Saturday, March 06, 2010

Mullen Wary of Israeli Attack on Iran

By Ray McGovern
March 6, 2010

Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came home with sweaty palms from his mid-February visit to Israel. Ever since, he has been worrying aloud that Israel might mousetrap the U.S. into war with Iran.

Read on.
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7 comments:

Morton Kurzweil said...

The last person we need to discuss foreign policy is the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president is responsible for foreign policy, not the military.
If this loud mouth is leaking a message from the president or the Secretary of State, we are back in the says of the Bush administration when General Colin Powell became the front man for the Second Gulf War.
Obama has failed at every attempt at foreign policy as he has domestically either because he has no idea of what is necessary for the security of this country, or because he is fixated on mediation as a viable means of attaining a viable result.
No one knows what Obama wants to accomplish beyond negotiations. A tough talking military commander will not change the minds of any opposition, especially a military that has its own agenda.

Sat Mar 06, 02:50:00 PM 2010
Brian T. Lynch, MSW said...

Ray McGovern is either being played, or is playing Consortiumnews. It has been an open secret since last summer that Israel has a green light from Washington to plan a strike on Iran this coming summer. An agreement has been reached with Russia that they will not intervene. So between now and this summer, everything we read and hear about Israel's plans and our efforts to hold them back is pre-staged propaganda.

Sat Mar 06, 09:38:00 PM 2010
Anonymous said...

Ray McGovern is overlooking a very important point, the Iranian's are not Communist Russia and comparring the two is like comparring a rabbid dog to my poodle. My poodle knows right from wrong. The rabbid dog does not.
Yesterday the PRESIDENT of Iran stated that 9/11 was a "lie." He has stated that the Holocaust was a lie. He has stated the sworn destruction of another nation. He has spoken of the Calaphite and Muslim domination of the world. He is executing his own people. He is lying to the international community about his intentions of building nuclear weapons.
We have gone the route of talk over and over again and soon it will be too late. Iran will go nuclear and the world will change, overnight. As for "friends" do you not think that the Saudi's, Jordanian's, Egyptian's are not peeing in their pants right now? If the Israeli's end up doing the world's "dirty work" once again (Iraq's nuclear reactor destruction) then shame on the rest of the world!
By the way, if I were the Israeli's, or any other nation, why would I trust the USA to defend my people? Every 4 to 8 years we head down a different street!
Mr. McGovern, you are niave! Go back to talking to your stuffed dog!

Sun Mar 07, 09:29:00 AM 2010
Dean Taylor said...

As McGovern outlined in a piece last year, the provenance of supposed aberrant hatred of Israel (i.e., more precisely, "aberrant hatred" of the US/Israeli hegemon, or folie à deux compelling resistance) by Muslims is to be found in the unbridled support of Zionist aggression (to the tune of $3 billion per annum plus)---aided and abetted by beneficiaries of K Street/J Street largesse--with Capitol Hill fully cognizant of those verities, via, e.g., the following:

"It has to do with an unclassified study published, not by some 'liberal' think-tank, but by the Pentagon-appointed U.S. Defense Science Board just two months after the 9/11 Commission Report.

"That report directly contradicted what Cheney and President Bush had been saying about 'why they hate us,' letting the elephant out of the bag and into the room, so to speak.

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/052209a.html

"Even paranoids have real enemies..."


Those in Iran coveting a nuclear arsenal have much
to fear from the loose cannon that is Bibi Netanyahu, and the lesson of North Korea is not lost upon them , i.e., Empire would have "pacified" NK---à la post-colonial/post-Geneva Accords Vietnam---were it not for their own nuclear armaments.

In a 3 March 2010 CounterPunch article, Norman Finkelstein (et al.) has some insights to offer on the waning fortunes of war-criminal Israel (q.v., Robert Jackson and the Nuremberg Tribunal) in the wake of what he terms, "mass murder in broad daylight," i.e., Operation Cast Lead.


