Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East

[synergy777]

Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=7257

Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater
By Wayne Madsen – WMR Sept. 24, 2007

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 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 convert 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."



this shows that are good people in the armed forces/intelligence who oppose the world government. its great news, the people united with the military can prevent the globalist agenda.

[jologriffiths]

Hi Synergy,
this is great news, thanks for the info
lets hope Bush, Cheney & Co are arrested A.S.A.P by the Provost Marshall ;)

ONE LOVE

[synergy777]

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?id=7131

Those five nukes on that B-52 may have something to do with Iran
Larry Johnson – Crimes & Corruptions of the N.W.O. News Sept 5, 2007

Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That’s like getting excited if you see a postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.

So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can’t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?

His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.

Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can’t think of one. What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride. We need some tough questions and clear answers.

What the hell is going on? Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don’t know, but it is a question worth asking.


Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management.

http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/09/those-five-nukes-on-that-b-52-may-have.html

[synergy777]

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?id=7154

LOOSE NUKES story!!!
From a reader – September 10, 2007

A reader writes, this post from Democratic Underground is quite interesting:

"Regarding yesterday's LOOSE NUKES story!!! Important update!
Edited on Thu Sep-06-07 03:50 PM by Rick Myers

I decided to dig a little deeper into the story about nuclear weapons 'accidentally' loaded onto a B-52 and have found some disturbing information buried in an unclassified USAF budget document.

Below you will find some of the significant text and a link to the entire ultra-dull report from the Pentagon. But here are some bullet points to consider (tin foil optional):

* We were TOLD these weapons were being moved to be decomissioned. THAT IS NOT TRUE! This current USAF doc says the missiles are being 'refitted' to extend their service life until fiscal year 2030! These are state of the art weapons. The service plan even includes upgrading the W-80 warheads to keep them IN SERVICE.

* If you read the first sentence below, you will see how the USAF decribes these weapons as "designed to evade air and ground-based defenses in order to strike heavily defended, hardened targets at any location within any enemy's territory." Humm... What sort of operation would require such ordanance?

* We have only 38 of these weapons, so 5 of them is a large chunk of the inventory to move at once.

* It is MY OPINION that some 'patriot' leaked the info about these weapons movements. A warning?

* It is also my opinion these weapons were being moved for some other reason, to Barksdale, and then possibly on to Diego Garcia, for obvious reasons.

IT IS TIME TO BE VERY AFRAID! The UK intercepted 8 Russian bombers yesterday, which has not happened in about 15 years. Syria fired on 4 or 5 Israeli aircraft that violated that violated Syrian airspace and dropped fuel tanks in the desert... Dr. Strangelove is alive and well...

Description/Justification
Committee Staff Procurement Backup Book
FY 2008/2009 Budget Estimates
www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-07..
(snip}

AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM) is a low-observable air-launched strategic missile with significant improvements over the Air Launched Cruise Missile B version (ALCM-B) in range, accuracy and survivability. Armed with a W-80 warhead, it is designed to evade air and ground-based defenses in order to strike heavily defended, hardened targets at any location within any enemy's territory. The ACM is designed for B-52H external carriage and there are currently 394 ACM in the inventory. The ACM fleet design service life expires between the years 2003 and 2008. A Service Life Extension Plan (SLEP) was developed to meet an AF Long Range Plan requirement to extend ACM Service Life to FY30. Range Commanders Council (RCC) test range safety requirements (RCC-319) and Department of Energy's (DOE) redesign of the Joint Test Assembly (JTA) is driving modification of existing Joint Test Instrumentation Kit (JTIK) test doors. Newly modified JTIK test doors will incorporate Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking capability and components removed from the redesigned JTA package. Without modified JTIK doors, the ACM cannot maintain its DOE nuclear certification, support the W-80 warhead Life Extension Program (LEP) or conduct flight testing used to collect weapon system reliability data. The requirement exists to provide modified Test Instrumentation Kits (TIKs) to support Functional Ground Test (FGT). FGT will provide a critical capability to the Air Force and provide a means of testing the ACM without the loss of an asset. These tests will provide important reliability data for Service Life Extension analysis. Kit modification and unique spare components will be procured to support tests in the FGT facility. Missile Breakdown: Active 38, Reserve 0, ANG 0, Total 38
(snip)

www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1748011#1748060

[synergy777]

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?id=7192

Israelis ‘blew apart Syrian nuclear cache’
Uzi Mahnaimi, Sarah Baxter and Michael Sheridan – Sunday Times September 16, 2007

It was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way.

At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames.

Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.

The Israeli government was not saying. “The security sources and IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] soldiers are demonstrating unusual courage,” said Ehud Olmert, the prime minister. “We naturally cannot always show the public our cards.”

The Syrians were also keeping mum. “I cannot reveal the details,” said Farouk al-Sharaa, the vice-president. “All I can say is the military and political echelon is looking into a series of responses as we speak. Results are forthcoming.” The official story that the target comprised weapons destined for Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi’ite group, appeared to be crumbling in the face of widespread scepticism.

