THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

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Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Friday, August 31, 2012

DAVID HOROVITZ-BOMBING IRAN: The most fateful decision of all


THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-most-fateful-decision-of-all-iran-israel-air-strike-nuclear/

Analysis

The most fateful decision of allFrom their very different vantage points, the US and Iran seem to have concluded that Israel is not about to strike the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites. Some insiders devoutly hope that’s accurate; others insist an attack is vital

By DAVID HOROVITZ August 28, 2012, 4:47 pm


Hear that frantic whispering noise beneath the hum of the air-conditioners in this sweltering Israeli summer? That’s the sound of many Israeli insiders repeating over and over and over: Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
“If I were an Iranian, I would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks,” Efraim Halevy, the wise and wily former Mossad chief observed in an Israel Radio interview early this month. Well, what some Israelis in the know are saying amounts to, “Never mind the Iranians, it’s the Israelis who need to be fearful. And we are. We’re terrified. We’re terrified our leaders are drawing us into disaster.”
But there’s another sound, too — other voices just as frantic. Do it, they urge. Do it, before it’s too late. Confound the cynics who say that you, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, can’t make a decision at the best of times and are given to panic at the worst. Remember, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, that those who snipe at you are lesser men, cynics and cowards. Trust your judgment. This is the eve of ’67 again. The imperative is to act.
When Halevy spoke, there were actually about 14 weeks until the US presidential elections. Now there are about 10. Ten weeks before America votes. Ten weeks before the skies cloud over, and complex, distant air strikes become still more complex. Ten weeks. Count them down.

Fear and loathing



For more than a year, Israelis have been exposed to the deeply dismaying sight of members of the elected political leadership doing battle with a series of the country’s most experienced and credible former security chiefs over the fateful question of whether Israel should go it alone and strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. On an issue so sensitive and so central to the Jewish state’s well-being that one might reasonably expect all discussion to be conducted far from the public eye, assessments and accusations and personal critiques have instead been hurled around, again and again and again, in full view.
But former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin’s bleak depiction of Netanyahu and Barak as a pair of “messianists,” who cannot be trusted to lead the state, sounds mild compared to the fearful assessments offered by some behind the cloak of anonymity. Former Mossad head Meir Dagan’s repeated lunges into the spotlight, to declare that only an idiot would consider a resort to solo Israeli military action at this stage, sound like mild rebukes when compared to the bitter epithets being hurled in private.
Yuval Diskin (photo credit: Kobi Gideon/ Flash90)
Yuval Diskin (photo credit: Kobi Gideon/ Flash90)
Behind-the-scenes, the degree of concern being expressed by some insider experts about a possible Israeli strike at Iran this fall is greater than anything that has been aired publicly to date. To these people, Netanyahu and Barak are deemed to be capable — through a mixture of obstinacy, narrow political objectives, misguided ideology, ego and more — of creating the circumstances in which a nuclear Iran really could become unstoppable. By launching an operation to stop Iran, they fear, Israel may end up liberating the Islamic Republic to cast off all constraints and break out to the bomb.
Some of these professionals — technocrats whose job it is to give non-ideological assessments — are smarting as seldom before. Some speak of the unprecedented disdain they and their colleagues face from Israel’s leadership duo — who, they lament, seek to discredit as tantamount to treachery their professional opposition to an Israeli resort to force at this stage. They say the leadership duo has avoided serious cabinet discussion of Iran in order to prevent the technocrats from effectively presenting their assessments. The experts say they are being told that they are not merely misguided, but that they cannot see the bigger picture, that they’ve forgotten the limits of their roles, that they are scaremongers and ass-coverers, that they have partisan political motivations, that they are undermining the national interest, even that they are serving foreign interests.
It is not that they are categorically opposed to Israeli military intervention in Iran, some of these insiders stress. It is, rather, that they are categorically opposed to Israeli military intervention in Iran now. They consider Iran’s nuclear weapons drive to be an immensely grave threat. But they are convinced that Israel action at this stage would be premature and counterproductive, and that Israeli action at any stage may not be necessary. They have been known to use the word “suicidal” to describe the idea of Israeli action now in the absence of clear US-Israel understandings.
Lost in the bitter public debate of recent months, they stress, is the fact — an undisputed fact, they insist — that were Iran to decide today to go for the bomb, it remains some 18 months away. And Iran has taken no such decision, they say.
Battered as narrow-minded and partisan, they are not above leveling political accusations of their own. Some consider Netanyahu’s obsession with Iran to be a consequence of his failure and irrelevance as prime minister in all other major fields. The peace process is going nowhere, he offers nothing as Islamist politics rises regionwide, he is failing in social and economic fields. Where else can he position himself as a purportedly necessary prime minister, they snipe, apart from on Iran?
As for Barak, here one encounters disillusionment. Barak was meant to be the responsible adult. Barak, the former chief of staff with his decades of defense expertise, could be relied upon to climb down the ladder before the war rhetoric got out of control. Barak was perceived by the Americans as the non-ideological, dependable interlocutor. But Barak, the head of a splinter party with no following, reasonably believes he might not be in office a year from today. And he has proved incapable, his insider critics say now, of separating personal political interests and narrow tactical considerations from the wider national interest. The Americans, they claim, have quite given up on him.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem, in July (photo credit: Ohad Zwigenberg/POOL/FLASH90)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem, in July (photo credit: Ohad Zwigenberg/POOL/FLASH90)
But there are other insiders, too — others, who empathize with Netanyahu’s parallels between the Iranian threat and the Holocaust, and some who go further. Germany had to gear up, gradually and protractedly, for the manufacture of mass murder. With Iran, if unchecked, genocide for the Jewish state could be attempted with the press of a button. No time then for a Churchill to shake us all out of our lethargy, slowly make up for lost time, and turn back the tide.
Yes, these insiders say, there are powerful arguments in favor of doing nothing — hoping the sanctions work, or the Iranians give ground in diplomatic channels, or sabotage has a deeper impact, or the regime is ousted or, when all else fails, America does have the will to utilize its military might. But how realistic are any of those hopes, they ask? What have sanctions and diplomacy done for us so far? How profoundly have the Stuxnet-style viruses and disappearing scientists set back the program? Does the Iranian regime look remotely wobbly? And can we really, truly, existentially expect — because our lives could depend upon it — that second-term-Obama or first-term-Romney would send in the bombers?
Can we expect that confidently enough to let our own opportunity to send in the bombers pass unused, our engines cold, our arms folded? The mighty Jewish state placing its destiny in the hands of, either, an untried president heading a parochial, unpredictable party, or a familiar president who didn’t even take a stand against the regime when the Iranian people were trying to rise up against it three years ago?

