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POPS Obama's Legacy That far exceeds what's needed to turn on the lights, but it's also beyond what's needed for a basic nuclear weapons program. Consider North Korea, which manufactured two limited yield nuclear weapons using only a plutonium reactor, a plutonium reprocessing facility, and -- presumably -- some sort of weapons laboratory. Why is Iran pumping billions more into building and protecting triple the number of facilities required to build a basic nuclear weapon, akin to the Fat Man or Little Boy bombs detonated in 1945? The answer could be that Tehran is skipping basic weapons construction and moving towards an advanced thermonuclear design. Consider that they've already experimented with advanced weapons designs like two-point implosion, nuclear triggers, and have built their own facility at Arak that could be used to produce both tritium, which is a suspected boosting agent in hydrogen bomb designs, as well as weapons-grade plutonium.
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POPSThe Iran Attack Plan Iran's acknowledgement that it is developing a second uranium-enrichment facility does little to dispel the view that the regime is developing a weapons program. Israel must consider not just whether to proceed with a strike against Iran"but how. By Anthony H. Cordesman
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POPSThe Madness of King Obama--US Trying To BLOCK Sanctions Against Iran !?!?!
Sources are also predicting a pointed debate between the heads of the industrialized nations over an appropriate response to Iranian authorities' suppression of reformist demonstrations in Iran led by Mir Hossein Mousavi and other Iranian opposition leaders. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hinted in a newspaper interview earlier in the week that the G8 is due to decide on new financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Berlusconi disclosed that he had spoken with the heads of the G8 nations and has discussed such steps with them. According to the Italian prime minister, "the general leaning is toward sanctions." However, diplomatic sources in New York reported that American officials are working behind the scenes to prevent new sanctions from being imposed against Iran. U.S. officials claimed that a tough stance toward Iran could backfire, bringing about an opposite outcome to that desired by those who support such measures.
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POPSU.S. Foreign Aid to Israel Illegal due to Israel's WMD The official report of Israel's nuclear weaponry makes it illegal for the U.S. to provide foreign aid to Israel! Note too that Obama recently "ducked" the question from the most veteran reporter in Washington, Helen Thomas (a real journalist). This demonstrates the real fear of the Israeli Lobby by Obama too. Why not uphold the law? Why the deliberate blindness toward Israel? Here is a push-point to challenge and change U.S. foreign policy and cut spending. By law, the U.S. would have to cease providing billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel if it determined the country had a nuclear weapons program. That's because the so-called Symington Amendment, passed in 1976, bars assistance to countries developing technology for nuclear weapons proliferation.
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POPSRussian President Won't "Haggle" Over US Missile Defense Plans Iranian nuclear program continues Russia is in charge of construction at the Bushehr site Iran has repeatedly rejected calls by the UN Security Council -- of which Russia and the United States are permanent members -- to halt uranium enrichment, despite the imposition of three sets of sanctions. The United States and its European allies believe that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge that Tehran denies, saying that the program is purely civilian. Iran recently began testing its Bushehr nuclear plant, a construction project run by Russia. Last week, Tehran said its first nuclear power station could go on line within months. On Monday, Clinton reiterated Washington's willingness to engage with Iran if it "unclenches its fist." This represents a clear switch in policy from the previous US administration, which made talks dependent upon Iran halting the enrichment process.
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POPSIran Buys Wheat From US For 1st time in 27 years. Capitalist Americans at work I guess. However, I hope they are charging an arm & a leg OR we are using some better bargaining chips. As Americans, we've bent over backwards to do our best to see that the *average* population does not suffer because of the policies of it's government; however....when does the benefactor say "stop biting the hand that feeds you"?
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POPSRisk to U.S. troops seen if Israel strikes Iran And I found this tidbit interesting: "American military analysts familiar with Israel's thinking said the government there remained uncertain whether an attack on Iran made strategic sense and whether such a strike would prove a decisive blow against Tehran's nuclear program. The subject is controversial in Israel, and many Israelis strongly oppose a strike."
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POPS Media Ignore Saddam's WMD Intent When Piro's interview came out in my book, "The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack," NBC Nightly News, Fox News, and Newsmax ran the news of Saddam's admission, but few newspapers published a story. The revelation should have hit Page One of every newspaper. According to the media spin, just about everyone in the White House has left President Bush except his wife Laura, Vice President Dick Cheney, and his two dogs. During the Clinton administration, anything that might make the president look good was quickly leaked to the press.
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POPSMullahs' Lies Verified by Intel Report Aren't we exactly 0[where we were in 2004 on? It remains, as it was, that the intentions of the political-Islamist mullahs of Iran cannot be trusted to develop a nuclear program of ANY kind. It matters NOT whether there is known to be development related strictly to weapons. It seems to me that evidence of a direct path to weapons was a mystery then, as now, but that was not the #1 issue then, as it SHOULD NOT be now. The deal has been modulated away from the first hard line. That Iran can't be allowed to have free reign with uranium enrichment of any kind and it must cease. Whether or not there is a current active weapons specific program right now.