Andrew Semmel, a senior US State Department official, said Syria might have obtained nuclear equipment from “secret suppliers”, and added that there were a “number of foreign technicians” in the country.

Asked if they could be North Korean, he replied: “There are North Korean people there. There’s no question about that.” He said a network run by AQ Khan, the disgraced creator of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, could be involved.

But why would nuclear material be in Syria? Known to have chemical weapons, was it seeking to bolster its arsenal with something even more deadly?

Alternatively, could it be hiding equipment for North Korea, enabling Kim Jong-il to pretend to be giving up his nuclear programme in exchange for economic aid? Or was the material bound for Iran, as some authorities in America suggest?

According to Israeli sources, preparations for the attack had been going on since late spring, when Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, presented Olmert with evidence that Syria was seeking to buy a nuclear device from North Korea.

The Israeli spy chief apparently feared such a device could eventually be installed on North-Korean-made Scud-C missiles.

“This was supposed to be a devastating Syrian surprise for Israel,” said an Israeli source. “We’ve known for a long time that Syria has deadly chemical warheads on its Scuds, but Israel can’t live with a nuclear warhead.”

An expert on the Middle East, who has spoken to Israeli participants in the raid, told yesterday’s Washington Post that the timing of the raid on September 6 appeared to be linked to the arrival three days earlier of a ship carrying North Korean material labelled as cement but suspected of concealing nuclear equipment.

The target was identified as a northern Syrian facility that purported to be an agricultural research centre on the Euphrates river. Israel had been monitoring it for some time, concerned that it was being used to extract uranium from phosphates.

According to an Israeli air force source, the Israeli satellite Ofek 7, launched in June, was diverted from Iran to Syria. It sent out high-quality images of a northeastern area every 90 minutes, making it easy for air force specialists to spot the facility.

Early in the summer Ehud Barak, the defence minister, had given the order to double Israeli forces on its Golan Heights border with Syria in anticipation of possible retaliation by Damascus in the event of air strikes.

Sergei Kirpichenko, the Russian ambassador to Syria, warned President Bashar al-Assad last month that Israel was planning an attack, but suggested the target was the Golan Heights.

Israeli military intelligence sources claim Syrian special forces moved towards the Israeli outpost of Mount Hermon on the Golan Heights. Tension rose, but nobody knew why.

At this point, Barak feared events could spiral out of control. The decision was taken to reduce the number of Israeli troops on the Golan Heights and tell Damascus the tension was over. Syria relaxed its guard shortly before the Israeli Defence Forces struck.

Only three Israeli cabinet ministers are said to have been in the know � Olmert, Barak and Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister. America was also consulted. According to Israeli sources, American air force codes were given to the Israeli air force attaché in Washington to ensure Israel’s F15Is would not mistakenly attack their US counterparts.

Once the mission was under way, Israel imposed draconian military censorship and no news of the operation emerged until Syria complained that Israeli aircraft had violated its airspace. Syria claimed its air defences had engaged the planes, forcing them to drop fuel tanks to lighten their loads as they fled.

But intelligence sources suggested it was a highly successful Israeli raid on nuclear material supplied by North Korea.

Washington was rife with speculation last week about the precise nature of the operation. One source said the air strikes were a diversion for a daring Israeli commando raid, in which nuclear materials were intercepted en route to Iran and hauled to Israel. Others claimed they were destroyed in the attack.

There is no doubt, however, that North Korea is accused of nuclear cooperation with Syria, helped by AQ Khan’s network. John Bolton, who was undersecretary for arms control at the State Department, told the United Nations in 2004 the Pakistani nuclear scientist had “several other” customers besides Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Some of his evidence came from the CIA, which had reported to Congress that it viewed “Syrian nuclear intentions with growing concern”.

“I’ve been worried for some time about North Korea and Iran outsourcing their nuclear programmes,” Bolton said last week. Syria, he added, was a member of a “junior axis of evil”, with a well-established ambition to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The links between Syria and North Korea date back to the rule of Kim Il-sung and President Hafez al-Assad in the last century. In recent months, their sons have quietly ordered an increase in military and technical cooperation.

Foreign diplomats who follow North Korean affairs are taking note. There were reports of Syrian passengers on flights from Beijing to Pyongyang and sightings of Middle Eastern businessmen from sources who watch the trains from North Korea to China.

On August 14, Rim Kyong Man, the North Korean foreign trade minister, was in Syria to sign a protocol on “cooperation in trade and science and technology”. No details were released, but it caught Israel’s attention.

Syria possesses between 60 and 120 Scud-C missiles, which it has bought from North Korea over the past 15 years. Diplomats believe North Korean engineers have been working on extending their 300-mile range. It means they can be used in the deserts of northeastern Syria � the area of the Israeli strike.

The triangular relationship between North Korea, Syria and Iran continues to perplex intelligence analysts. Syria served as a conduit for the transport to Iran of an estimated £50m of missile components and technology sent by sea from North Korea. The same route may be in use for nuclear equipment.