Trusting Obama



Where the insiders who support and those who oppose an imminent Israeli military strike on Iran agree is that Netanyahu’s temptation to order it stems in large part from his conviction that a re-elected Obama cannot be fully trusted to use force if all else fails to stop Iran, and that a president Romney might be still less likely to do so.
Before November’s presidential elections, by contrast, however reluctant he might be, Obama, in Netanyahu’s assessment, simply could not politically refrain from supporting Israel in the potentially messy aftermath of an Israeli strike.
Insiders say Barak has told Netanyahu that Israel’s window of opportunity for action — for seriously impacting the Iranian program — closes at the end of the year. The former IDF Military Intelligence chief and Osirak pilot Amos Yadlin (who I should stress is not one of the anonymous insiders quoted in this article) tends to disagree, as do others, assessing that Israel would have a little more time. But Barak is Netanyahu’s font of Iranian wisdom. So if Israel is to avoid subcontracting its security, as Barak puts it, even to the best of its friends, Netanyahu may feel it’s a case of act now or forever hold your peace.
Everything you have heard about the personal hostility between Obama and Netanyahu is true, and then some, according to the insiders from both the pro- and anti-strike camps. The prime minister thinks the president is unreliable and misguided on matters Israeli, Middle Eastern and Islamist. Holding to “a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” as Obama put it in his AIPAC speech in March, is not the same as vowing explicitly to use whatever tools are needed, up to and including force, in order to guarantee that Iran does not gain a nuclear weapons capability.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, the Oval Office, May 2011. (photo credit: Avi Ohayon/Government Press Office/FLASH90)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, the Oval Office, May 2011. (photo credit: Avi Ohayon/Government Press Office/FLASH90)
The president, for his part, thinks the prime minister is arrogant, manipulative and indecisive, the insiders from both camps agree. He feels that Netanyahu, who had the temerity to publicly lecture him in the Oval Office last year about Israel’s territorial red lines, has consistently sought to undermine him in the pro-Israel community in America — whether directly or through wealthy and influential American Jewish figures. He regards Netanyahu’s address to the 2012 AIPAC conference as a slap in the face, publicly blowing off the president’s appeal a day earlier to give diplomacy and sanctions more time. He considers that the enthusiastic welcome for Mitt Romney here last month strayed beyond the polite, correct hosting of a presidential candidate.
The problem with the Netanyahu overview, the don’t-strike-now insiders say, is that attacking Iran at this stage would be strategically counter-productive, to put it mildly. It would see Israel perceived globally as an impatient, over-hasty aggressor. It would unify the Iranian public around their regime’s nuclear goal. It would ostensibly legitimize accelerated Iranian progress — here would be proof of Iran’s need for a nuclear counterweight to regional aggressor Israel. It would infuriate Obama, who has pledged to take care of the crisis. It would spark a regional nuclear arms race, wiping out Israel’s military advantages. It would put Israel’s nuclear program on the international agenda; can those guys be trusted with the bomb? It would destroy the international sanctions effort, however imperfect that may be, and likely destroy the prospect of international force being employed to stop the Iranians. But it would not destroy the Iranian program, since Iran — unlike Saddam after Osirak in 1981, or Syria after its Korean reactor was smashed in 2007 — has the knowledge and the wherewithal to rebuild.
The counter argument to those critiques, says the better-strike-soon camp, is that a decade’s evidence suggests that nobody else has the will to stop the Iranians, and if we don’t act soon, it will be too late for us to thwart them either. That there are no guarantees the Americans would recognize an Iranian breakout to the bomb in time, and no guarantees that, if it did, even a president who wanted to act would have the necessary support to do so. And, yes, it is already, sadly, dismally, too late for Israel to smash their entire program, but the air force can certainly delay it — and earn another few years’ grace in which the regime might fall. If not, if Israel has to strike again, so be it. And since sanctions haven’t worked, the collapse of the sanctions regime is hardly the end of the world, though it probably could be revived over time. And a regional arms race is inevitable if Israel doesn’t act, since this entire region is terrified of a nuclear Iran.

Overplaying their hand?


