This video from the USA is called: Seymour Hersh on planned invasion of Iran.
From London daily The Morning Star:
(Sunday 04 February 2007)
TONY Blair‘s echo of George W Bush’s assertion that all options, including military action, are open with regard to Iran indicates that the disastrous occupation of Iraq has not cured the imperialist warmongers of their contempt for international law.
Neither the UN charter nor any other globally accepted statute allows the most powerful country in the world to wield the military big stick.
However, the US president and his Downing Street bag-carrier treat the international rule of law as either an empty slogan or a flag of convenience that they can adopt or cast aside at will.
Far from this being an effective means of dealing with terrorism and so-called rogue states, such wanton lawlessness gives rise to terrorism and serves as a pretext for it.
US retired officers against war with Iran: here.
Opposition to Iran war in US and UK: here.
Update: here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
Iranian weapons for pro Bush Iraqis: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Tell Bush and Congress: Hands Off Iran!
We must act now to stop another war.
In the months since the launch of StopWarOnIran.org, we have made significant steps towards helping to build an international grassroots movement against a U.S. invasion of Iran:
* We have gathered more than 20,000 signers on the Stop War on Iran petition, including Bishop Thomas Gumbleton; Bishop Filipe C Teixeira; author Michael Parenti; former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; author and historian Howard Zinn; George Galloway, MP; Tony Benn, MP; Denis J. Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary-General; Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature; Margarita Papandreou, former First Lady of Greece; and many more.
* We have sent more nearly half a million petitions to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, members of the House and Senate, and the board of directors of Halliburton.
* We have brought Stop War on Iran banners, placards, and literature to rallies, pickets, and progressive events across the U.S. At last Saturday’s national antiwar march in Washington DC, our Stop War on Iran contingent in the march distributed thousands of broadsheets.
But we must do more, and we need your help to do it. Please consider making a donation to Stop War on Iran to help with the expenses of printing literature, organizing rallies and meetings, producing placards and banners, and so much more.
What we do on the next few weeks and months may be decisive. We know that once again using the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction,” the U.S. is moving the forces into place in preparation for a possible attack. The USS Eisenhower strike force, with some 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, has moved into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS Stennis, is now steaming toward the region. The London Telegraph reported this spring that “a major American attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would kill up to 10,000 people and lead to war in the Middle East.”
In addition to moving military forces into place, the U.S. pushed through UN Sanctions on December 23 intended to cut off vital technology and funds to the people of Iran. Donate
History teaches us that we cannot trust politicians in Washington to stop this new war. In 2002, both Democrats and Republicans rushed to vote for war against Iraq and they have voted every year to fund that war.
Over the next few months, the Stop War on Iran campaign is gearing up to organize more meetings, speakouts, and teach-ins to help build a movement to stop the drive to war. We will also be preparing “Stop War on Iran” placards, banners, and leaflets to bring to antiwar and progressive activities, including the national antiwar march on March 17, the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
The only force that will stop this war is a grass roots movement, and we need your help now to help stop a new brutal war in the Middle East. Here’s how you can help:
6 Things you can do to help Stop War on Iran:
1. Sign the petition
2. Donate to help with organizing expenses
3. Tell a friend
4. Volunteer – we need thousands of activists across the country to help build a movement to stop a new war
5. Organize a local meeting – contact us for ideas and speakers
6. Help get the word out – Link to Stop War on Iran – logos available here
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27-01-2007
(from Il Manifesto)
Europe does not exist : what there is just the European face of the North American project
Interview with Samir Amin by Giuliano Battiston
On the eve of the event in Nairobi, Giuliano Battiston interviewed the president of the World Alternatives Forum, economist Samir Amin, for Il Manifiesto. Among the matters covered, the incoherence of the European project. Representatives of the great social forces that are victims of capitalist policies participated from the first meetings out of which the Social Forum came about, which ended up calling itself “anti-Davos”, small but decidedly symbolic.
