"it's the oil , stupid" ...and... "down with traitors !"

"down with traitors "


in early summer 2002 "it's the oil , stupid" was the title of an analysis we wrote for a now defunct small ny women's magazine .

in the article we asked why the bush administration had such a hard-on for invading iraq --since the various lies the neo-cons were vigorously pimping in the media --weapons of mass destruction ; saddam was in on 9-11 ; the saddam /bin laden tag team duo--clearly didn't hold water .

finally the only plausible reasons left were iraq's oil and iraq's geo-political strategic location for american military bases to better control the region...

well the oil angle has proven out ...

but inspite of what the article says about muktada al sadr being opposed to the oil theft --its been said his people in the iraqi parliament cast their votes for the new oil law (theft)

compared to the alternatives --at least the grizzled old bandito didn't give away the national wealth and he did "make the trains run on time" ...as the old grizzled bandito said among his last moments before he was hung by what have proven themselves to be the minions of the Us big oil-garchs , "down with traitors"




US's Iraq oil grab is a done deal
By Pepe Escobar

"By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies." - US Vice President Dick Cheney, then Halliburton chief executive officer, London, autumn 1999

US President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney might as well declare the Iraq war over and out. As far as they - and the humongous energy interests they defend - are concerned,



only now is the mission really accomplished. More than half a trillion dollars spent and perhaps half a million Iraqis killed have come down to this.

On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet in Baghdad approved the draft of the new Iraqi oil law. The government regards it as "a major national project". The key point of the law is that Iraq's immense oil wealth (115 billion barrels of proven reserves, third in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran) will be under the iron rule of a fuzzy "Federal Oil and Gas Council" boasting "a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq". That is, nothing less than predominantly US Big Oil executives.

The law represents no less than institutionalized raping and pillaging of Iraq's oil wealth. It represents the death knell of nationalized (from 1972 to 1975) Iraqi resources, now replaced by production sharing agreements (PSAs) - which translate into savage privatization and monster profit rates of up to 75% for (basically US) Big Oil. Sixty-five of Iraq's roughly 80 oilfields already known will be offered for Big Oil to exploit. As if this were not enough, the law reduces in practice the role of Baghdad to a minimum. Oil wealth, in theory, will be distributed directly to Kurds in the north, Shi'ites in the south and Sunnis in the center. For all practical purposes, Iraq will be partitioned into three statelets. Most of the country's reserves are in the Shi'ite-dominated south, while the Kurdish north holds the best prospects for future drilling.

The approval of the draft law by the fractious 275-member Iraqi Parliament, in March, will be a mere formality. Hussain al-Shahristani, Iraq's oil minister, is beaming. So is dodgy Barnham Salih: a Kurd, committed cheerleader of the US invasion and occupation, then deputy prime minister, big PSA fan, and head of a committee that was debating the law.

But there was not much to be debated. The law was in essence drafted, behind locked doors, by a US consulting firm hired by the Bush administration and then carefully retouched by Big Oil, the International Monetary Fund, former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz' World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development. It's virtually a US law (its original language is English, not Arabic).

Scandalously, Iraqi public opinion had absolute no knowledge of it - not to mention the overwhelming majority of Parliament members. Were this to be a truly representative Iraqi government, any change to the legislation concerning the highly sensitive question of oil wealth would have to be approved by a popular referendum.

In real life, Iraq's vital national interests are in the hands of a small bunch of highly impressionable (or downright corrupt) technocrats. Ministries are no more than political party feuds; the national interest is never considered, only private, ethnic and sectarian interests. Corruption and theft are endemic. Big Oil will profit handsomely - and long-term, 30 years minimum, with fabulous rates of return - from a former developing-world stalwart methodically devastated into failed-state status.

Get me a PSA on time
In these past few weeks, US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been crucial in mollifying the Kurds. In the end, in practice, the pro-US Kurds will have all the power to sign oil contracts with whatever companies they want. Sunnis will be more dependent on the Oil Ministry in Baghdad. And Shi'ites will be more or less midway between total independence in the south and Baghdad's dictum (which they control anyway). But the crucial point remains: nobody will sign anything unless the "advisers" at the US-manipulated Federal Oil and Gas Council say so.

Nobody wants to colonial-style PSAs forced down their throat anymore. According to the International Energy Agency, PSAs apply to only 12% of global oil reserves, in cases where costs are very high and nobody knows what will be found (certainly not the Iraqi case). No big Middle Eastern oil producer works with PSAs. Russia and Venezuela are renegotiating all of them. Bolivia nationalized its gas. Algeria and Indonesia have new rules for future contracts. But Iraq, of course, is not a sovereign country.