But North Korea is at a sensitive stage of negotiations to end its nuclear programme in exchange for security guarantees and aid, leading some diplomats to cast doubt on the likelihood that Kim would cross America’s “red line” forbidding the proliferation of nuclear materials.

Christopher Hill, the State Department official representing America in the talks, said on Friday he could not confirm “intelligence-type things”, but the reports underscored the need “to make sure the North Koreans get out of the nuclear business”.

By its actions, Israel showed it is not interested in waiting for diplomacy to work where nuclear weapons are at stake.

As a bonus, the Israelis proved they could penetrate the Syrian air defence system, which is stronger than the one protecting Iranian nuclear sites.

This weekend President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent Ali Akbar Mehrabian, his nephew, to Syria to assess the damage. The new “axis of evil” may have lost one of its spokes

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2461421.ece

[synergy777]

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=7258

"Simple Error" My Ass

By Larry Johnson – TPM Café September 24, 2007

Well, if you buy the nonsense reported in the Washington Post, I have a bridge to sell you. According to Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus, the snafu involving missing nukes was just a bad mistake.

They write: "A simple error in a missile storage room led to missteps at every turn, as ground crews failed to notice the warheads, and as security teams and flight crew members failed to provide adequate oversight and check the cargo thoroughly. An elaborate nuclear safeguard system, nurtured during the Cold War and infused with rigorous accounting and command procedures, was utterly debased, the investigation's early results show."

Sorry boys and girls, but that is nonsense. You do not walk into an ammo/weapons bunker and sort thru a bunch a cruise missiles like a college freshman searching their laundry basket in the dark for a pair of matching socks.
Despite the appearance of a meticulous report, Warrick and Pincus leave some enormous holes unfilled. Consider this, for example:

"A munitions custodian officer is supposed to keep track of the nuclear warheads. In the case of cruise missiles, a stamp-size window on the missile's frame allows workers to peer inside to check whether the warheads within are silver. In many cases, a red ribbon or marker attached to the missile serves as an additional warning. Finally, before the missiles are moved, two-man teams are supposed to look at check sheets, bar codes and serial numbers denoting whether the missiles are armed.

Why the warheads were not noticed in this case is not publicly known. But once the missiles were certified as unarmed, a requirement for unique security precautions when nuclear warheads are moved — such as the presence of specially armed security police, the approval of a senior base commander and a special tracking system — evaporated."

So let's see: not only did the munitions custodian officer lose track of the warheads, but an additional two-man team failed to record the pertinent data, and the pilots did not inspect the weapons. And now we learn that nukes and conventional weapons are stored together willy-nilly?

One main question remains unanswered? Why are such weapons being taken to Barksdale, Louisiana, which is the jump off base for Middle East ops?

Just asking.


UPDATE:

(Going thru my mailbox came across the following from a friend and former B-52 pilot. The pilot's views inform my observations)

"Recently the news media reported a USAF B-52 taking off from Minot AFB, ND and landing at Barksdale AFB, LA with six nuclear weapons aboard. The big question is how or why this could happen?

"First of all I have to say we are not privileged to all of the information and may never know the underlying circumstances of this occurrence. The Department of Defense declared this entire event was a mistake and would investigate what actually happened. Obviously there are two possibilities: 1. this was an error and the events that occurred were a tragic mistake of far reaching proportions; and 2. the nuclear weapons were moved on purpose.

"The United States has had nuclear weapons for over sixty years. Through out this time the tracking, storage and movement of these weapons has been performed without any type of security problem. The chain of custody procedures has been refined to the nith degree to insure that there will never be a mistake. The access to, movement of, and custody of these weapons is so tightly controlled, each serial numbered weapon has to be signed for when possession of it changes (from one person to another), then only after receiving a lawful order to do so. In order to load a nuclear weapon onto an aircraft the Weapon's Depot Commander must receive a lawful order from above. The order is sent down (in writing) to one of the bomb shelter custodians and the weapon is signed out to a Loader. The Loader, loads the weapon onto an aircraft and will keep the weapon/aircraft under surveillance with the aircraft under armed guard by the Security Police in an isolated protected area until the Aircraft Commander performs his pre-flight inspection on the aircraft and signs a receipt for each of the weapons by serial number. Once delivered at their destination the Aircraft Commander would receive a receipt for the weapons by serial number from the receiving facility.

"With all of the necessary orders and paperwork required just to move a nuclear weapon from one room in a storage facility to another, it can be stated with some sort of certainty that this was not a casual mistake as the Department of Defense has eluted to.

"Then if the movement wasn't a mistake, it obviously was done with some sort of purpose in mind.

"The destination of the aircraft was Barksdale AFB, LA from which a number of the strikes on the Middle East have initiated. Speculation would lead us to believe the weapons were being stockpiled at this facility for a possible strike somewhere in the world. Additional speculation would also lead us to believe the strike was to occur in the very near future. Why else the need to forego the normal overland transportation procedures for nuclear weapons and risk flying them to their destination in violation of a treaty with the Russians. Also how is it the press was aware of this movement? After all who would be suspicious of a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base and a B-52 landing at a B-52 base. This event goes on many times each day for practice missions and training. Some one had to have leaked the information to the press that the U.S. was moving nuclear weapons by air in a treaty violation.