Capitalism with a human face? Pure illusion. Moderate global alternatives? Ingenuous. Europe. Still to exist. Far from the circumspect rhetoric of the “politically correct”, a tireless promoter of alternative politics and economics to those of the dominant neoliberal dogma, the Egyptian economist Samir Amin has made straight talking, analytic rigour and militant passion the tools of his deep-rooted battle to put people and their needs before profit. Samir Amin is an extremely prolific author, a convinced advocate of the need to join the claims of social justice and criticism of the inherent inequalities of capitalist globalization to a radicalization of political struggle capable of unifying the manifold energy of the alternative world movements. His writings are read and discussed by whoever seeks to convert the heterogeneity of the “movements” into a collective political actor, nor are they less read by those who fear their political effects.
G.B. According to a certain kind of Liberal and Conservative creed, the market will not just be the only tool of social regulation but also that the very promotion and universalization of rights will depend on the processes of economic globalization. How might one articulate the relationship between globalization in its current form and basic rights?
S.A. The argument of the dominant ideology – which absolutely equates democracy with the free market on the basis that it argues there is no democracy without a free market and that the free market itself creates the conditions that guarantee democracy – is a purely propagandist, populist discourse that has nothing to do with historical reality or with its scientific analysis. On the other hand, there is a quite basic contradiction in that dominant rhetoric which, reducing democracy to its merely political dimension, and that dimension only to representative democracy, dissociates it from social questions which are supposed to be capable of regulation by the workings of the free market, or to put it better, of an imaginary market. The theory of imaginary capitalism of conventional economists, for whom the generalized free market would tend to equilibrium, supposes that society is simply made up of the sum of the individuals who comprise it, without taking into account forms of social organization, belonging to the family, social class, nationality : forgetting, that is, what for Marx was a natural truth – taken up later especially by Karl Polanyi – and which is that economic values are embedded in social reality.
G.B. If a fundamental contradiction exists between a global market and basic rights, what tools could open a way enabling the contradiction to be overcome?
S.A. I have no recipes. But I suggest arguing from the perspective of launching strategies of struggle in common around some basic points, the first of which pivots on the idea that there cannot be authentic democracy without social progress. It is an objective that goes in exactly the opposite direction of the dominant discourse, which as has been seen, dissociates both terms and goes far beyond the thought of well-meaning social-liberals and social democrats who suppose the negative effects of capitalism can be mitigated by partial social regualtion. Perhaps one should ditch the term “democracy” and talk rather of “democratization” understood as an endless process and remember that the need to associate social progress and democracy is an objective to be achieved in all the countries of the world. Democracy is also in crisis in countries that are called democratic precisely because, split off from the social question, it ends up reduced to representative democracy and the solution of social and economic problems gets transferred to the market. It is a very dangerous road, in Italy as elsewhere you have voted freely (or almost, since voting is very conditioned by the communications media) and nonetheless many wonder : why vote, if parliament affirms that some decisions have to be left to the market and to globalization? In that way democracy delegitimizes itself and runs the risk of turning into varieties of soft neo-fascism.
G.B. According to your analysis, capitalism and globalization have always existed, but after World War 2 we have entered a new phase in which US strategy is to extend the Monroe doctirne to the whole planet. What do you think are the new phases of this globalization and what are the objectives prioritized in US strategy?
S.A. At the root of this new phase lies a transformation of the nature of imperialism (I speak of imperialism and not “empire” like Toni Negri) : if up until the end of World War 2 imperialism was conjugated in the plural and the imperialist powers were in permanent conflict among themselves, since then we have witnessed a structural transformation which has given birth to a collective imperialism which I call the “triad”, simplifying a little, the US, Europe and Japan, which is to say the collective of the dominant sector of capital who share common interests in the workings of the world system. This system, which represents a new form of imperialism against 85% of the world’s population, “requires” war. This is precisely the point in which the project of the North American establishment comes into the open and which reflects the thinking of the majority of the United States ruling class disposed to military control of the planet. The US has chosen to unleash the first attack on the Middle East for a series of motives, two in particular : for oil and, by means of military control of the main oil regions of the planet, to exercise uncontested leadership in order to make itself a permanent threat for all potential economic and political rivals. But also because they maintain in the region what I call their fixed aircraft carrier, the State of Israel, by means of which they guarantee a tool to apply constant pressure operating via the occupation of Palestine and, as has been seen, also the attack on Lebanon.