Big Oil is obviously ecstatic - not only ExxonMobil, but also ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP and Shell (which have collected invaluable info on two of Iraq's biggest oilfields), TotalFinaElf, Lukoil from Russia and the Chinese majors. Iraq has as many as 70 undeveloped fields - "small" ones hold a minimum of a billion barrels. As desert western Iraq has not even been exploited, reserves may reach 300 billion barrels - way more than Saudi Arabia. Gargantuan profits under the PSA arrangement are in a class by themselves. Iraqi oil costs only US$1 a barrel to extract. With a barrel worth $60 and up, happy days are here again.

What revenue the regions do get will be distributed to all 18 provinces based on population size - an apparent concession to the Sunnis, whose central areas have relatively few proven reserves.

The Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance) certainly has other ideas - as in future rolling thunder against pipelines, refineries and Western personnel. Iraq's oil independence will not go down quietly - at least among Sunnis. On the same day the oil law was being approved, a powerful bomb at the Ministry of Municipalities killed at least 12 people and injured 42, including Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. Mahdi has always been a feverish supporter of the oil law. He's a top official of the Shi'ite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SCIRI).

A whole case can be made of SCIRI delivering Iraq's Holy Grail to Bush/Cheney and Big Oil - in exchange for not being chased out of power by the Pentagon. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the SCIRI's leader, is much more of a Bush ally than Maliki, who is from the Da'wa Party. No wonder SCIRI's Badr Organization and their death squads were never the target of Washington's wrath - unlike Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army (Muqtada is fiercely against the oil law). The SCIRI certainly listened to the White House, which has always made it very clear: any more funds to the Iraqi government are tied up with passing the oil law.

Bush and Cheney got their oily cake - and they will eat it, too (or be drenched in its glory). Mission accomplished: permanent, sprawling military bases on the eastern flank of the Arab nation and control of some of largest, untapped oil wealth on the planet - a key geostrategic goal of the New American Century. Now it's time to move east, bomb Iran, force regime change and - what else? - force PSAs down their Persian throats.

"they didn't 'let' it happen...they made it happen"

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/260207building7.htm







oops --it hasn't collapsed yet !



here's the you tube video--george bush --rudy guiliani --you got some explaining to do !

what's one other thing that the 9-11-2001 world trade center attacks and the 1963 kennedy assassination have in common besides the name "bush" all over them ?

premature misinformation .

yup .

back in 1963 the late colonel l. fletcher prouty , military liaison between pentagon and cia , reported that shortly before he was supposed to help arrange military security for jfk's trip to dallas , he was suddenly sent on a mission to escort a junket of senators to america's base at mc murdo bay--the south pole !

on his return from antarctica , at a stop over in new zealand , the media there were already announcing kennedy's assassination and circulating studio photographs of lee harvey oswald --naming him as the accused killer .

the only problem was , prouty later compared the time that oswald was accused of kennedy's murder in dallas texas to the time it was announced in new zealand .

he found a gap in times which raised the question --how did the media in new zealand know who oswald was , and where did they get his presumably passport picture picture , and who told them that he was the accused killer of kennedy BEFORE any of this was even figured out by dallas police and released to the press in dallas ?

oops!

now 40 years later , over at alex jones website there is the story about how some diligent independent 9-11 researcher dug up an old bbc news cast where the bbc reporter is saying that building 7 at the wtc has collapsed 20 minutes before it actually happened --while it can still be seen standing in the background .

building 7 was not hit by any plane .

it suffered minimal damage from the collapse of the neighboring twin towers --the wtc owner larry silverstein in an interview said the decision to "pull" building 7 was made later that day on 9-11.

"pull it" , is a term for controlled demolition of a building --which is exactly what all three building collapses look like .

3 buildings fall in neat, controlled collapses -each straight down on top of itself pancaking downward imploding exactly like a controlled demolition .

but controlled demolitions like that take WEEKS to accurately plan --so if building 7 was "pulled"-- the way owner larry silverstein said --it would mean explosives would have to have been in place in the building weeks in advance of 9-11--and out the window goes that ridiculous lie about bin laden and lousey pilots bringing down the wtc on 9-11.

and collapsing like the twin towers and wtc 7 goes the justification for the war in afghanistan --the invasion of iraq --and the impending lebanon-like , devastating air assault planned by the neo-cons for iran .

add to that , the story circulating in the news about the new "law" the puppet government in iraq passed recently --allowing foreigners--meaning Us oil company reps-- to sit on the new "federal board " that will control iraq's oil --well at this stage of the game , you can put two and two together-- can't you ?