Even the anti-strike insiders don’t claim that Obama can be relied upon 100 percent to take care of Iran. Not necessarily. Not all of them.
If there is a brazen escalation by Iran of its nuclear program — a breakout to the bomb — many in the don’t-strike-now camp believe the international community would see it, and many believe Obama would use force to thwart it.
But if the current situation persists into 2013, with sanctions continuing to fail, diplomatic overtures going nowhere, and Iran continuing to make headway with enrichment and other aspects of the program, even those in the don’t strike-now camp are not certain that a re-elected Obama, or a president Romney for that matter, would declare that the time had come for a resort to force. Some of these insiders think, however, that Israel would still be capable of meaningful military intervention in 2013, and that it would be able to act then with greater international legitimacy and support, without alienating the US and without destroying the sanctions effort — keeping the pressure on Iran, that is, even after an attack.
Clearly, the Americans have chosen not to force a showdown with Iran. They’ve not said to the Iranians, ‘Here’s our best and final offer; if you reject it you’ll face the consequences.’ They’ve indicated a disillusionment with the negotiations, but they’ve not pushed a confrontation. That will come after the presidential elections — in February or the spring, say some insiders. Or not, say others.
Incidentally, some of the don’t-strike-now insiders speak of indications that Iran is waiting until after the US elections to negotiate meaningfully. It wants to be sure who’s president, they argue. It might then be willing to be forthcoming, knowing that the US could be more forthcoming, too. Others believe Iran is intransigent and will continue to be so.
Amos Yadlin last week called on Obama to assuage Israeli concerns about his commitment to use force if needed by coming to Israel and speaking in the Knesset. Israeli sources quoted in Hebrew TV reports have posited that an Obama-Netanyahu meeting after the UN General Assembly in late September might enable the US president to offer the prime minister the reassurance he apparently needs in order to refrain from sending in the IAF.
But insiders in both the pro- and anti camps say there would be zero prospect of Obama quickly adding in an Israel trip in the weeks before the elections even if he did want to offer further reassurance. And they say that the president was trying assiduously to provide precisely such reassurance in any case. For the past six months.
The US really didn’t understand the gravity of the issue until fairly late in the day, they say. It took the administration a long time to believe that Netanyahu and Barak were seriously contemplating a strike. And then it believed that Barak would ultimately be persuaded to hold Israeli fire — that it could win him over and create a wedge between him and Netanyahu.
There was a big debate in the administration, some insiders claim: Should we bother with Netanyahu? It wasn’t even clear to the Americans what it was that the prime minister wanted from them. Was he seeking a green light for Israeli action? A guarantee that the US would stand by Israel if Netanyahu did act? Clearer reassurance that the US would act itself if all else fails? In the climate of mistrust, they found Netanyahu very difficult to read. They couldn’t even be sure whether the issue was Iran or bringing down Obama. With Barak, they thought it was Iran. With Netanyahu?
But eventually, the president did give the order to reassure Israel — to provide the ladder for Barak to walk down, with Netanyahu reluctantly following.
Amid the incessant visits to and fro by top US and Israeli officials, the insiders say with understandable vagueness, the US has helped boost Israeli offensive and defensive capabilities; it has deepened operational cooperation and intelligence sharing; it has publicly reaffirmed Israel’s right to act if needed; it has made overt that the US president will prevent the nuclearization of Iran; it has not only stated clearly that all options are on the table, but has also given Israel tangible proof that all options are being prepared, including operations in the Gulf. It has shared sufficient details of its war plans for Israel to recognize their credibility.
But Barak did not budge.
In the past two weeks, some in the don’t-strike-now camp see indications that Barak might now be ready to climb down. This, despite the interview a man identified as “the decision maker” who was clearly Barak gave to Haaretz two weeks ago, in which he declared that (a) “If Iran’s nuclearization is not halted now, before long we’ll find ourselves in a Middle East that has all gone nuclear”; (b) “Iran could soon enter the immunity zone. And when that happens, it means putting a matter that is vital to our survival in the hands of the United States. Israel cannot allow this to happen”; (c) “there are moments in the life of a nation in which the imperative to live is the imperative to act. So it was on the eve of the Six-Day War. So it was in 1948. And it may be so now, too”; (d) “we mustn’t listen to those who in every situation prefer inaction to action”; and (e) “The sword hanging over our neck today is a lot sharper than the sword that hung over our neck before the Six-Day War.”
Those same anti-strike insiders, however, also see signs that the Obama administration has now lost patience with Netanyahu, and has concluded that the prime minister and the defense minister have overplayed their hand. The former American ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, gave public expression to this sentiment in an Army Radio interview last Thursday: Israel’s talk of attacking Iran was “a classic case of crying wolf,” he said. “The US has done everything it could to reassure Israel and doesn’t have anything more in its quiver… So it thinks [when it hears talk of an Israeli strike on Iran], ‘Here we go again. There’s nothing else we can do. We’ll learn to live with it.’”
The administration is betting, the anti-strike insiders say, that a critical mass of opposition has been reached to unilateral Israeli action this fall that will now compel Netanyahu to abandon the idea. The accumulation of opposition — by the ex-security chiefs like Dagan and Diskin; serving security chiefs including chief of the General Staff Benny Gantz; opposition leader Shaul Mofaz (however discredited by his constant zig-zagging); and President Shimon Peres (despite his opposition to the Israeli strike on Osirak 31 years ago), backed up by former president Yitzhak Navon — is now deemed to be simply too widespread and overwhelming to defy.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, left, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey give a news conference at the Pentagon on June 29, 2012. (photo credit: Evan Vucci/AP)
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, left, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey give a news conference at the Pentagon on June 29, 2012. (photo credit: Evan Vucci/AP)
And of course the Americans themselves are doing their best, and have been for months, to further discredit an Israeli strike. In March, a senior unnamed American intelligence official told Channel 2′s reliable diplomatic correspondent Udi Segal that Israel’s leaders seem to be drastically underestimating the likely near-apocalyptic repercussions of an Israeli strike. Leon Panetta, speaking off-the-cuff three months earlier, had said almost the same, albeit without the hyperbole. In the last few days, though, the Americans have stepped up the challenge, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, making wearily, almost derisively clear, twice, that he doesn’t think Israel could stop the Iranians if it tried.
The Iranians, for their part, are openly derisive. Israel doesn’t have the guts, they gloat. It’s all talk, they sneer.
Might Netanyahu and Barak nonetheless follow through on their threats? As of last week, they were still allowing them to be aired.
Ten weeks to go…

And what of the Iranians?