"This leads us to two possible scenarios.

"1. Whoever leaked the information would have been someone in a position of authority knowing what was going on and concerned the U.S. was actually attempting to use nuclear weapons somewhere in the world and wanting to stop it by exposing it. This someone would have had to have a security clearance of some kind and violated the trust under which it was issued thus being exposed to severe penalties and jail time for potential treason etc. Facing such severe penalties someone would have to be totally committed to his/her own conscience/moral beliefs. This preemptive exposure would put the U.S. on a difficult footing and loss of the surprise factor, thus potentially curtailing the mission.

"2. The other possibility would be the information on the flight was leaked on purpose in an attempt to influence a foreign government, group or situation to move in a particular direction. That the U.S. was "Saber rattling" and the stakes were high enough to risk antagonizing the Russians to accomplish it. (With the possibility the Russians were supporting the action and willing to overlook the violation as exemplified by their lack of response in the entire situation.)

"In either case we have only seen some minor actions taking by the Department of Defense in an attempt to say; well, by accident we left a few nuc's laying around on some missiles we were going to destroy and they accidentally got loaded onto a plane that by some coincidence happened to be going to a base other than the one it was assigned to (we rarely fly B-52's assigned at one station to another station). B-52's usually take off from their home base, fly their mission anywhere in the world by aerial refueling and then return to the base from which they departed. Often these flights take over 20 to 30 hours. If this was a mistake what is happening to the general officers in the chain of command who would have had to issue lawful orders for the movement of those weapons and all those in the custodial chain who would have had to sign for each weapon as they gained possession of them? It just doesn't add up. Especially when there is a line item in the budget before Congress to upgrade the missiles the Air Force says they were about to destroy. There appears to be too many loose ends still dangling. In addition to all of this did anyone notice how quickly this entire situation quieted down. Usually the press would play on such a world shaking event for months. They do for other things like the first birthday of Anna Nicole's daughter. We've heard about that for weeks on end. But, for a world event with treaty violation implications, no protests from the other treaty signers or other major world players, we get about three days of news attention and it goes away. It seems the exposure has played its roles and has gone away with hopes all is forgotten.

"In closing, again we are not privileged in knowing all of the facts and undercover goings on in this matter to be fully aware of what the real intent of this action, but it appears to be more than what the surface information appears."

www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/24/simple_error_my_ass

[resistance]

lets hope that other high ranking military personel follow suit.

[megafish33]

Lives were probably saved. Thank god...

[synergy777]

remember the kissinger quote, we should make the military aware of it.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/266114.shtml

Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy

i think most military men/women do this out of duty, and sincerely belive in the govt ideals. they don't realise the tyrannical/globalist nature of their governments. now that this awareness is increasing, its great news.

good soldiers follow the flag, the govt place the flag. the soldiers are doing what the pen pushers could never do. they always send the poor to war, while their kids go to ivy league universities.

[synergy777]

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=7266

Mystery surrounds deaths of Minot airmen
Presstv.ir – September 22, 2007

Six members of the US Air Force who were involved in the Minot AFB incident, have died mysteriously, an anti-Bush activist group says.

The incident happened when a B-52 bomber was "mistakenly" loaded with six nuclear warheads and flown for more than three hours across several states, prompting an Air Force investigation and the firing of one commander.

The plane was carrying Advanced Cruise Missiles from Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base on August 30.

The Air Combat Command has ordered a command-wide stand down on September 14 to review procedures, officials said.

The missiles, which are being decommissioned, were mounted onto pylons on the bomber's wings and it is unclear why the warheads had not been removed beforehand.

In addition to the munitions squadron commander who was relieved of his duties, crews involved in the incident, including ground crew workers had been temporarily decertified for handling munitions.

The activist group Citizens for Legitimate Government said the six members of the US Air Force who were directly involved as loaders or as pilots, were killed within 7 days in 'accidents'.

The victims include Airman First Class Todd Blue, 20, who died while on leave in Virginia. A statement by the military confirmed his death but did not say how he died.

In another accident, a married couple from Barksdale Air Force Base were killed in the 5100 block of Shreveport-Blanchard Highway. The two were riding a 2007 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, with the husband driving and the wife the passenger, police said.

"They were traveling behind a northbound Pontiac Aztec driven by Erica Jerry, 35, of Shreveport," the county sheriff said. "Jerry initiated a left turn into a business parking lot at the same time the man driving the motorcycle attempted to pass her van on the left in a no passing zone. They collided."

Adam Barrs, a 20-year-old airman from Minot Air Force Base was killed in a crash on the outskirts of the city.

First Lt. Weston Kissel, 28, a Minot Air Force Base bomber pilot, was killed in a motorcycle crash in Tennessee, the military officials say.

Police found the body of a missing Air Force captain John Frueh near Badger Peak in northeast Skamania County, Washington.