BBC Reported Building 7 Had Collapsed 20 Minutes Before It Fell
Revealing, shocking video shows reporter talking about collapse with WTC 7 still standing in background, Google removes clip

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Prison Planet
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 (UPDATED 5:36AM CST)


RELATED: BBC Responds to Building 7 Controversy; Claim 9/11 Tapes Lost

RELATED: Time Stamp Confirms BBC Reported WTC 7 Collapse 26 Minutes In Advance

RELATED: After This Fiasco, How Can We Trust Anything They Told Us About 9/11?

An astounding video uncovered from the archives today shows the BBC reporting on the collapse of WTC Building 7 over twenty minutes before it fell at 5:20pm on the afternoon of 9/11. The incredible footage shows BBC reporter Jane Standley talking about the collapse of the Salomon Brothers Building while it remains standing in the live shot behind her head.

Minutes before the actual collapse of the building is due, the feed to the reporter mysteriously dies.



This amazing clip was on Google Video (now back again here), but was removed within hours of the story breaking. However, hundreds of people had already managed to download the clip and it has gone viral on the Internet and the censors won't be able to shut the lid this time. A You Tube upload is available here but we fully expect this to be removed soon. You can watch it for the time being at this link and also here. A WMV link is here (on our server) and a Quicktime here. Bit torrent versions of the file can be found here. An avi version can be found here.

To be clear, the Salomon Brothers Building is just a different name for Building 7 or WTC 7. Skip forward to around the 14:30 minute mark.

Although there is no clock or time stamp on the footage, the source claims the report was given at 4:57pm EST, 23 minutes before Building 7 collapsed at 5:20pm. While the exact time of the report cannot be confirmed at present, it is clear from the footage that the reporter is describing the collapse of WTC 7 while it clearly remains standing behind her in the live shot.

Here are some further screenshots from the video.







The fact that the BBC reported on the collapse of Building 7 over twenty minutes in advance of its implosion obviously provokes a myriad of questions as to how they knew it was about to come down when the official story says its collapse happened accidentally as a result of fire damage and debris weakening the building's structure.

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As we have documented before, firefighters, police and first responders were all told to get back from the building because it was about to be brought down. It is widely acknowledged by those who were there on the scene that warnings were issued for people to evacuate the area in anticipation of the building's collapse, with some even stating that a 20 second countdown preceded the collapse of the 47-story skyscraper, again clearly suggesting that it was taken down by means of explosives as the video footage of its implosion illustrates.

Alex Jones' film Terror Storm documents how Thermate was the likely culprit for the implosion of the twin towers and also explores the collapse of WTC 7.



In a September 2002 PBS documentary, the owner of the WTC complex Larry Silverstein discusses Building 7 and states that in the late afternoon of September 11, the decision was made to "pull it." The term "pull it" is industry jargon for controlled demolition, but Silverstein denied charges that WTC 7 had been deliberately brought down.

This newly uncovered video confirms that the collapse of WTC 7 was no surprise, because television news stations were reporting on it before it happened!

This footage is absolutely amazing and should provoke a firestorm of new questions aimed both at Silverstein and the BBC. Who told the BBC that the building was going to collapse before it did and why were they reporting its fall in advance of the event actually taking place?

Many have speculated that some kind of press release was leaked too soon and AP wires, radio stations and TV news outlets prematurely reported on WTC 7's collapse.

The video also severely undermines the credibility of the BBC who recently caused controversy by airing a 9/11 hit piece that sought to debunk questions that bring the official story into doubt.

Calls have already been put through to the BBC reporting the "mistake," click here to listen to an MP3. The BBC have promised to "look into it."

Moronic commenters on Digg are already trying to bury the story, yet none of them have an answer as to why the BBC reported the building's collapse before it happened. Click here to add your own comment and counter the debunkers.

ACTION: E Mail the BBC and ask them to clarify exactly why their reporter is announcing the collapse of Building 7 before it has collapsed.
Copyright © Prisonplanet.com. All rights reserved.

confessions of an economic hitman --john perkins

John Perkins, Part 1 at the VFP National Convention

John Perkins, Part 1 The first of a three part speech given to the Veterans For Peace National Convention, Seattle, WA in August 2006. Author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in this part John discusses, from a hit mans perspective, the reasons and background to why we are at war in the Middle East.