Nobody, but nobody, among the Israeli experts doubts that Iran has a clear aspiration to attain nuclear weapons. But thus far, whether for strategic, political, religious and/or ideological reasons, the Iranians are hedging, some say.
Iran wants the wherewithal to break out to nuclear weapons quickly, when it decides to do so. But it has not taken that decision. In fact, say some, the Iranians have taken a decision not to accelerate into the end zone for now, by constraining what their scientists and technicians work on.
The Iranians are running a sizable and growing enrichment effort, all the insiders say. And they have kept in place the team necessary to take that effort to the next level. They are also expending ever greater energy on long-range delivery capability. And they are investing heavily in “hardening” the project against attack — so that a one-time attack would not kill off the program in the way a single strike halted Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. But they have not ventured into that 18-month break out period.
Some insiders believe Iran knows it can’t encroach on that period without this being recognized very quickly, and that it holds back because it fears this might unleash an American response.
Last week, the air force commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards asserted that Iran would “welcome” an Israeli strike. It would give Tehran the opportunity to be rid of Israel forever, said Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh. The Israeli technocrats don’t all believe Iran is happily contemplating an Israeli strike. But Iran is not petrified of an Israeli attack, they say, and broadly, it could withstand one. Not so, an American attack — because a single American strike would be more damaging than an Israeli strike, because the Americans could return to hit again and again, and because the Americans would not limit themselves to a strike at nuclear targets.
The Americans would go about an attack, the Israeli experts say, in an entirely different — and dramatically more substantive manner — than Israel could. The US has made this clear to Israel — another reason for its frustration at Israel’s lack of faith. And it is clear to Iran too. If the Americans act, they go after the air defenses, the missiles, the Revolutionary Guards. They make sure that Iran can’t retaliate.
If Israel strikes, Iran rebuilds and promptly moves into the 18-month breakout period, the don’t-act-now Israeli insiders say. Whatever damage Israel thus has done has no lasting value. In fact, it boomerangs. The sanctions are off, the inspectors are gone, the legitimacy is there. Iran crosses the Rubicon.
That’s dramatic but wrong-headed, says the better-strike-soon camp. An Israeli attack might spell harsh short-term consequences — including the 500 dead that Barak has posited — but it delays the program; it forces an Iranian rethink; it destroys the sense of fait accompli — that the Iranian bomb is inevitable; it staves off the untenable remaking of our region in Iran’s favor.

About those 18 months


How firm is that 18 months? If everything went smoothly, Iran might be able to shave off a couple of months, at most. Unforeseen delays might add another six months.
But there’s a lot of confusion about the period, the experts all say. Israeli experts were saying 18 months to an Iranian bomb in 2006, and in 2008, and in 2010. Were they wrong? No. Iran has progressed a great deal in that period. But Iran has yet to make the accelerated, 18-month push to the bomb. So what’s changed is how things would look over those 18 months, the experts say. Things like, whether Iran would have a better or worse missile delivery system. Things like Iran’s capacity to withstand attack. Things like how many bombs Iran could build in those 18 months.
Some of the technocrats say these factors hold the key to Iran’s decision-making process.
In the better-strike-soon camp, the assessment is that Iran will give the order to plunge forward when it thinks it will be able to build enough bombs — whatever “enough” may mean — in the 18 months, and when it believes itself to be sufficiently protected against attack. So the time for action is now.
In the don’t-strike-now camp, some believe that the Iranians have lost confidence in their ability to do things in secret, and that the US constantly reinforces this sense of lost confidence by indicating that it can see what Iran is up to — thanks to the intelligence work of the US, the Israelis, the Canadians, the Brits, the Germans…
Iran keeps getting reminders that it is penetrated, that it is transparent, these experts say. So, encroaching into the 18 months becomes a still bigger strategic gamble. They might be playing into their adversaries’ hands. The Iranians are saying to themselves, can we do this in secret? No. Can we act quickly and successfully? No. Can we be sure that it won’t be just Israel that attacks? No.
File photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visiting the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. (photo credit: AP/Iranian President's office, File)
File photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visiting the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. (photo credit: AP/Iranian President’s office, File)
Signs that the Iranians are accelerating toward a bomb would be quite clear, the don’t-strike-now experts say. One would be if Iran began enriching uranium beyond 20%. (Evidence of a recent minor enrichment beyond 20% was what the experts call a normal fluke). Another would be if they stepped up efforts to produce a warhead. They have the basic design and some elements, but they’d need to accommodate the enriched uranium inside a warhead, or in the interim, in some kind of a device that would enable a test.
But this kind of process unfolded in Pakistan and North Korea, the better-act-now camp counters. Threats and promises notwithstanding, there was no military intervention in either case. And anyone who thinks the dangers posed by a nuclear Iran are remotely comparable to those the world faces from nuclear Pakistan and North Korea, noted Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Friday, “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Where does Liberman stand on the imperative or otherwise for action? “We should have struck in 2001,” he said Friday.