G.B. You have argued that the aggressive militarism of the US is not so much a synonym of power as, rather, a means of balancing its economic weakness. Could you explain more what you mean?
S.A. According to the dominant theory, of which unfortunately a large part of European public opinion is also the victim, the military supremacy of the United States is the tip of the iceberg of a superiority ultimately based on economic efficiency and on cultural hegemony. But the reality is that the US finds itself in an extremely weak position which is clear from its huge foreign trade deficit and from that fragility derives the strategic choice of the US ruling class to end up using military violence. Pentagon documents exist which show the US has considered the possibility of a nuclear war which could cost 600 million victims : as Daniel Ellsberg has written, about 100 Holocausts.
G.B. Faced with the leadership of the US, Europe appears incapable of articulating a really alternative political project. How should it move?
S.A. For now, and in spite of so many Europeans who predict it, I do not believe Europe is in any shape to end up being an alternative to US hegemony. It would have to leave NATO, break its military alliance with the US and free itself from liberalism. However, right now, European social and political forces seem to be interested in anything except a project of this type, to the point that – as the old Italian Socialist Party used to in its day – they have instead reinforced Atlanticism and alignment with Nato and liberal socialism. There is no other Europe in sight. And in that sense, Europe does not exist : the European project is simply the European face of the North American project.
G.B. However, the margins to build “another Europe” exist and you yourself have spoken of a conflict of political cultures that sets Europe against the United States.
S.A. The political cultures of Europe were formed over the last centuries around the polarization between Right and Left : whoever was in favour of the Enlightement, the French Revolution, the workers movement, the Russian Revolution, on the Left : whoever were against, on the Right. European history is the history of political cultures of the “non-consensus” which extends the conflict beyond the reductive version of class struggle. On capitalism, which has not been called into question in the United States, if there is a class struggle, there is no politicization of that struggle. In fact, the successive migrations, thanks to which the US American people was formed, have substituted a communitarian culture for the formation of political consciousness. We are witnessing today an attempt to “US-Americanize” Europe and to substitute a culture of consensus for a culture of conflict. It is pretended that there is no Right or Left, that there are no citizens, only more or less wealthy consumers.
G.B. The World Social Forum, according to a superficial reading that has received some attention was born out of the alternative world demonstrations in Seattle. However the Forum’s history has origins much less “western” than what is believed. Can you talk about that?
S.A. So little has the World Social Forum to do with being a “western” creation that its first meeting was in Brazil; then, not by accident, the following meetings were in Mumbai, Bamako, Caracas and Karachi and the Forum which begins tomorrow has chosen Nairobi as its seat. It is handy to remember, too, that in Seattle the World Trade Organization was paralysed not by North American demonstrators but by the vote of the majority of developing countries. One of the first meetings that gave birth to the WSF was the so-called “anti-Davos in Davos”, the small but highly symbolic meeting organized in 1999 by the World Alternative Forum thanks to which representatives of the policies of liebral capitalism could discuss the official agenda of Davos. We were a few but we represented great social forces : Indian, Korean and Brazilian trades unions, women’s and rural workers organizations, associations of West Africa, defenders of social rights, Brazilian movements. From there sprang the idea of holding a new meeting on a bigger scale.
Translated from Italian for sinpermiso.info by Leonor Març
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Posted by: “Corey” cpmondello@yahoo.com cpmondello
Fri Feb 9, 2007 5:11 am (PST)
From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq
Excerpt;
“Everything the advocates of war said would happen hasn’t happened,” says the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, an influential conservative who backed the Iraq invasion. “And all the things the critics said would happen have happened. [The president’s neoconservative advisers] are effectively saying, ‘Invade Iran. Then everyone will see how smart we are.’ But after you’ve lost x number of times at the roulette wheel, do you double-down?”
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/whitehouse200703
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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Posted by: “Corey” cpmondello@yahoo.com cpmondello
Fri Feb 9, 2007 5:11 am (PST)
From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq
Excerpt;
“Everything the advocates of war said would happen hasn’t happened,” says the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, an influential conservative who backed the Iraq invasion. “And all the things the critics said would happen have happened. [The president’s neoconservative advisers] are effectively saying, ‘Invade Iran. Then everyone will see how smart we are.’ But after you’ve lost x number of times at the roulette wheel, do you double-down?”