John Perkins, Part 2 at the VFP National Convention

John Perkins, Part 2. The second of a three part speech given to the Veterans For Peace National Convention, Seattle, WA in August 2006. Author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in this part John discusses, from first hand experience, the globalization efforts of the corporatocracy in Central and South America.

John Perkins, Part 3 at the VFP National Convention

John Perkins, Part 3. The third of a three part speech given to the Veterans For Peace National Convention, Seattle, WA in August 2006. Author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in this part John takes Q & A and discusses actions which can be taken to counter the globalization efforts of the multi-national corporations.

tarpley on lebanon

well... well... well...would this be the same zapata oil founded by george herbert walker bush ?

IEDS IN IRAQ MADE BY ZAPATA AND ISRAEL, NOT IRAN!
From Tom Heneghan
1-14-6

Excerpts only...

WASHINGTON, DC (Cloak News) -- Zapata Engineering, an offshoot of Zapata Oil with offices in North Carolina, Hawaii and Tel Aviv, have now been linked to the hiring of private Mossad contractors aka alleged Israeli Engineers in Iraq. Of course, that is not the real story.

It can now be reported that Zapata Engineering has hired these Israeli Mossad-types into Iraq for the purposes of alleged counter-insurgency.

However, the alleged Israeli engineers have now been fingered for sniping at U.S. Soldiers and the murder of two female American Marines who had their throats slit and then placed in garbage dumps.

These female Marines had been investigating the origins of the I.E.D. (Improvised Explosives Devices). And of course it gets worse. It can now be reported that the origin of the I.E.D.'s, come not from Iran, but come from Zapata Engineering of North Carolina, Hawaii and Tel Aviv.

And now of course, it really gets worse. The projectile's discovered by American Special Forces have depleted uranium tips which connects directly to the Israeli company Rafael, which of course is owned by Zapata Engineering of North Carolina, Hawaii and Tel Aviv.

http://www.cloakanddagger.de/CLOAKANDDAGGE
R.DE_TOM%20HENEGHAN/cloak_BB_nov14.htm

webster tarpley on peak oil...

webster tarpley in the video below , touches on some of the topics we've mentioned at the old "deskrat" especially about what we read at col. L. fletcher prouty's website where he says

geologists told him that oil is not a fossil fuel but instead ,

a product which is produced as a function of the earth's crust .



prouty had mentioned that the geologists told him oil was being found at

depths deeper than the earth's fossil record --meaning at layers of the earth so deep that there are no fossils there--layers of the earth formed before there was life on earth --if so, how could oil then be a fossil fuel--the residue of dead dinosaurs and dead forests ?



old soviet science believed that there may be an unlimited amount of oil in the earth .

the only problem being developing the technology to drill deeply enough to reach it .



the peak oil boys --the theory that oil production had reached its peak on earth in the years from the 1970's to present times , would begin a global decrease --and trigger catastrophic economic decline--especially for the west--was in part the motivation for the neo-con grab at empire in the middle east-- to control world's largest proven oil reserves, as well as control the geo-political crossroads of the world --the middle east --(once the land of the ancient blacks btw

as we mentioned in a black history posting at another blog )



tarpley goes on to connect the iraq war --Us middle east-central asia (and africa) empire grab-- to the shift away from the dollar as the world's currency , and the Us intention to keep the world's oil purchases locked into the dollar.



in the "lessons learned repeatedly " postings at deskRat , we mentioned how in 1963 the rightwing staged a coup

by murdering president kennedy because they saw him as weak on vietnam --where the rightwing had already committed itself to the profits of a war in vietnam .



kennedy also issued silver certificates --Us money backed by silver rather than the worthless paper the federal reserve bankers were printing up and then charging the Us government interest, for borrowing it from them .



kennedy also angered the oil interests by planning to repeal the oil depletion allowance --a big tax break oil men got because according to the "oil is a fossil fuel theory" --every barrel pumped out of the ground left oil men with one less barrel of opportunity for profit --thus a need for a big tax write-off in order for Us taxpayers to finance big oil's exploration for more oil .



so the combination of big oil , wall street bankers , pentagon war hawks/defense contractors and of course their bay of pigs disgraced minions at CIA had kennedy assassinated --and no president since has dared to stand up to these boys --in fact most have sat idly by as they looted not only the Us treasury but the Us middle class --setting the standard of living back beneath the 1950s levels.



