spends about $80 billion on intelligence each year, which provides a flood of important guidance every week on matters ranging from hunting terrorists to countering China's growing military capabilities. This analysis informs policymakers' day-to-day decision-making and sometimes gets them to look more closely at problems, such as the rising threat from al Qaeda in the late 1990s, than they otherwise would.

On major foreign-policy decisions, however, whether going to war or broadly rethinking U.S. strategy in the Arab world (as President Barack Obama is likely doing now), intelligence is not the decisive factor. The influences that really matter are the ones that leaders bring with them into office: their own strategic sense, the lessons they have drawn from history or personal experience, the imperatives of domestic politics, and their own neuroses. A memo or briefing emanating from some unfamiliar corner of the bureaucracy hardly stands a chance.

Read rest of article.

Phi Beta Iota: Brother Pillar avoids the obvious – the excessive influence of the banks, military-industrial complex, and the Zionists, among others. CORRUPTION is our greatest enemy. Both parties are corrupt, and a third party (or Americans Elect) is not the answer–we need to restore the INTEGRITY of the entire process from election through governance through accountability.

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

2011/12/292011/12/29

Mini-Me: Occupy 9/11 Emergent – War by Deception 2011 – The shadow government and shadow economy

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, InfoOps (IO), IO Deeds of War, Military, Movies, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

Occupy 9/11 is emergent. This film, loaded on 1 February 2011, is now going viral. At 2:28:42, this is one of the best documentaries on the topic, and it is free online.

YouTube War by Deception 2011

Phi Beta Iota: This is an extraordinary contribution. It is highly recommended for students as well as adult learning clubs; it provides the best “overview” in one place.

See Also:

9-11 Truth Books & DVDs (33)

2011/12/282011/12/28

Butler Shaffer: War as a Lifestyle + Does Integrity Matter?

Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

War as a Lifestyle

Butler Shaffer

Lou Rockwell.com, 28 December 2011

Whenever I watch the Republican presidential debates, my mind is drawn to that important children’s book, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The six sock-puppets who have thus far managed to survive the musical-chairs comedy ballet wow Mr. and Mrs. Boobus with their visions of a violent, intrusive, policed, and war-loving America that equals, if not exceeds, what Barack Obama has been able to generate. It was but four years ago that John McCain choreographed his campaign around the lyrics “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” That so few people were repulsed by such psychopathic utterances is but one of many symptoms of a society in moral, spiritual, and intellectual collapse. The domestic police-state so passively accepted by most Americans – and insisted upon by the voices of the political establishment – reminds me of the comment made by the Prince of Wales in the 1934 film, The Scarlet Pimpernel: “if a country goes mad, it has the right to commit every horror within its own walls.”

Read full essay.

Does Integrity Matter?

The Moral Liberal, 28 December 2011

I become exasperated reading or listening to chuckleheaded people who are unable – or unwilling – to distinguish the peaceful and voluntary nature of a free market, from the violent and coercive character of the corporate-state system that long ago took over our economic lives. Murray Rothbard’s words come to mind, wherein he observed that it was no great wrong to not understand economics, but that one ignorant of the subject ought not be offering advice on such matters. I would no more go to a lawyer, or an orthodontist, or Lew Rockwell, to have brain surgery performed on me, than would I take seriously the prescriptions offered by economic ignoramuses on how to “grow” an economy (an idea as absurd as that of misguided, controlling parents who believe it is their role to “grow” their children).

Read full essay.

2011/12/26

Chuck Spinney: Clintonizing Perpetual War

05 Iran, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War

Clintonizing Perpetual War

26 December 2011

In the winter of 2002, a close friend, a liberal staffer on capital hill, asked me if I thought the crazy fulminations of the neocons and the tough-guy rantings of an insecure President [1] could result in a war with Iraq? My answer was something like ‘read the Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and you will get a good idea of how these pressures can take on a life of their own and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.'

President Obama — perhaps inadvertently — is playing the same game with regard to Iran by trying to neutralize his political opposition at home with a dangerous mutation of Bill Clinton's cynical triangulation strategy. In this case, the goal of the triangulation strategy is to pull the rug out from under the Republican warmongers like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. If he can co-opt the domestic political pressures for war against Iran, Mr. Obama may well think he can better position himself for the upcoming presidential election. But in so doing, he would be running a real risk of starting yet another ill-conceived war, whether he wants to or not. (Patrick Seale explains one way the march to war could spin out of Obama's control at this link.) To make matters worse, Mr. Obama is a man who has demonstrated that he talks a good line but fails to deliver on his promises when under pressure — just ask the Arabs about his Cairo speech or progressives who believed his promises about health care reform and “change your can believe in.” Whether or not triangulating questions of war and peace is a question of Obama's free will is quite beside the point: a malleable man is playing with the most dangerous kind of fire.

My last post, Beating the War Drums in Versailles on the Potomac, described the buildup of domestic political pressures to launch an attack on Iran in the name of prempting Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons, notwithstanding the fact that there is no solid intelligence proving the Iranians have embarked on a program to acquire those weapons. This aim of this post is to alert interested readers to another analysis in the same vein, but analyzed from a different angle. In The Winners and Losers of US policy on Iran, an op-ed that appeared in Al Jazeera (English) on 23 December, Jasmine Ramsey provides a useful insight in to the warmongering pressures on a president prone to appeasing his opposition for domestic political reasons.

The new year is shaping up to be a very dangerous one, because appeasing an external aggressor, like Adolf Hitler, is not the only kind of appeasement strategy that leads to war.

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[1] Any president who feels it is necessary to brag about being “The Decider” is insecure by self-definition.

Chuck Spinney

The Blaster

The winners and losers of US policy on Iran

The same week Obama declared an end to the Iraq War, Congress brought the US closer to confrontation with Iran

Jasmine Ramsey, Al Jazeera, 23 Dec 2011

In the same week that President Obama declared an end to the Iraq War, Congress brought Americans closer to confrontation with Iran. The whimper with which America's presence in Iraq ended was also drowned out by Republican presidential hopefuls beating war drums. This is America nearly four years into Obama's leadership. The President may have begun his term by trying to pursue a different path with Iran, but his acquiescence to domestic lobbying has made the results of his policies indistinguishable from his predecessor. Ironically, his attempts to appease pro-Israel advocates have only invited more onerous demands while leaving would-be supporters disillusioned.