The bottom line



The insiders in the don’t-strike-now camp speculate that the US has it about right in gauging Israeli intentions: that Netanyahu and Barak won’t act before the US elections. Something that seemed to Netanyahu and Barak to be politically doable in the past has now become extraordinarily risky, some of the insiders say.
The damage done, these technocrats say, has already been enormous: People taking money out of the country; parents taking their children out of the country. Israelis looking for alternate citizenships; investors looking for alternate investments. Worse still, Israel under Netanyahu has “taken ownership” of the Iranian nuclear crisis, when it’s the international community that needs to feel the onus to act. There are plenty of people in the West who want Israel to strike at Iran, some of the insiders say — and those people are not friends of Israel.
All wrong, say those in the better-strike-soon camp. Israel waited a decade for someone else to step up. Now it has no choice. Netanyahu the indecisive is capable of being coldly decisive on this issue alone — the Iranian threat being the danger he feels he was fated to handle, the reason that circumstances contrived to make him prime minister, now.
Benjamin Netanyahu eulogized his father Benzion in April as a man who knew “how to identify danger in time,” and was prepared to “face reality head on” and “draw the necessary conclusions.” In the case of the insufficiently influential father, the danger that the Jewish leadership failed to face was the Holocaust. In the case of the son, the prime minister of a regional superpower, the danger he has the capacity to recognize, and to thwart, is a would-be genocidal, almost-nuclear Iran. “As prime minister of Israel, I will never let my people live under the shadow of annihilation,” Netanyahu told AIPAC in March.
Israeli F-15I fighter jets are refueled by a Boeing 707 during an air show at the graduation ceremony of Israeli pilots in Hatzerim air force base in the Negev desert, near the southern city of Beersheva, in June. (photo credit: Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90)
Israeli F-15I fighter jets are refueled by a Boeing 707 during an air show at the graduation ceremony of Israeli pilots in Hatzerim air force base in the Negev desert, near the southern city of Beersheva, in June. (photo credit: Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90)
Now is not the time for Israel to strike at Iran, the former chief of the General Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, opined last Thursday, completing the complement of most-recent security chiefs inveighing against an attack. “This threat that emerges in the east, and all the darkening on that horizon – we aren’t there yet.”
But allowing Israel’s window of military opportunity to shut without acting may turn out to be an act of restraint with catastrophic consequences, retort those in the better-strike-soon camp. It may turn out that Israel ought not to have trusted its security even to a president who has promised that the United States is “bound to Israel,” and that for his country Israel’s “security is sacrosanct.”
Is Netanyahu prepared to take the risk of inaction, or choose the gamble of intervention?
Ten weeks.

A New Record is Set for Military Spending


A New Record is Set for Military Spending
The Shame of Nations
By Lawrence S. Wittner 
April 23, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- On April 17, 2012, as millions of Americans were filing their income tax returns, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its latest study of world military spending. In case Americans were wondering where most of their tax money — and the tax money of other nations — went in the previous year, the answer from SIPRI was clear: to war and preparations for war.

World military spending reached a record $1,738 billion in 2011 — an increase of $138 billion over the previous year. The United States accounted for 41 percent of that, or $711 billion.

Some news reports have emphasized that, from the standpoint of reducing reliance on armed might, this actually represents progress. After all, the increase in “real” global military spending — that is, expenditures after corrections for inflation and exchange rates — was only 0.3 percent. And this contrasts with substantially larger increases in the preceding thirteen years.

But why are military expenditures continuing to increase — indeed, why aren’t they substantially decreasing — given the governmental austerity measures of recent years?
Amid the economic crisis that began in late 2008 (and which continues to the present day), most governments have been cutting back their spending dramatically on education, health care, housing, parks, and other vital social services. However, there have not been corresponding cuts in their military budgets.

Americans, particularly, might seek to understand why in this context U.S. military spending has not been significantly decreased, instead of being raised by $13 billion — admittedly a “real dollar” decrease of 1.2 percent, but hardly one commensurate with Washington’s wholesale slashing of social spending. Yes, military expenditures by China and Russia increased in 2011. And in “real” terms, too. But, even so, their military strength hardly rivals that of the United States. Indeed, the United States spent about five times as much as China (the world’s #2 military power) and ten times as much as Russia (the world’s #3 military power) on its military forces during 2011. Furthermore, when U.S. allies like Britain, France, Germany, and Japan are factored in, it is clear that the vast bulk of world military expenditures are made by the United States and its military allies.

This might account for the fact that the government of China, which accounts for only 8.2 percent of world military spending, believes that increasing its outlay on armaments is reasonable and desirable. Apparently, officials of many nations share that competitive feeling.

Unfortunately, the military rivalry among nations — one that has endured for centuries — results in a great squandering of national resources. Many nations, in fact, devote most of their available income to funding their armed forces and their weaponry. In the United States, an estimated 58 percent of the U.S. government’s discretionary tax dollars go to war and preparations for war. “Almost every country with a military is on an insane path, spending more and more on missiles, aircraft, and guns,” remarked John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus. “These countries should be confronting the real threats of climate change, hunger, disease, and oppression, not wasting taxpayers’ money on their military.”

Of course, defenders of military expenditures reply that military force actually protects people from war. But does it? If so, how does one explain the fact that the major military powers of the past century — the United States, Russia, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and China — have been almost constantly at war during that time? What is the explanation for the fact that the United States — today’s military giant — is currently engaged in at least two wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and appears to be on the verge of a third (with Iran)? Perhaps the maintenance of a vast military machine does not prevent war but, instead, encourages it.