Us economy began its decline after the military failure in vietnam . the debt used to finance the war ate a huge hole in the Us economy--meaning deficit spending was used to finance the war --the bankers ran the printing presses to create money they did not have and then loaned worthless money that did not really exist to the government to pay for the war and charged the government (read "Us taxpayers") interest for loaning the government money that was

backed by nothing but paper to pay defense contractors for supplying the military weapons for 10 years during a lost war .



it was richard nixon --one of the kennedy assassination conspirators and minion of prescott bush--who himself was a minion of harriman (railroad and banking fortune) and rockefeller families (rockefellers own exxon oil and citi bank ) who as president , not only escalated the war in vietnam--after being elected largely on a promise to end the war --but it was nixon who took the dollar off the gold standard

and brokered a secret deal with the saudis that oil could only be bought with dollars .



the nations of the world --if they wanted saudi oil --had to have dollars on hand in order to buy it.



the Us dollar --no longer backed by gold --was backed instead by oil transactions.--the artificial global demand for dollars needed in order to buy oil.



--until saddam hussein --america's boy who was pissed off --after the gulf war and a dozen years of economic sanctions --at being bent over a barrel with his pants left down around his ankles by his former american employers , decided to get back at them by being the first to dump the dollar and sell oil in euros .



the Us invades iraq and topples saddam because "wmd" stands for "we mean dollars"--as far as oil sales are concerned and will go to war to preserve that relationship and thus preserve the dollar.



russia , reduced to third world status after the collapse of the soviet union , and minus about $300 billion siphoned off by western robber barons with the inside help of russian mafia/oligarchs , was also left bent over a barrel with pants down around the ankles .



but finally the russians dump yeltsin and putin takes charge and the threat of them selling russian oil in rubles or euros instead of dollars becomes a real possibility.



even in its weakened state , putin quickly moves against the oligarchs and reestablishes the russian military /industrial complex by huge arms sales to countries like iraq and iran as well as huge sales of oil and natural gas to western europe

which raises the cash to keep even a reduced russia still too large and too strong to

risk military confrontation .



this leaves iran --which announced its intents to begin an oil bourse--oil market selling oil in euros , and china -- after serious attempts to destroy china's currency by the same western hedge fund speculators who broke the asian tiger currencies and the russian ruble and argentina's currency beginning back in 1997 . china announces plans to issue a gold back yuan coin--the iranian bourse and the chinese gold yuan --are direct challenges to the dollar which since george w bush took office has seen a 30 percent decline in value--which means our standard of living in the Us took a 30 percent drop ..



if not for "everyday low prices " made possible by prison labor in china

and china and japan loaning the Us billions per day to keep the Us treasury afloat -- buying up Us t-bills , treasury notes , and bonds -- the Us consumer , already up to the eyeballs in debt would be in for a major downward revision in the quality of life department .



as long as the Us military was perceived as invincible ,

the fear of american military power bolstered the worthless dollar and the present economic order of petro-backed dollars was still secured .



the status quo was relatively secure even as america continued stripping down its once world championship manufacturing sector--the heart and source of america's military prowess btw-- and shipping manufacturing jobs over seas in search of the good old days --before the Us labor unions-- of child labor , penny wages

and no health or retirement benefits --"globalization" as it is now called --"robber baron "capitalism was its former name .



but saddam and company , possibly unwittingly , possibly on purpose , ruined everything with that stubborn and vengeful shift to oil sales in euros instead of keeping with dollars.



the Us had to respond --the whole fragile house of paper cards was in jeopardy if iraq could

get away with making war on the dollar the way the anglo-american hedge fund boys in the late 90s had successfully made war on the individual currencies of the asian "tiger" economies

and through them , their sponsor-- japan ,



along the way , the hedge fund boys had gotten away with making war on russia and argentina--in the process reducing russia to mineral selling third world nation status as well as reducing some well educated highly skilled argentines to foraging through dumpsters for their next meal

during the argentine economic collapse .



the Us had to invade iraq --the world's oil reserves and the dollar were at stake .

the underpinnings of the entire american empire were unraveling and at risk .



according to neo-con worldview , with unchallenged american military dominance and

control of the worlds' major oil and natural reserves in the middle east /central asia/and africa --the american century would be secured --pax americana --unchallenged Us global dominance --would be the reality for at least the next 100 years .