"Public outrage at the Gaza invasion did not come out of the blue but rather marked the nadir of a curve plotting a steady decline in support for Israel. As polling data of Americans and Europeans, both Gentiles and Jews, suggest, the public has become increasingly critical of Israeli policy over the past decade. The horrific images of death and destruction broadcast around the world during and after the invasion accelerated this development. 'The increased and brutal frequency of war in this volatile region has shifted international opinion,' the British Financial Times editorialized one year later, 'reminding Israel it is not above the law. Israel can no longer dictate the terms of debate.'

"One poll registering the fallout from the Gaza attack in the United States found that American voters calling themselves supporters of Israel plummeted from 69 per cent before the attack to 49 per cent in June 2009, while voters believing that the U.S. should support Israel dropped from 69 per cent to 44 per cent. Consumed by hate, emboldened by self-righteousness, and confident that it could control or intimidate public opinion, Israel carried on in Gaza as if it could get away with mass murder in broad daylight. But while official Western support for Israel held firm, the carnage set off an unprecedented wave of popular outrage throughout the world. Whether it was because the assault came on the heels of the devastation Israel wrought in Lebanon, or because of Israel’s relentless persecution of the people of Gaza, or because of the sheer cowardice of the assault, the Gaza invasion appeared to mark a turning point in public opinion reminiscent of the international reaction to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in apartheid South Africa" [Finkelstein].

http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein03032010.html

Sun Mar 07, 02:56:00 PM 2010
Dean Taylor said...

II.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive"

And, "the guy voted most likely to prostitute himself," i.e., the Sage of 1600 Pennsylvania, enabled that act in proffering, almost on cue, a "no comment" at the height of the bloodbath. The Likud knew then and there (as they know now) that it had their man.

And, for Forwardlooking (or, for that matter, the Left rank and file) to place their audacious hopes in backpedaling now is merely an act of self-delusion.

To use another metaphor (and, barring a massive left-of-center turnout on the Mall protesting escalation of aggression in the Middle East) the die is cast.

We here at Empire---i.e., from Wall Street to DC---traffic in volatility, not stability. It's utterly exhausting and unconscionably costly, but it's the price we pay in the precincts of Power---i.e., Power-as-exclusion of the majority of the human race. And, the fact that the Muslim "opposition" has a dusky, non-Anglo-Saxon appearance isn't helping their cause. That is, we are the new City on the Hill, i.e., the WASP (q.v., the Anglo-American prerogative) as latter-day Old Testament Jew merely laying claim to his entitlements. The American Century, the Monroe Doctrine, the Ivy-League inebriates---drunk on Power---cum Masters of the Universe running the show via, e.g., Goldman Sachs (and the current incarnation of their "Messiah," i.e., Blankfein) are all of a piece. That is, we do not have to engage, diplomatically, with..."Arabs."

The latter-day Chosen People (whether they turn out to be Anglo-Saxon or Jewish remains to be sorted out) are practically demi-gods who would find it demeaning, to the say the very least---and a virtual blasphemy at the other end of the pole--- to acknowledge "the lesser peoples" as equals, particularly after the Almighty has taken the trouble to set us up as "Chosen."

We, at Empire, do what the hell we want---full stop. And, our military expenditures are a "proof" of our ordained "calling."

Sun Mar 07, 02:59:00 PM 2010
John said...

The Israelis also "took out" Iraq's nuclear weapons capability. That was so effective that we subsequently had to murder about 2 million Iraqis and essentially destroy the country to save it.

The only real difference between then and an attack on Iran is that the USA didn't have a few hundred thousand troops within retaliatory range and the attack hadn't been publicly discussed ad infinitum in order to allow preparations for accurate retaliation.

Oh, there is one other slight difference. China had not become the ascendent world economic giant and had not told the US to back off Iran whose oil it also regards as it own.

Mon Mar 08, 07:30:00 AM 2010
Anonymous said...

yup i read that washington and israel settled on a time and that being between spring and summer. then the dollar completely crashes,another false flag attack and martial law here. we are becoming a communist country where nothing matters to our government anymore. they just keep killing and robbing the poor in america to line their own pockets. people living in tent cities while our government smoke the finest cigars and popping corks. Cheering and clinking glasses,because their objective is near. a one world communist government,ruled by satanist

Fri Mar 12, 12:28:00 AM 2010

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