In short, huge military establishments can be quite counterproductive. Little wonder that they have been condemned repeatedly by great religious and ethical leaders. Even many government officials have decried war and preparations for war — although usually by nations other than their own.

Thus, the release of the new study by SIPRI should not be a cause for celebration. Rather, it provides an appropriate occasion to contemplate the fact that, this past year, nations spent more money on the military than at any time in human history. Although this situation might still inspire joy in the hearts of government officials, top military officers, and defense contractors, people farther from the levers of military power might well conclude that it’s a hell of a way to run a world.
Lawrence S. Wittner is professor of history emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is “Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual” (University of Tennessee Press).
This article was first published at Counterpunch

Thursday, August 30, 2012

U.S. Ambassador to Syria in charge of recruiting Arab/Muslim death squads


U.S. Ambassador to Syria in charge of recruiting Arab/Muslim death squads
12. Sep, 2011 by Wayne Madsen
WMR has been informed by reliable sources that the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, is the key State Department official who has been responsible for recruiting Arab "death squads" from Al Qaeda-affiliated units in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Chechnya to fight against Syrian military and police forces in embattled Syria. Ford served as the Political Officer at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006 under Ambassador John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Negroponte was a key figure in the covert U.S. program to arm the Nicaraguan contras and his support for vicious paramilitary units in El Salvador and Honduras earned him the nickname of "Mr. Death Squad."
Negroponte tasked Ford with implementing the "El Salvador option" in Iraq, the use of Iraqi Shi'a irregulars and Kurdish Pesh Merga paramilitary forces to target for assassination and kidnapping/torture Iraqi insurgency leaders in Iraq and across the border in Syria. The operation was named for Negroponte's death squad operation in Central America in the 1980s.
Ford has become the point man in the recruitment of Arabs and Muslims from the Middle East and beyond to battle against the security forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. The U.S.-backed terrorists have not only carried out attacks on Syrian security forces but have also massacred civilians in "false flag" operations later blamed on Syrian government forces. WMR has been informed that Ford's operations in Syria are being carried out with the assistance of Israel's Mossad.
The "El Salvador" option has also been used in Libya, where Al Qaeda irregulars, drawn from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, have been carrying out murders of Libyan civilians, especially black Libyans and African guest workers, on behalf of the Libyan rebel government. Some of the murders of civilians have been blamed on pro-Muammar Qaddafi forces but they have, in fact, been carried out by Al Qaeda units fighting with the rebels and which are being directed by CIA and MI-6 advisers. Ford has been providing advice to the Libyan rebels on how to carry out their death squad attacks.
From 2006 to 2008, Ford served as U.S. ambassador to Algeria, a nation that opposes the Libyan rebel government and a nation that has begun to see a re-surgence of "Al Qaeda" terrorist attacks against Algerian government targets. In fact, Algeria is viewed as the next domino to fall as the U.S. seeks to establish total military and political hegemony over North Africa.
WMR has learned from a source who was recently in Libya that the Libyan rebel transitional government has agreed to allow the U.S. to establish permanent military bases in Libya, including on the Algerian border. The rebels have also agreed to permit an American to serve as the chief political officer for the planned Libyan transitional advisory body due to be organized by NATO and the United Nations. The body will be modeled on the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

THE HOULA MASSACRE: Opposition Terrorists "Killed Families Loyal to the Government"

THE HOULA MASSACRE: Opposition Terrorists "Killed Families Loyal to the Government"
Detailed Investigation
   
Global Research, June 1, 2012
 
Global Research Editor's Note
This incisive report by independent Russian journalist Marat Musin dispels the lies and fabrications of the Western media. 

The report is based on a chronology of events as well as eyewitness accounts.  Entire pro-government families in Houla were massacred. The terrorists integrated by professional mercenaries were not pro-government militia as conveyed in chorus by the mainstream media, they were in large part mercenaries and professional killers operating under the auspices of the self-proclaimed Free Syrian Army (FSA):

"When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children.

Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of the Abdul Razak.

The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something
that was not verified by any marks on their bodies."
We call on our readers to forward this report far and wide. The massacre in Houla is being blamed on the Syrian government without a shred of evidence. The objective is not only to isolate Syria but to develop a pretext and a justification for waging an R2P humanitarian war on Syria.

It is essential to reverse the tide of war propaganda which uses civilian deaths as a pretext to wage war, when those civilians deaths were carried out not by the government but by professional terrorists operating under the helm of the US-NATO supported Free Syrian Army.


Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Montreal, June 1, 2012



In the weekend of May 25, 2012, at about 2 PM, big groups of fighters attacked and captured the town of Al – Hula of the Homs province. Al-Hula is made up of three regions: the village of Taldou, Kafr Laha and Taldahab, each of which had previously been home for 25-30 thousand people.
The town was attacked from the north-east by groups of bandits and mercenaries, numbering up to 700 people. The militants came from Ar-Rastan (the Brigade of al-Farouk from the Free Syrian Army led by the terrorist Abdul Razak Tlass and numbering 250), from the village of Akraba (led by the terrorist Yahya Al-Yousef), from the village Farlaha, joined by local gangsters, and from Al Hula.
The city of Ar-Rastan has long been abandoned by most civilians. Now Wahhabis from Lebanon dominate the scene, fueled with money and weapons by one of the main orchestrators of international terrorism, Saad Hariri, who heads the anti-Syrian political movement “Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal” (“Future Movement”). The road from Ar-Rastan to Al-Hula runs through Bedouin areas that remain mostly out of control of government troops, which made the militant attacks on Al Hula a complete surprise for the Syrian authorities.
When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children. Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of the Abdul Razak. Many of those killed were “guilty” of the fact that they dared to change from Sunnis to Shiites. The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies.
The idea that the UN observers had heard artillery fire against Al-Houla in the Safir Hotel in Homs at night I consider nothing short of a bad joke. 50 kilometers lie between Homs and Al-Houla. What kind of tanks or guns has this range? Yes, there was intensive gunfire in Homs until 3 am, including heavy weapons. But, to give an example, on the night of Monday to Tuesday shooting was due to an attempt by law enforcement to regain control for a security corridor along the road to Damascus, Tarik Al-Sham.
After a visual inspection of Al Hula it is impossible to find traces of any of fresh destruction, bombing and shelling. During the day, several attacks by gunmen are made on the last remaining soldiers at the Taldou checkpoint. Militants used heavy weapons and snipers made up of professional mercenaries were active.
Note that once, the exactly same provocation failed at Shumar (Homs) and 49 militants and women and children were killed, when it was organized just before a visit of Kofi Annan. The last provocation was immediately exposed as soon as it became known that the bodies of the previously kidnapped belonged to Alawites. This provocation also contained serious inconsistencies – the names of those killed were from people loyal to the authorities, there were no traces of bombings, etc.
However, the provocation machine is running all the same. Today, the NATO countries directly threat to bomb Syria, and a simultaneous expulsion of Syrian diplomats has begun As of today, there are no troops within the city of Al Hula, but there are regularly heard bursts of automatic fire, nonetheless. Moreover, it is unclear whether the militants are fighting with each other, or whether supporters of Bashar al-Assad are being cleaned out.

Militants opened fire on virtually everyone who tries to get closer to the border town. Before us a UN convoy was fired upon and two armored jeeps of the UN observers were damaged, when they tried to drive up to an army checkpoint in Tal Dow.
In the attack on the convoy a twenty-year-old terrorist was spotted. The fire was directed on the unprotected slopes of the first jeep, the back door of the second armored car was hooked by a fragment. There are wounded among those accompanying.

According to a wounded soldier:

“The next day, UN observers came to us at the checkpoint and as soon as they arrived, gunmen opened fire on them. And three of us were injured. One was wounded in the leg, the second – in the back, and I was hit in the hip.
When the observers came, they could hear a woman who was standing next to them and cried, the woman stood and pleaded the observers’ help – to protect her from the bandits. When I was wounded, the observers watched as I fell, but none of them tried to help. Our checkpoint no longer exists. There are no civilians any longer in Taldou, only militants remain. Our relationship to the locals was excellent. They are very good to us; they called on the army to enter Taldou. We were attacked by snipers.”
Unfortunately, many of the militants are professional snipers. 100-200 meters from our group TV-crew, militants attacked a BMP that went to replace soldiers at the checkpoint. During this a soldier – draftee got a concussion and slight tangential wound in the head by a sniper bullet. Looking at the pierced Kevlar helmet, it seems he did not even realize that he survived by a miracle.
Snipers kill up to 10 soldiers and policemen at checkpoints each day. It is true, that the daily casualties of law enforcement agencies in Homs were dozens of victims daily. But, unfortunately, at 10 am, six dead soldiers were taken to the morgue. Most were killed by a shot in the head. And the day had just begun
So, these are the names of those were killed by snipers in the early morning hours of May 29:
1. Sergeant Ibrahim Halyuf
2. Sergeant Salman Ibrahim
3. Policeman Mahmoud Danaver
4. Conscript Ali Daher
5. Sergeant Wisam Haidar
6. the dead soldier’s family name could not be clarified
The bandits even fired an automatic burst on our group of journalists, although it was clear that this is a normal filming crew, consisting of unarmed civilians.

HOW THE ATTACK BEGAN

After Friday prayers at about 2 PM on May, 25th a group from the Al Aksh clan started firing on a checkpoint of law enforcement officers from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Returning fire from a BRDM hit the mosque, and this was the very aim to lead to a bigger provocation.
Then, two groups of militants led by the terrorist Nidal Bakkour and Al-Hassan from the Al Hallak clan, supported by a unit of mercenaries, attacked the upper checkpoint on the eastern outskirts of the city. At 15.30 the upper checkpoint was taken, and all the prisoners executed: a Sunni conscript had his throat cut, while Abdullah Shaui (Bedouin) of Deir-Zor was burned alive.
During the attack on the upper checkpoint in the east the armed men lost 25 people, which were then submitted to the UN observers, together with the 108 dead civilians – “victims of the regime”, allegedly killed by bombing and shelling of the Syrian army. As for the remaining 83 bodies, including 38 young children, they were from the families that were executed by militants. These families were all loyal to the government of Syria.
Interviews:

with a law enforcement officer: 

“My name is Al Khosam, I am a law enforcement officer. I served in the village of Taldou, the district of Al-Hula, a province of Homs. On Friday, our checkpoint was attacked by a large group of militants. There were thousands.
Q: How do you protect yourself?

Answer: A simple weapon. We had 20 people, we called support, and when they were coming for us, I was wounded, and regained consciousness in the hospital. The attackers were from Ar-Rastan and Al-Hula. Insurgents control Taldou. They burned houses and killed people by the families, because they were loyal to the government. Raped the women and killed the children.”