one day , from space , platforms could eventually be orbited that could not only monitor the most minute events on the ground in any nation in the world , the communications as well as military command and control --any challenge to american military power could be monitored from space and nipped in the bud BEFORE it reached the critical mass stage on earth .



the project for a new american century could be considered a done deal --if that pesky saddam had just gotten out dodge city the way sheriff george dubya had told him --but that fucker saddam would not go peacefully into exile --that fucker bought tons of russian weapons and stashed them all over iraq--turned the whole country into an arsenal.



and then when his army refused to fight for him as the generals sold out and each made deals with the americans --the old grizzled bastard's REAL plan --the sunni insurgency --led in large part by the junior officers of the republican guard --took up the fight and through primarily the ied -improvised devices --homemade explosives made from an old artillery shell and detonated by electrical charges triggered by the everyday consumer electronics found in cell phones , garage door openers , and kid's remote control toys--the Us regional invasion of the middle east was stalled in iraq and unable to carry on into syria and iran as originally planned .



at the end of the first gulf war and the kosovo campaign , american military prowess

was viewed by the world as unstoppable .



smart bombs and satellite directed laser guided airwar was seen as unbeatable --no nation could stand up to american military power --until the iraqi insurgency and until the Us proxy war against hezbollah in lebanon put an end to the belief of american military invincibility .



are we seeing the end of the american empire --the end of the dollar? the damage done to the american economy by the ROT of deficit spending allowed accumulate and the monumental costs of this lost war in iraq may be the clogged arteries that even quadruple bypass surgery cannot cure.



at the beginning of the 20th century a soon to be famous russian firebrand politico predicted that the british empire would expand itself to death , the german empire would militarize itself to death and the american empire would spend itself to death .



iraq war reveals the limits of american military power--if the world dumps the shrinking dollar --we will witness the complete end of pax americana.



pax romana--rome's unchallenged dominance of the known world lasted 200 years .

pax britania lasted 100 years , from 1815 and the end of the napoleonic wars to 1914 --the first world war .

pax americana began in 1990 after the demise of the soviet union .



17 years as the world's only undisputed superpower --and the american empire may have run its course --because of unsound fiscal policy allowing banks to print unlimited supplies of worthless money combined with astronomical deficit spending ,

along with the deliberate gutting of the greatest manufacturing base the world had ever seen

and the subsequent sinking of the american middle class back into paycheck to paycheck , one step ahead of homelessness , hand to mouth existence.



live by the deficit--die by the deficit...








 

this is the evidence ? bush anti-iran spin bubble burst by "Whatreallyhappened.com"

"HOW LUCKY FOR THE US MEDIA THAT THIS BOMB SUPPOSEDLY MADE IN IRAN BEARS ENGLISH MARKINGS"  

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com

"Also, Iran gets its weapons, including mortars, from Russia. Russian mortars do NOT use 81MM rounds! They use 82mm.



AND, Modern Iran uses a solar Hijri calendar that is 621 years less than the Western solar calendar, so if this munition were really made in Iran. the date should read 1384 or 1385 (Wikipedia errs in showing it as 1427), rather than 2006! The reason for the uncertainty about those two dates is that the Iranian new year happens in our March. In any event, the numerals should be in Farsi. The letters in the center appear to be "HE". "High Explosive" is a common catagory of mortar shell. But "High Explosive" is English, not Farsi.



The bovine excrement meter just exploded in flames. (But the steel frame is still standing.)"

 

anna nicole smith ...re-united with her loving spouse

i promise to stop making sick jokes about the late anna nicole smith-- like imitating her voice in her "trimspa" commericals saying , "like my body ?"-- while pretending to be a corpse .

bad sekou! bad sekou!

of course , all these guys claiming to be the father of her poor little baby probably has nothing to do with the $474 million dollar settlement that anna might have some day gotten as her part of the 1.6 billion dollar estate of her late oil billionaire 90 year old "husband"

what ? stop snickering ...30 year old women and 90 year old men get married all the time --don't they ?

to paraphrase r kelly --" they did it for love ...they did it for love !"

bad sekou... bad sekou ...you sick puppy.


btw , if memory is correct , didn't she wear a tee shirt saying something
endearing like "rich bitch " to one of the legal hearings about the billionaire's estate ?

war clouds on the horizon...

uss eisenhower


i'd have to agree with the conclusion
that an attack on iran is imminent .