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/whitehouse200703
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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> Iran: The War Begins
> >
> > By John Pilger
> >
> > 10 February, 2007
> > The New Statesman
> >
> > As opposition grows in America to the failed Iraq adventure, the Bush
> > administration is preparing public opinion for an attack on Iran, its
latest
> > target, by the spring.
> >
> > 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 Tony 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 Shia 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, “neo-con” fanatics such as Vice-President Dick Che- ney 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 programme 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 ElBaradei, 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 its thermo nuclear weapons aimed at Middle East
> > targets and an unmatched record of defying UN resolutions, as 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 demonising 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
how
> > it has been distorted. According to Juan Cole, American professor of
modern
> > Middle East and south Asian history at the University of Michigan, 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 Israeli 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.
> >
> > Nuclear option
> >
> > The one piece of “solid evidence” is the threat posed by the United
States.
> > An American naval build-up in the eastern Mediterranean has begun. This is
> > almost certainly part of what the Pentagon calls CONPLAN 8022-02, which is
> > the aerial bombing of Iran. In 2004, National Security Presidential
> > Directive 35, entitled “Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorisation”, was
> > issued. It is classified, of course, but the presumption has long been
that
> > NSPD 35 authorised 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 discussed openly 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 that 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 from 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 destabilisation.
> >
> > 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 the outraged US will destabilise
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 et cetera . . . It . . . remain[s]
> > unclear . . . whether the US Congress is going to authorise 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 the 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 Herzliya, 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 the 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 Edalat, of Imperial College
London,
> > on behalf of others seeking to expose the disinformation on Iran. Blair
> > remains silent. Apart from the usual honourable exceptions, parliament
> > remains shamefully silent, too.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > In numerous surveys, such as the one released on 23 January by the 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 Edalat 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 theatre. What are they waiting for? The declaration of
another
> > thousand-year Reich, or a mushroom cloud in the Middle East, or both?
> >
> > [John Pilger is a renowned author, journalist and documentary film-maker.
A
> > war correspondent, his writings have appear in numerous magazines, and
> > newspapers.]
> >
> > February 5, 2007 New Statesman (UK)
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Posted by: “hapi22” hapi22@earthlink.net robinsegg
Sat Feb 10, 2007 7:10 am (PST)
PLEASE … please …. please … read this
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/10/04417/0435
It is heavily formatted and is more easily understood at it own link.
The New York Times — without the “help” of the infamous and disgraced
Judith Miller — is once again carrying water for the Bush War-Thirsty
Gang in writing unsubstantiated allegations as if they are fact.
The Bush War-Hungry Gang WANTS WAR WITH IRAN.
And The NYTimes is helping them make their case.
NO one is named.
NO proof is offered.
We are just supposed to “trust” Bush and his War-Lusting Gang.
PLEASE … please …. please … read this
“SHADES OF JUDITH MILLER: NY TIMES GOES SLAM DUNK ON IRAN”
at: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/10/04417/0435
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A word of CAUTION on US claims of Iranian weapons killing GIs
Posted by: “G. Myrick” garymyrick@sbcglobal.net garymyrick
Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:51 am (PST)
It is URGENT that we QUESTION the Bush administration’s attempt to build up to a case against Iran…
———————————————————-
A word of caution on US claims of Iranian weapons killing GIs
by Dave Lindorff / OpEd News
February 12, 2007
If reporters could all stop the heavy breathing for a moment, they might ask the folks at the White House and in the Pentagon to explain why those bombs that they displayed as “evidence” of Iranian perfidy had English words and numbers on them, instead of Persian.
I understand that Iranian manufacturers use English to identify products produced for export, but these devices–if they are Iranian–aren’t really part of their general export product list.
That’s not to say that Iran is not involved in any of the fighting in Iraq. It would be astounding if they were not, being as they are right next door and have an intense interest in the future of Iraq, a country that fought an eight-year, US-supported war against them not long ago. But I think it raises questions about the quality of the US evidence purporting to prove that Iran is providing bombs that can pierce American armored vehicles.