The Activist group says the mysterious deaths of the air force members could indicate to a conspiracy to cover up the truth about the Minot Air Base incident.

RE/RE
www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=24190§ionid=3510203

Also see:

"Simple Error" My Ass
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?id=7258

Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theatre
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?id=7257

LOOSE NUKES story!!!
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?id=7154


these people did what they thought was best for the country/world, these are real heroes. may their spirits be in a better place and at peace.

[synergy777]

http://theconspiratorsnest.blogspot.com/2007/09/odd-synchronicity-fossett-minot-b-52.html


Odd synchronicity -- Fossett, the Minot B-52 incident and the Syrian nuclear incident

During last night’s debate among the Democratic Presidential candidates, the question was put forward to Sen. Clinton regarding the mysterious Israeli airstrike in Syria that has reportedly involved a secret nuclear facility. Sen. Clinton’s tone, demeanor and delivery noticeably changed as she discussed what happened and from reading her body language it is obvious she has been let in on a certain amount of confidential information regarding the strike. The rest of us, meaning the rest of the world, is operating in a vacuum on this story. The silence is actually beginning to draw attention to itself.

Coupled with this event is the recent oddness of missing billionaire aviator Steve Fossett and the incredible story regarding the possibility that nuclear-armed Tomahawk cruise missiles have been moved in a manner that circumvents the control procedures for maintaining custody of nuclear weapons. Is there a connection between all or some of these recent events? Was the attack on the Syrian facility a component of a larger operation in which Iran was to have been attacked as well? Is the Fossett story cover or a sign of a much larger story?

First of all, we are operating with a certain ammount of unknowns for all three of these stories. The most open of the stories being the Fossett search. This hasn’t captured the imagination of the American public for a simple reason; we have already been desensitized to any missing aviator/person of wealth/under strange circumstances stories. Our obsession with missing women and children has also taken the interest level down a notch for Fossett. The McCann story updates alone are enough to push the Fossett story aside.

The areas that Fossett overflew are near quite a few airbases of extreme sensitivity to the US Military. The areas are remote with hidden canyons and areas where persons could operate in a clandestine mode if they wanted. Is it possible that Fossett’s plane was forced down or taken down out of concern that he may have observed something occurring on the ground?

Details, including timelines for the Minot-Barksdale incident are virtually impossible to find via mass media reports. The most curious aspect and one that I believe is being overlooked is the supposed 10 hour timeframe that the B-52 sat on the Barksdale tarmac, loaded with a dozen Tomahawks, half of which were armed with a nuclear payload. Could this 10-hour timeframe actually be cover for a trip from Minot southwest toward the Nevada-California border, followed by a quick eastern flight to the base in Shreveport?

Rumor and theories get started because of news blackouts, silence, stonewalling and disinfo like we are seeing in varying degrees with all three of these stories. The trick in trying to understand these stories and trying to find out if they are interconnected is to ask basic questions, the old Five W’s of reporting. Who? What? When? Where? Why? If answers cannot be found by following those guidelines and using them in follow-up questions it is then obvious that there is a problem with the official story.

The most curious aspect of the Fossett disappearance, in my mind, is the side story that Google released recent satellite images of an area that Fossett may have been in at the time of his disappearance and allowed users of Google Earth to assist in the search for the aviator. Information, in any investigation is crucial. What is most important in an investigation is not the quantity of the leads but the management of that information. Any time there is a massive flood of “tips” from the public in an investigation there is an added chance that the investigation will go in the wrong direction simply because the investigative team will be swamped with an avalanche of info.

Was this an example of a disinfo campaign or an attempt to overwhelm the investigative team so a covert operation could be run out in the open? The covert operation being the cleanup or removal of debris from an incident involving the Fossett plane.

In the case of the Tomahawks situation the most troubling aspects are the when and why of the matter. Timelines cannot be established without hitting odd inconsistencies. For example, the Air Force states that the plane sat, unguarded and open for more than 10 hours at Barksdale while senior officers attempted to establish whether or not nukes were sitting on the tarmac. An hour I can understand, but a 10-hour window is not reasonable. The answers for why this was the case is not satisfactory and leads us to question if this 10-hour window is truthful.

Why pilots flew from North Dakota to Louisiana, almost the entire longitudinal length of the contiguous United States, without knowing they were carrying live nuclear weapons and why the weapons officers allowed this to happen fly completely in the face of the accepted and required procedures for the storage, handling and release of weapons from the nuclear stockpile. This isn’t like a person making a mistake at the grocery store and picking up a low-fat version of some food product instead of the regular version.

The nukes were released from the stockpile for a specific reason. Officers, who have spent most if not all of their careers, certified in the world of tactical nuclear weapons, authorized this release and were satisfied that their orders were correct. For the last 39 years there has been a ban on flying nuclear weapons on combat aircraft and the only acceptable means of transporting nukes by air has been through specially built transport planes. Nuclear weapons are not marked like conventional weapons. All weapons are marked and color coded in a manner so there is absolutely no way of mistaking whether a weapon is live, inert, conventional, chemical, biological or radiological in nature.