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POPSRussia Refutes NIE: Iran Never Had Nuke Program
Russia contradicts the National Intel Estimate, as they have continuously done, saying that Iran NEVER had a nuclear weapons program, which of course Cheney got inserted into the redacted and delayed NIE report. (This is a continuation on two previous posts on same subject that ties them together). Israel and the neoconservatives have always wanted to create a pretext for war on Iran, just like on Iraq. While Cheney said "there is no doubt Saddam possesses weapons of mass destruction...", we can safely assert, upon this and the previous, "There is no doubt that Cheney, Bush, and the neoconservatives lied about weapons of mass destruction intelligence", which was "fixed around the policy" to go to war based upon the Project for New American Century (PNAC) blueprint for a "new middle east" issued in Sept. 2000, prior to 9/11, hinged upon "a catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor". Perjury is a high crime, no misdemeanor. Impeachment is the minimum that should be p
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POPSBush holds line on 'dangerous' Iran Lies, lies and more lies. The man must have completely lost his credibility by now. Iran may be potentially dangerous, but is not the fact that 40m Americans don't have/can't afford health insurance dangerous for them.
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POPS Iran’s Secret Nuclear Arms Activities The White House hopes thereby to compel Tehran to level on its military nuclear program, whose existence it has so far denied, and demonstrate the failure of the international nuclear watchdog’s director, Mohammed ElBaradei and his vast inspection organization, to uncover the underhand nuclear activities in progress in Iran and Syria. Washington hopes that once the real facts are in the open, Russia and China, which back ElBaradei, will endorse a third round of UN Security Council sanctions, tough enough to progressively place Iran under economic siege. European companies, especially in Germany, fear that their economic boycott of trade with Iran will create a gap into which Russia and China will eagerly step. The failure of the Russian president’s talks in Tehran last month left him more amenable to an accommodation with Bush than before. His cooperation in the Bush strategy would leave China as the only standout DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
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POPS U N Ratchets Up 'Global Warming' Hysteria Reducing emissions can be met at moderate cost relative to global GDP, but the window of opportunity for quickly reaching a safer, stable level is closing fast. “We need a new ethic by which every human being realises the importance of the challenge we are facing and starts to take action through changes in lifestyle and attitude Green groups said the Valencia document had rammed home the dangers of warming more forcefully than in any other assessment issued in the 19-year history of the IPCC. ,“This is the strongest document the IPCC has produced,” said Hans Verolme, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF’s) Global Climate Change Program… Emissions are now spiralling, driven especially by carbon dioxide (CO2) spewed from coal-fired plants in fast-growing China and India, and Kyoto’s present commitments will not even dent the problem. Reducing emissions implies a cost in converting to cleaner energy or more efficient energy use.
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POPS Syria Erases The Evidence After Israeli Air-Strike The striking difference in the satellite photos surprised even some outside experts who were skeptical that Syria might be developing a nuclear program. Cirincione said the photographic evidence "tilts toward a nuclear program" but does not prove that Syria was building a reactor. Besides, he said, even if it was developing a nuclear program, Syria would be years away from being operational, and thus not an imminent threat The purported reactor at the site is believed to be modeled on a North Korean model, which uses buildings a few feet longer on each side than the Syrian building that vanished. Albright called the Syrian site "consistent with being a North Korean reactor design." Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States, denied in an interview last week with The Dallas Morning News that his country was trying to build a reactor
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POPSGaza power cut off: Collective punishment
This is an act of slow, deliberate genocide not to mention icollective punishment. It's like having your electricity, water supplies, food and medical supplies all slowly reduced and strangled because someone else robbed a bank. Hideous behavior. Unjust. So while the US was debating about Armenian genocide a 100 years ago we ignore the genocide right before our eyes. While this goes on, also the US threatens war on allegations and accusations that Iran intends to have a nuclear weapon in 3 or 4 or 5 years while Iran denies U.S. accusations that its uranium enrichment program is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, saying it is only for civilian energy purposes. The mantra: Iran has nuclear weapon ambitons while the lies of Weapons of Mass Destruction still echo in our ears!? Asking for justice here is like sheep asking wolves for mercy. We need to elect better leaders and kick these bad leaders out of their jobs. http://www.americancitizenstogether.org
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POPSFOX News says top U.S. officials pushing for Iran strike Serious discussions are now underway in the Bush administration on "the costs and benefits of military action against Iran," focusing on two options - "less invasive scenarios" involving a blockade, and "full-scale aerial bombardment." The channel cited a foreign diplomat as saying the George W. Bush administration "has just about had it with Iran... They tried the diplomatic process. China is now obstructing them at the U.N. Security Council and the Russians are tucking themselves behind them." Dangerous words indeed, considering Iran is a neighbour of Russia and that these Nations have formed a military alliance. Keep pushing and someone is going to push back and hard.
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POPSIs a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more? Must-read, in-depth article from Seymour Hersh on the lengthy lead-up to Rumsfeld's ouster (he was kept in the dark until the end!), what the new leadership of Secretary of Defense Gates might signal, the dwindling options Rumsfeld's war has left us in Iraq, and the renewed neoconservative clamor to invade Iran to make up for the loss in Iraq. (Double down on Tehran.) The Pentagon consultant said that he and many of his colleagues in the military believe that Iran is intent on developing nuclear-weapons capability. But he added that the Bush Administration’s options for dealing with that threat are diminished, because of a lack of good intelligence and also because "we’ve cried wolf" before.
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