Of course there are other reasons to doubt the administration too, besides the simple fact that it has shown itself to be seriously truth-challenged. A major problem is that most of the Americans who have died in Iraq, and who are continuing to die in Iraq, are being killed by Sunni fighters, and Iran has been backing the Shia side there, not the Sunnis.
At least until Bush came up with his bright idea of escalating the Iraq War by attacking Moktada al Sadr’s forces in Baghdad last month, the Shia forces were leaving American troops alone, and were focused on killing Sunnis and the occasional Brit.
The other thing is that these shaped charges are not all that sophisticated, for all the huffing and puffing over at the Pentagon. Basically it’s a matter of making a concave bottom of the blast cannister, which converts into a high-velocity slug in the explosion, becoming an excellent armor penetrator ahead of the explosion.
This is not rocket science, and is easily within the technological capabilities of the insurgent forces in Iraq.
In fact, if you google “Iraq and shaped charges,” you discover that the Sunni insurgents have been using shaped charges against U.S. forces for well over a year and a half, to devastating effect. On October 10, 2005, for example, the BBC ran a story by Neil Arun headlined, “Shaped bombs magnify Iraq attacks.” It stated, “According to defense sources, basic armor-piercing weapons are easy to manufacture, drawing on principles discovered more than a century ago and in use since World War Two.”
It adds that the system uses something called the “Munroe Effect” after an US Navy scientist, Charles Munroe, who invented the technique in–get this–1888.
So clearly there is no need for Iran to be providing such devices to Iraqi insurgents.
Why do mainstream American reporters and editors–like the reporters at ABC and MSNBC–have to repeatedly display such ignorant and willful gullibilty? Why can’t they at least check their own clip files or do a 30-second google search before they run with the garbage being spoon-fed to them by by Washington’s official war-mongers?
Speaking as a reporter, I have to say I’m embarrassed for them.
///
Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books (“This Can’t Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy” and “Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal”). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is “The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin’s Press, May 2006). His writing is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
Source: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_dave_lin_070212_iran_charges_3a_lying_.htm
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ALSO SEE (Note the date):
Iraq bombs from ‘Iran’ were created by UK security services
Terror devices used by the IRA in a vicious murder campaign in Ulster blew up British servicemen as the world blamed Iran
16 Oct 2005
Eight British soldiers killed during ambushes in Iraq were the victims of a highly sophisticated bomb first used by the IRA, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. The soldiers, who were targeted by ‘insurgents’ as they travelled through the country, died after being attacked with bombs triggered by infra-red beams. The bombs were developed by the IRA using technology passed on by the security services in a botched “sting” operation more than a decade ago. This CONTRADICTS the British government’s claims that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is helping Shia insurgents to make the devices. The Independent on Sunday can also reveal that the bombs and the firing devices used to kill the soldiers, as well as two private security guards, were initially created by the UK security services as part of a counter-terrorism strategy at the height of the troubles in the early 1990s.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/ulster/article320004.ece
Re: A word of CAUTION on US claims of Iranian weapons killing GIs
Posted by: “robinsegg” hapi22@earthlink.net robinsegg
Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:17 am (PST)
More on this important issue at:
http://www.juancole.com/2007/02/nyt-falls-for-bogus-iran-weapons.html
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Pentagon Caught Red Handed in an attempt to Frame Iran: Iran Does No
Posted by: “Corey” cpmondello@yahoo.com cpmondello
Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:46 pm (PST)
Pentagon Caught Red Handed in an attempt to Frame Iran: Iran Does Not Manufacture 81MM Mortar Shells
February 13, 2007
Pentagon carelessness fabricating bogus “evidence” against Iran is really quite stupendous. As I wrote here yesterday, the 81mm mortar shell offered up to the complaisant corporate media as “evidence” Iran is supplying weaponry to the Shi’a of Iraq is an obvious ruse, as the date on the proffered shell does not follow the Muslim calendar and other markings are in English when it only makes sense they would appear in Persian script.
Full story;
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NIM20070213&articleId=4772
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