In short, there could have been no mistake involved, starting with the lowliest E-1, E-2 or E-3 all the way up the chain of command. The missiles were intentionally released from the stockpile, loaded onto the B-52 and flown off the Minot Air Force Base. What became of them, where they went, when they arrived, who took possession of them and why this was done is not known to us but we can say without reason that the Air Force’s explanation for the who, what, when, where and why this happened neither makes sense or is reasonable.

This leads us back to the action in Syria. Our elected officials in America respond with vague answers that allude to absolute secrecy when questions are asked. Israel is keeping their mouths shut. Syria is keeping itself quiet. No one wants to talk about it. One thing that has come out is the legendary Israeli General Staff’s Reconnaissance Unit, aka Sayeret Matkal, may have taken nuclear materials out of the location before the air attack occured, disguised as members of the Syrian Army.

Why the deafening silence over this action? Did a nuclear accident occur during the ground raid or the air attack? If a nuclear accident did occur it is safe to say that remote monitoring stations would have detected the presence of radiation, so I think it’s safe to say that an accidental release of radiation from the air attack did not occur. It would also be foolish to attack the facility, with the fuel rods present, and not make an effort to remove them from the site. Even if they were buried under tons of debris they would still be present and make a tempting prize for anyone willing to remove them. Assuming they did remove nuclear materials from the site, does this mean they removed bundles of fuel rods from the site? Wouldn’t activity of this nature have drawn massive amounts of attention at the site? It certainly would have.

Bombing the site, with the fuel rods present, would have caused a release of radioactive materials, which would have been detected; therefore it is safe to assume that the Israelis did in fact remove the fuel rods before the airstrike since no release of radioactive materials has been observed. Other than slaughtering the entire group of people present at the work site, there is no way they could have removed bundles of fuel rods for a nuclear reactor without drawing a massive amount of attention. You couldn’t walk onto a job site anywhere in the world and simply commandeer a crane and steal a pile of rebar without a large group of workers, foremen, supervisors and project managers noticing and raising hell. It's safe to assume that a group of commandos couldn't remove fuel rods without generating a similar reaction from witnesses.

Something ominous has happened in Syria, something so serious and terrifying that government officials are afraid to talk about it. Something ominous has also happened to the American nuclear stockpile, something so serious and terrifying that government officials have created a cover story that is easily seen through as a lie, which foretells that it was created in haste, because they are afraid to tell us the truth. Something has also happened to Steve Fossett. Was he collateral damage, a pain in the ass innocent bystander who saw too much, or did he simply take one too many flights and the roulette wheel of statistics finally caught up with him when he bet red instead of putting all the chips on black?

[synergy777]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18469.htm

Why Did Israel Attack Syria?

By Jonathan Cook

09/27/07 "ICH" -- -- Nazareth -- Israel's air strike on northern Syria earlier this month should be understood in the context of events unfolding since its assault last summer on neighboring Lebanon.

From the leaks so far, it seems that more than half a dozen Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace to drop munitions on a site close to the border with Turkey. We also know from the US media that the raid occurred in close coordination with the White House. But what was the purpose and significance of the attack?

It is worth recalling that, in the wake of Israel's month-long war against Lebanon a year ago, a prominent American neoconservative, Meyrav Wurmser, wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney's recently departed Middle East adviser, explained that the war had dragged on because the White House delayed in imposing a ceasefire. The neocons, she said, wanted to give Israel the time and space to expand the attack to Damascus.

The reasoning was simple: before an attack on Iran could be countenanced, Hizbullah in Lebanon had to be destroyed and Syria at the very least cowed. The plan was to isolate Tehran on these two other hostile fronts before going in for the kill.

But faced with constant rocket fire from Hizbullah last summer, Israel's public and military nerves frayed at the first hurdle. Instead Israel and the US were forced to settle for a Security Council resolution rather than a decisive military victory.

The immediate fallout of the failed attack was an apparent waning of neocon influence. The group's program of "creative destruction" in the Middle East -- the encouragement of regional civil war and the partition of large states that threaten Israel -- was at risk of being shunted aside.

Instead the "pragmatists" in the Bush Administration, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the new Defense Secretary Robert Gates, demanded a change of tack. The standoff reached a head in late 2006 when oilman James Baker and his Iraq Study Group began lobbying for a gradual withdrawal from Iraq -- presumably only after a dictator, this one more reliable, had again been installed in Baghdad. It looked as if the neocons' day in the sun had finally passed.

Israel's leadership understood the gravity of the moment. In January 2007 the Herzliya conference, an annual festival of strategy-making, invited no less than 40 Washington opinion-formers to join the usual throng of Israeli politicians, generals, journalists and academics. For a week the Israeli and American delegates spoke as one: Iran and its presumed proxy, Hizbullah, were bent on the genocidal destruction of Israel. Tehran's development of a nuclear program -- whether for civilian use, as Iran argues, or for military use, as the US and Israel claim -- had to be stopped at all costs.