with 2 aircraft carrier groups moved into the persian gulf
and at least one in the eastern mediterranean
-the question has to be asked why?


iraq and afghanistan are land campaigns yet
the new overall Us centcom regional commander is an admiral .

an admiral who when questioned , seemed ignorant about the landwars in both iraq and afghanistan .


the iran strike is believed to be primarily air assault and carrier based instead of a land assault .

iran has no nukes --no evidence of any attempt to build one . so where's the threat ?

again , there is no evidence to support americans claims of iran arming or training the iraq insurgency.

the insurgency needs neither weapons or training from iran.

america seems intent on hiding the fact that saddam and his generals knew they could not win a conventional war against the Us and planned for instead a long term insurgency to be led by loyal mid level and junior officers of the army and republican guard .

rather than admit that the "grizzled old bandito" they hung back in december has outsmarted them , they tried to first blame the insurgency on syria , then on the ridiculous al zarqawi figure and "al-qaeda in iraq" , and now on iran .

the Us media seems ready to forget that saddam had an army of 300,000 , most of whom took off their uniforms and melted back into the populace during the Us invasion .

the iraqis are already trained fighters .

saddam had stockpiles of small arms and explosives strategically stashed all over the country before the invasion --they don't need weapons or expertise from iran .

the iraqi insurgency is a home grown phenomena fueled by 650,000 dead iraqis at the hands of the Us invaders.

bush recently said he has no plans to invade iran ,
but almost the very next day the deputy secretary of state repeated that , the Us has no plans to invade iran as part of the iraq campaign .

when pressed about Us plans to invade iran
as part of a separate iranian campaign ,
he replied , "all options are still on the table"--the same thing that hillary is saying btw...so of course , the democrats and republicans are in this together --just as they were together in the invasion of iraq .

look for an "incident" created to justify hostilities against iran .

the Us does not spend the money that it takes to move that many warships , planes, pilots , sailors and supplies into the region for nothing --unfortunately the signs look like an attack against iran is on the way .


February 3, 2007
Iran: A War Is Coming

by John Pilger

The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on Iran. For the Bush cabal, the attack will be a way of "buying time" for its disaster in Iraq. In announcing what he called a "surge" of American troops in Iraq, George W. Bush identified Iran as his real target. "We will interrupt the flow of support [to the insurgency in Iraq] from Iran and Syria," he said. "And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

"Networks" means Iran. "There is solid evidence," said a State Department spokesman on 24 January, "that Iranian agents are involved in these networks and that they are working with individuals and groups in Iraq and are being sent there by the Iranian government." Like Bush's and Blair's claim that they had irrefutable evidence that Saddam Hussein was deploying weapons of mass destruction, the "evidence" lacks all credibility. Iran has a natural affinity with the Shi'ite majority of Iraq, and has been implacably opposed to al-Qaeda, condemning the 9/11 attacks and supporting the United States in Afghanistan. Syria has done the same. Investigations by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and others, including British military officials, have concluded that Iran is not engaged in the cross-border supply of weapons. General Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said no such evidence exists.

As the American disaster in Iraq deepens and domestic and foreign opposition grows, "neocon" fanatics such as Vice President Cheney believe their opportunity to control Iran's oil will pass unless they act no later than the spring. For public consumption, there are potent myths. In concert with Israel and Washington's Zionist and fundamentalist Christian lobbies, the Bushites say their "strategy" is to end Iran's nuclear threat. In fact, Iran possesses not a single nuclear weapon nor has it ever threatened to build one; the CIA estimates that, even given the political will, Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon before 2017, at the earliest.

Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations – until gratuitous, punitive measures were added in 2003, at the behest of Washington. No report by the International Atomic Energy Agency has ever cited Iran for diverting its civilian nuclear program to military use. The IAEA has said that for most of the past three years its inspectors have been able to "go anywhere and see anything." They inspected the nuclear installations at Isfahan and Natanz on 10 and 12 January and will return on 2 to 6 February. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El-Baradei, says that an attack on Iran will have "catastrophic consequences" and only encourage the regime to become a nuclear power.

Unlike its two nemeses, the US and Israel, Iran has attacked no other countries. It last went to war in 1980 when invaded by Saddam Hussein, who was backed and equipped by the US, which supplied chemical and biological weapons produced at a factory in Maryland. Unlike Israel, the world's fifth military power with thermonuclear weapons aimed at Middle East targets, an unmatched record of defying UN resolutions and the enforcer of the world's longest illegal occupation, Iran has a history of obeying international law and occupies no territory other than its own.

