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21 hours ago
Saturday, 14 February 2009
IRAN AND THE BOMB
Remember the tremendous international glee late in 2007, when a muddled NIE report sort of said the Iranians had halted their nuclear program or perhaps not but then again who knows? At the time I took the highly unusual step of reading the document, and was surprised (or actually, not) to find that about 98% of the reportage was wrong.
Well, it now appears that the report was wrong. Or rather, since it didn't actually say anything, and thus couldn't be wrong, it was misleading.
Is the media world reporting on this change of mind (which is coming, I remind you, from the Obama administration, not the Likud)? Well, to be honest, now that you ask, umm, you know, I mean, hmmn... no, not really. I saw mention of it at the Jerusalem Post but decided they weren't a good enough source for what the American administration thinks. Soccerdad has pointed me to the LA Times, not one of my regular haunts, but since it's an important American paper I'm linking to them. As for the question, where is everyone else? I have no idea.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
WHO WAS KILLED IN GAZA ?
Haaretz cites an IDF report listing 1,134 Palestinian fatalities in the recent Gaza operation, 673 of whom were from Hamas or other fighting formations, 288 were non-combatants, and the rest have not yet been identified. Apparently the IDF is making lists by name, so as to know in each case who the dead person was.
My understanding is that the investigation is not yet complete.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
THE U.S. POLICY OF PLACATING TERRORISTS
Why U.S. Policy Leans Too Close to Terrorist Appeasement
"A well-organized plan to infiltrate and influence U.S. policymakers at the highest levels has been operating on American soil for well over a decade." And the Muslim Brotherhood is involved -- who else?
Clare M. Lopez of the Intelligence Summit explains in Human Events: "Why U.S. Policy Leans Too Close to Terrorist Appeasement,"
Under the Bush administration we had no Iran policy. Now, our policy leans too close to appeasement. How did it get this way?
America’s foreign policy toward Iran did not reach this level of malleability overnight or by accident. A well-organized plan to infiltrate and influence U.S. policymakers at the highest levels has been operating on American soil for well over a decade. Conceived in Tehran under the direct authority of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the plan set out to create a network of top U.S. academics, diplomats, journalists, NGOs, and think tanks that would advocate a policy of appeasement towards Iran. Iran’s top strategic objective has always been to buy time for its nuclear weapons program, which now is well along in developing the three critical components: enriched uranium, warhead weaponization, and a credible missile delivery system.
Beginning in the late 1990s, a de facto alliance between Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the U.S. (such as CAIR -- the Council on Islamic American Relations) and frank Tehran regime advocates like the American-Iranian Council (AIC) openly began to promote public support for a U.S. foreign policy based on the favored positions of the Islamic Republic. In 2002, a new pro-Iran group was formed by a young Swedish-Iranian immigrant named Trita Parsi. That group, the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) quickly established itself as the nexus of a growing network of individuals and organizations that openly lobby for a U.S. policy of acquiescence, diplomacy, incentives, and negotiations with the Tehran regime -- while strongly opposing coercive diplomacy, sanctions, or threat of military action. Part and parcel of this advocacy on behalf of Tehran is a pattern of antipathy towards Israel that minimizes its security concerns and dismisses its legitimate defense needs.
Under Parsi, who is closely connected to the Tehran regime, the NIAC network has expanded to include a growing number of new groups. Some of them -- such as The Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) -- are NIAC clones. CASMII was founded in December 2005 to oppose all forms of pressure on Iran. Others, such as the Center for a New American Security (CNAS, founded in February 2007) play the role of useful idiots. CNAS had Dr. Susan Rice, the Obama administration’s appointee as Ambassador to the UN, on its Board of Directors.
Dr. Vali Nasr, who has been named senior advisor to U.S. Afghanistan/Pakistan envoy Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, was one of the authors of a September 2008 CNAS publication called Iran: Assessing U.S. Strategic Options. Nasr’s chapter, "The Implications of Military Confrontation with Iran," urged the U.S. to take the military option for dealing with Iran off the table and instead focus on how best to accommodate Tehran’s rising power in the Middle East region. The Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran (CNAPI) launched its pro-Iran activities with a cross-country event called The Folly of Attacking Iran Tour, which crisscrossed the U.S. in February and March 2008.
The American Foreign Policy Project (AFPP) was founded in December 2008 with an “experts list” that reads like a remix of other CAIR and NIAC affiliates, including former Ambassadors Thomas Pickering, James Dobbins, and William Miller plus well-known academic figures such as Professors Gary G. Sick of Columbia University and Juan R. Cole of the University of Michigan. These groups’ interlocking Boards of Advisors, Directors, and Experts include many other nationally-known figures from public policy and international business arenas, including some big oil companies.
All are associated in one way or another with Trita Parsi and NIAC and all advocate a policy of accommodation with Iran.
The Iranian regime makes no attempt to disguise its links to this network. NIAC, for instance, was openly mentioned in the 7 December 2007 issue of the government-controlled Aftab News, where the NIAC network was called the regime’s “Iran lobby in the U.S.” In March 2007, the Fars News daily described NIAC as ‘a non-profit’ organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C. that was established to counter the influence of AIPAC [the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, a legal lobby group] and to enlist the support of Iranian expatriates living in the U.S. in order to ‘penetrate U.S. politics.’
Maneuvering behind Washington, D.C. policymaking scenes to exert influence on U.S. decision makers is pretty standard for a host of legitimate interest groups, including many foreign countries. Concern is indicated, however, when the guiding influence behind such maneuvering emanates from the top levels of a regime like Iran’s that holds top spot on the Department of State’s state sponsors of terror list, makes no secret of its hatred and enmity for the U.S. and our ally Israel, and acts in myriad ways to support those who have assassinated, held, kidnapped, killed, and tortured American civilians and military over a 30-year period. The expanding influence of this pro-Iran lobby on U.S. foreign policy attests to a determined and sophisticated operation that serves only the interests of regime implacably hostile to America’s own national security interests.
taken from : B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)
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