While the White House turned uncharacteristically quiet all spring and summer about what it planned to do next, rumors that Israel was pondering a go-it-alone strike against Iran grew noisier by the day. Ex-Mossad officers warned of an inevitable third world war, Israeli military intelligence advised that Iran was only months away from the point of no return on developing a nuclear warhead, prominent leaks in sympathetic media revealed bombing runs to Gibraltar, and Israel started upping the pressure on several tens of thousands of Jews in Tehran to flee their homes and come to Israel.

While Western analysts opined that an attack on Iran was growing unlikely, Israel's neighbors watched nervously through the first half of the year as the vague impression of a regional war came ever more sharply into focus. In particular Syria, after witnessing the whirlwind of savagery unleashed against Lebanon last summer, feared it was next in line in the US-Israeli campaign to break Tehran's network of regional alliances. It deduced, probably correctly, that neither the US nor Israel would dare attack Iran without first clobbering Hizbullah and Damascus.

For some time Syria had been left in no doubt of the mood in Washington. It failed to end its pariah status in the post-9/11 period, despite helping the CIA with intelligence on al-Qaeda and secretly trying to make peace with Israel over the running sore of the occupied Golan Heights. It was rebuffed at every turn.

So as the clouds of war grew darker in the spring, Syria responded as might be expected. It went to the arms market in Moscow and bought up the displays of anti-aircraft missiles as well as anti-tank weapons of the kind Hizbullah demonstrated last summer were so effective at repelling Israel's planned ground invasion of south Lebanon.

As the Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld reluctantly conceded earlier this year, US policy was forcing Damascus to remain within Iran's uncomfortable embrace: "Syrian President Bashar al-Assad finds himself more dependent on his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, than perhaps he would like."

Israel, never missing an opportunity to wilfully misrepresent the behavior of an enemy, called the Syrian military build-up proof of Damascus' appetite for war. Apparently fearful that Syria might initiate a war by mistaking the signals from Israel as evidence of aggressive intentions, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, urged Syria to avoid a "miscalculation". The Israeli public spent the summer braced for a far more dangerous repeat of last summer's war along the northern border.

It was at this point -- with tensions simmeringly hot -- that Israel launched its strike, sending several fighter planes into Syria on a lightning mission to hit a site near Dayr a-Zawr. As Syria itself broke the news of the attack, Israeli generals were shown on TV toasting in the Jewish new year but refusing to comment.

Details have remained thin on the ground ever since: Israel imposed a news blackout that has been strictly enforced by the country's military censor. Instead it has been left to the Western media to speculate on what occurred.

One point that none of the pundits and analysts have noted was that, in attacking Syria, Israel committed a blatant act of aggression against its northern neighbor of the kind denounced as the "supreme international crime" by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.

Also, no one pointed out the obvious double standard applied to Israel's attack on Syria compared to the far less significant violation of Israeli sovereignty by Hizbullah a year earlier, when the Shia militia captured two Israel soldiers at a border post and killed three more. Hizbullah's act was widely accepted as justification for the bombardment and destruction of much of Lebanon, even if a few sensitive souls agonized over whether Israel's response was "disproportionate". Would these commentators now approve of similar retaliation by Syria?

The question was doubtless considered unimportant because it was clear from Western coverage that no one -- including the Israeli leadership -- believed Syria was in a position to respond militarily to Israel's attack. Olmert's fear of a Syrian "miscalculation" evaporated the moment Israel did the maths for Damascus.

So what did Israel hope to achieve with its aerial strike?

The stories emerging from the less gagged American media suggest two scenarios. The first is that Israel targeted Iranian supplies passing through Syria on their way to Hizbullah; the second that Israel struck at a fledgling Syrian nuclear plant where materials from North Korea were being offloaded, possibly as part of a joint nuclear effort by Damascus and Tehran.

(Speculation that Israel was testing Syria's anti-aircraft defences in preparation for an attack on Iran ignores the fact that the Israeli air force would almost certainly choose a flightpath through friendlier Jordanian airspace.)

How credible are these two scenarios?

The nuclear claims against Damascus were discounted so quickly by experts of the region that Washington was soon downgrading the accusation to claims that Syria was only hiding the material on North Korea's behalf. But why would Syria, already hounded by Israel and the US, provide such a readymade pretext for still harsher treatment? Why, equally, would North Korea undermine its hard-won disarmament deal with the US? And why, if Syria were covertly engaging in nuclear mischief, did it alert the world to the fact by revealing the Israeli air strike?

The other justification for the attack was at least based in a more credible reality: Damascus, Hizbullah and Iran undoubtedly do share some military resources. But their alliance should be seen as the kind of defensive pact needed by vulnerable actors in a Sunni-dominated region where the US wants unlimited control of Gulf oil and supports only those repressive regimes that cooperate on its terms. All three are keenly aware that it is Israel's job to threaten and punish any regimes that fail to toe the line.

Contrary to the impression being created in the West, genocidal hatred of Israel and Jews, however often Ahmadinejad's speeches are mistranslated, is not the engine of these countries' alliance.