The "threat" from Iran is entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran's "nuclear ambitions," just as the vocabulary of Saddam's non-existent WMD arsenal became common usage. Accompanying this is a demonizing that has become standard practice. As Edward Herman has pointed out, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "has done yeoman service in facilitating this"; yet a close examination of his notorious remark about Israel in October 2005 reveals its distortion. According to Juan Cole, American professor of Modern Middle East History, and other Farsi language analysts, Ahmadinejad did not call for Israel to be "wiped off the map." He said, "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." This, says Cole, "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all." Ahmadinejad compared the demise of the Jerusalem regime to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Iranian regime is repressive, but its power is diffuse and exercised by the mullahs, with whom Ahmadinejad is often at odds. An attack would surely unite them.

The one piece of "solid evidence" is the threat posed by the United States. An American naval buildup in the eastern Mediterranean has begun. This is almost certainly part of what the Pentagon calls CONPLAN 8022, which is the aerial bombing of Iran. In 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 35, entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization, was issued. It is classified, of course, but the presumption has long been that NSPD 35 authorized the stockpiling and deployment of "tactical" nuclear weapons in the Middle East. This does not mean Bush will use them against Iran, but for the first time since the most dangerous years of the cold war, the use of what were then called "limited" nuclear weapons is being openly discussed in Washington. What they are debating is the prospect of other Hiroshimas and of radioactive fallout across the Middle East and Central Asia. Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker last year that American bombers "have been flying simulated nuclear weapons delivery missions...since last summer."

The well-informed Arab Times in Kuwait says Bush will attack Iran before the end of April. One of Russia's most senior military strategists, General Leonid Ivashov says the US will use nuclear munitions delivered by Cruise missiles launched in the Mediterranean. "The war in Iraq," he wrote on 24 January, "was just one element in a series of steps in the process of regional destabilization. It was only a phase in getting closer to dealing with Iran and other countries. [When the attack on Iran begins] Israel is sure to come under Iranian missile strikes. Posing as victims, the Israelis will suffer some tolerable damage and then an outraged US will destabilize Iran finally, making it look like a noble mission of retribution . . . Public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian hysteria, leaks, disinformation etcetera . . . It remains unclear whether the US Congress is going to authorize the war."

Asked about a US Senate resolution disapproving of the "surge" of US troops to Iraq, Vice President Cheney said, "It won't stop us." Last November, a majority of the American electorate voted for the Democratic Party to control Congress and stop the war in Iraq. Apart from insipid speeches of "disapproval," this has not happened and is unlikely to happen. Influential Democrats, such as the new leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and would-be presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have disported themselves before the Israeli lobby. Edwards is regarded in his party as a "liberal." He was one of a high-level American contingent at a recent Israeli conference in Herzilya, where he spoke about "an unprecedented threat to the world and Israel (sic). At the top of these threats is Iran.... All options are on the table to ensure that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon." Hillary Clinton has said, "US policy must be unequivocal.... We have to keep all options on the table." Pelosi and Howard Dean, another liberal, have distinguished themselves by attacking former President Jimmy Carter, who oversaw the Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt and has had the gall to write a truthful book accusing Israel of becoming an "apartheid state." Pelosi said, "Carter does not speak for the Democratic Party." She is right, alas.

In Britain, Downing Street has been presented with a document entitled "Answering the Charges" by Professor Abbas Edalal of Imperial College, London, on behalf of others seeking to expose the disinformation on Iran. Blair remains silent. Apart from the usual honorable exceptions, Parliament remains shamefully silent.

Can this really be happening again, less than four years after the invasion of Iraq which has left some 650,000 people dead? I wrote virtually this same article early in 2003; for Iran now read Iraq then. And is it not remarkable that North Korea has not been attacked? North Korea has nuclear weapons. That is the message, loud and clear, for the Iranians.

In numerous surveys, such as that conducted this month by BBC World Service, "we," the majority of humanity, have made clear our revulsion for Bush and his vassals. As for Blair, the man is now politically and morally naked for all to see. So who speaks out, apart from Professor Edalal and his colleagues? Privileged journalists, scholars and artists, writers and thespians who sometimes speak about "freedom of speech" are as silent as a dark West End theater. What are they waiting for? The declaration of another thousand year Reich, or a mushroom cloud in the Middle East, or both?


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