Interview with a wounded soldier: 
“I am Ahmed Mahmoud al Khali. I’m from the city Manbej. Was wounded in Taldou. I come from a support group that came to the aid of our comrades, who were stationed at the checkpoint.
Militants destroyed two infantry fighting vehicles and one BRDM standing at our checkpoint. We moved out to Taldou in a BMP, to pick up our wounded comrades from the checkpoint within the city. We drove them back in the BMP, and I filled in their place.
And after a while the UN observers came. They came to us, we led them to the homes of families who were cut by thugs.
I saw a family of three brothers and their father in the same room. In another room we found dead young children and their mother. And another one- an old man killed in this house. Only five men, women and children. The woman raped and shot in the head, I covered her with a blanket. And the commission had seen them all. They put them in the car and drove away. I do not know where they took them, probably for burial.”

A resident of Taldou on the roof of the police department:
“On Friday afternoon I was home. Hearing the shots, I came out to watch what was happening and saw that the fire came from the north side, towards the location of army checkpoint. As the army did not respond, they started to approach the homes, were subsequently the family was killed. When the army started to return fire, they used the women and children as human shields and continued firing at the checkpoint. When the army began answered, they fled. After that, the army took the surviving women and children and brought them into safety. At this time, Al Jazeera aired pictures and said that the Army committed the massacre at Al Hula.
In fact, they killed the civilians and children in Al-Hula. The bandits did not allow anyone to carry out their work. They steal everything that they can get their hands on: wheat, flour, oil and gas. Most of the fighters are from the city of Ar Rastan.”
After they captured the city, they carried the bodies of their dead comrades, as well as the bodies of people and the children they killed to the mosque. They carried the bodies in KIA pickups. On May, 25th, at around 8 PM, the corpses were already in the mosque. The next day at 11 o’clock in the morning the UN observers arrived at the mosque.

Media Disinformation
To exert pressure on public opinion and change the positions of Russia and China, texts and subtitles in Russian and Chinese languages were prepared in advance, reading: “Syria – Homs – the city of Hula. A terrible massacre perpetrated by the armed forces of the Syrian regime against civilians in the town of Hula. Dozens of victims and their number is growing, mainly women and children, brutally killed by indiscriminate bombing of the CITY.”
Two days later, on May 27, after the residents’ stories and video recordings made showed that the facts do not support the allegation of shelling and bombing, the bandits’ videos had undergone significant changes. At the end of the text appeared this postscript: “And some were killed with knives.”
Marat Musin, Olga Kulygina, Al-Hula, Syria

British intelligence enabled Syrian rebels to launch devastating attacks on President Assad's regime


British intelligence enabled Syrian rebels to launch devastating attacks on President Assad's regime, official says

  • Disclosure is first indication of Britain playing a covert role in the civil war
  • Intelligence from Cyprus 'being passed through Turkey to the rebels'
British intelligence on Syrian troop movements is helping rebels in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, it was revealed today.
The disclosure by a Syrian opposition official is the first indication of British intelligence playing a covert role in the civil war.
The official told The Sunday Times the British authorities 'know about and approve 100 per cent' signals intelligence from their Cyprus bases being passed through Turkey to the rebel troops of the Free Syrian Army.
 
The Free Syrian Army fighters have been aided by British intelligence in their fight again President Bashar al-Assad's regime, it was claimed
The Free Syrian Army fighters have been aided by British intelligence in their fight again President Bashar al-Assad's regime, it was claimed
 
 
'British intelligence is observing things closely from Cyprus. It's very useful because they find out a great deal,' the official said.
'The British are giving the information to the Turks and the Americans and we are getting it from the Turks.'
According to the official, the most valuable intelligence so far has been about the movements of troops loyal to President Assad towards the stricken second city of Aleppo, which is partly controlled by rebels.
Early this month FSA fighters had reported that two large columns of government troops were heading towards Aleppo.
One was from Latakia on the Mediterranean coast and the other from Damascus, the capital. The fighters did not reveal the source of their intelligence at the time.
The official said rebels ambushed troops and a column of more than 40 tanks in a valley near Saraqib, cut them off and destroyed many of them with repeat attacks with rocket-propelled grenades.
Smoke rises over the Salaheddine neighbourhood in central Aleppo during clashes between Free Syrian Army fighters and Syrian Army soldiers yesterday
Smoke rises over the Salaheddine neighbourhood in central Aleppo during clashes between Free Syrian Army fighters and Syrian Army soldiers yesterday
 
 
Civil war: Smoke billowing from the scene of a bomb explosion in central Damascus
Civil war: Smoke billowing from the scene of a bomb explosion in central Damascus
Britain has two sovereign military bases in Cyprus at Dhekelia and Akrotiri. They draw intelligence from the airwaves for GCHQ, Britain's listening post in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
The opposition official said rebel forces in Aleppo had also received US satellite imagery, which the Turks had passed on from the CIA.
MI6 and the CIA are understood to be tacitly condoning the supply of heavy machineguns from Gulf countries to the rebels.
The rebels claim to have shot down at least two helicopters, part of a fleet used by Assad's regime to try and crush the growing rebellion. But they do not have enough to be effective.
 
One diplomat denied that the British were 'facilitating' the supply of heavy machineguns. But he said he could not rule out the possibility that private contractors financed by countries such as Qatar were involved in providing arms. Wealthy families in Qatar and Saudi Arabia are understood to be providing substantial financial support to the rebel forces.
 
Opposition fighters also benefit from the monitoring by British bases of ships along the Syrian coast from countries friendly towards Assad.
 
Britain has officially ruled out giving any covert help to the rebels. It is understood that William Hague, the foreign secretary, has been advised that it would be illegal under international law for Britain to supply weapons directly to any group in Syria, which is covered by a European Union arms embargo.