Nonetheless, the political significance of the justifications for the Israeli air strike is that both neatly tie together various strands of an argument needed by the neocons and Israel in making their case for an attack on Iran before Bush leaves office in early 2009. Each scenario suggests a Shia "axis of evil", coordinated by Iran, that is actively plotting Israel's destruction. And each story offers the pretext for an attack on Syria as a prelude to a pre-emptive strike against Tehran -- launched either by Washington or Tel Aviv -- to save Israel.

That these stories appear to have been planted in the American media by neocon fanatics like John Bolton is warning enough -- as is the admission that the only evidence for Syrian malfeasance is Israeli "intelligence", the basis of which cannot be questioned as Israel is not officially admitting the attack.

It should hardly need pointing out that we are again in a hall of mirrors, as we were during the period leading up to America's invasion of Iraq and have been during its subsequent occupation.

Bush's "war on terror" was originally justified with the convenient and manufactured links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, as well as, of course, those WMDs that, it later turned out, had been destroyed years earlier. But ever since Tehran has invariably been the ultimate target of these improbable confections.

There were the forged documents proving both that Iraq had imported enriched uranium from Niger to manufacture nuclear warheads and that it was sharing its nuclear know-how with Iran. And as Iraq fell apart, neocon operatives like Michael Ledeen lost no time in spreading rumors that the missing nuclear arsenal could still be accounted for: Iranian agents had simply smuggled it out of Iraq during the chaos of the US invasion.

Since then our media have proved that they have no less of an appetite for such preposterous tales. If Iran's involvement in stirring up its fellow Shia in Iraq against the US occupation is at least possible, the same cannot be said of the regular White House claims that Tehran is behind the Sunni-led insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few months ago the news media served up "revelations" that Iran was secretly conspiring with al-Qaeda and Iraq's Sunni militias to oust the US occupiers.

So what purpose does the constant innuendo against Tehran serve?

The latest accusations should be seen as an example of Israel and the neocons "creating their own reality", as one Bush adviser famously observed of the neocon philosophy of power. The more that Hizbullah, Syria and Iran are menaced by Israel, the more they are forced to huddle together and behave in ways to protect themselves -- such as arming -- that can be portrayed as a "genocidal" threat to Israel and world order.

Van Creveld once observed that Tehran would be "crazy" not to develop nuclear weapons given the clear trajectory of Israeli and US machinations to overthrow the regime. So equally Syria cannot afford to jettison its alliance with Iran or its involvement with Hizbullah. In the current reality, these connections are the only power it has to deter an attack or force the US and Israel to negotiate.

But they are also the evidence needed by Israel and the neocons to convict Syria and Iran in the court of Washington opinion. The attack on Syria is part of a clever hustle, one designed to vanquish or bypass the doubters in the Bush Administration, both by proving Syria's culpability and by provoking it to respond.

Condoleezza Rice, it emerged at the weekend, wants to invite Syria to attend the regional peace conference that has been called by President Bush for November. There can be no doubt that such an act of détente is deeply opposed by both Israel and the neocons. It reverses their strategy of implicating Damascus in the "Shia arc of extremism" and of paving the way to an attack on the real target: Iran.

Syria, meanwhile, is fighting back, as it has been for some time, with the only means available: the diplomatic offensive. For two years Bashar al-Assad has been offering a generous peace deal to Israel on the Golan Heights that Tel Aviv has refused to consider. This week, Syria made a further gesture towards peace with an offer on another piece of territory occupied by Israel, the Shebaa Farms. Under the plan, the Farms -- which the United Nations now agrees belongs to Lebanon, but which Israel still claims is Syrian and cannot be returned until there is a deal on the Golan Heights -- would be transferred to UN custody until the dispute over its sovereignty can be resolved.

Were either of Damascus' initiatives to be pursued, the region might be looking forward to a period of relative calm and security. Which is reason enough why Israel and the neocons are so bitterly opposed. Instead they must establish a new reality -- one in which the forces of "creative destruction" so beloved of the neocons engulf yet more of the region. For the rest of us, a simpler vocabulary suffices. What is being sold is catastrophe.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

[mountain]

YES!!! Finally we have those with access having the balls to put a halt on senseless war offense! YIPPEE!!

[synergy777]

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1036.htm

i know its sorchaa, but as with all data use discernment.

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio.asp?bioID=109

one of the counter coup main players:

Admiral William J. Fallon
Commander, U.S. Central Command

[whitenight639]

So basically those nukes that were loaded onto the B-52 were destined for Iran and someone stood up to there orders and said fuck the chain of command, bring those nukes back! and now the pentagon are saying ''they were going to be decommissioned/ reconditioned"?

sounds like the military men and women have found a consiusness and are telling the elite to shove it!

I havnt read all your posts synergy theres just too much to read right now, but how does isreal bombing/ nuking syria result in a decent reason for the us to start war with Iran???

and whats with North Korea are they with or against the US?

please excuse my young ass ignorance, I just havnt got the time to read about it (im a slow reader).