Given that an amphibious attack has been targeted against Iran from the Arabian Sea, with a provocative US blockade in the Gulf of Oman to choke Iran’s sealanes of communications it is prudent to pay attention to any movements in the waters surrounding Iran. #msg-3480614
Bahrain's king said Saturday that his country was ready to send a naval force to help safeguard Iraqi territorial waters, if asked by the new Iraqi government, the official Bahrain News Agency reported.
Bahrain is a member of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC).
It is entirely possible the United States, an ally of the UAE, is the hidden force behind the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) request that the European Union mediate the issue of the disputed islands between Iran and the UAE in an attempt to create an unhealthy political climate. The involvement of the EU has the potential to ignite an international crisis and divide the Arabs. This looks like the United States is attempting to escalate the territorial dispute as a means to diminish Iran.
The dispute over the islands is unresolved and I am not sure who legally owns them; they are, however, full of oil reserves and their strategic position could allow a country to influence the Gulf's valuable shipping lane, or even to close off the Gulf all together. #msg-3136614
Iran has long been targeted for invasion or takeover. The CIA planned a guerrilla campaign in Iran to counter communists in 1953. The Mossadegh government, which drew the ire of Washington and London because of its persistent attempts to increase control over the country's oil resources, was toppled in an August 19, 1953, coup led by US-backed general Fazlollah Zahedi who allowed pro-American Shah Reza Pahlavi to return from exile. #msg-3403314
On July 8, 1996, Richard Perle, now the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory group that reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, presented a written document to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spelling out a new Israeli foreign policy, calling for a repudiation of the Oslo Accords and the underlying concept of "land for peace"; for the permanent annexation of the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip; and for the elimination of the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad, as a first step towards overthrowing or destabilizing the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. #msg-3447668
Possessing excellent defense capability Army Marine Force Navy commander Abbas Mohtaj said here Friday, the marine force is ready to protect the sea borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. #msg-3379634
Bahrain’s intention to send a naval force to help safeguard Iraqi territorial waters may be in preparation for the US blockade in the Gulf of Oman which is an important strategy in the invasion of Iran. This strategy would involve controlling the Strait of Hormuz the real prize in the Persian Gulf island dispute.
This is not good. Bush will have to reinstitute the draft as he spreads his war.
-Am
Bahrain ready to safeguard Iraqi waters
Bahrain's king said Saturday that his country was ready to send a naval force to help safeguard Iraqi territorial waters, if asked by the new Iraqi government, the official Bahrain News Agency reported.
Insurgents Kill 5 Iraqi GIs at Checkpoint
Updated 9:12 AM ET July 3, 2004
By DANICA KIRKA
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Insurgents attacked an Iraqi checkpoint south of the capital on Saturday, killing five national guard soldiers and wounding five more, hospital officials said.
West of Baghdad, a U.S. Marine died of wounds suffered the day before during operations in Anbar province, the military said, giving no other details.
U.S. forces, meanwhile, said they uncovered a bomb-making facility in Baghdad and detained 51 people believed linked to an insurgent cell alleged to have been planting roadside bombs in the area.
Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment discovered several assembled bombs and four vehicles they believed were to be rigged as car bombs at sites in southern Baghdad. Also found were several automatic weapons, ammunition, explosives and the Iraqi dinar equivalent of about $8,750.
U.S. troops and their allies are hit nearly every day by bombs planted on roadsides. Over a dozen car bombs in the country last month killed scores of people.
"These discoveries deal a blow to anti-Iraqi forces," 1st Cavalry spokesman Lt. Col. James Hutton said in a statement.
In the southern city of Basra, one British soldier was wounded and two military vehicles damaged when a roadside bomb exploded Saturday, a British military spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
The five national guard soldiers were killed and five others wounded at a checkpoint in Mahmudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, said Dawoud Hussein, a local hospital director.
The U.S. Marine was the fourth to die this month in Anbar, a Sunni-dominated area that has been a hotbed of anti-U.S. resistance.
An angry crowd of Iraqis held a funeral procession in the streets of Ramadi, a volatile city in the province, carrying four wooden coffins containing they said were four Iraqi youths killed by U.S. tank fire. The U.S. military called the report "unsubstantiated."
With violence continuing, Iraq's deputy Foreign Minister Hamid al-Bayati called on France and Germany, the chief opponents of the war in Iraq, to help build and train his country's security forces.
"We need to build a new army and we need to build security forces and police," al-Bayati said in an interview with Al-Arabiya television. "We also need training for these institutions. The NATO countries, especially Germany and France, are important countries and we need the help from these countries."
About 160,000 foreign troops, mostly American, have stayed on after Monday's handover of sovereignty to the new interim government. The foreign troops are led by U.S. commanders with a U.N. mandate to help maintain security.
Bahrain's king said Saturday that his country was ready to send a naval force to help safeguard Iraqi territorial waters, if asked by the new Iraqi government, the official Bahrain News Agency reported.
The announcement by Bahrain's Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa followed offers by fellow Arab nations Jordan and Yemen to send troops to help shore up security in Iraq.
Also Saturday, a senior Yemeni government official clarified that country's offer, telling the Saba news agency that the country would only send troops after coalition forces have left.
"Yemen is willing to participate in an international peacekeeping force ... after the coalition troops withdraw and Iraq regains its full sovereignty, and if the brothers in Iraq ask us to," the unnamed official said.
No Arab nation has contributed soldiers to the U.S.-led coalition. Iraqi authorities have not comments on the offers.
At a summit last week in Istanbul, Turkey, NATO leaders offered military training to the new Iraqi government. However, France and Germany, which had strongly opposed the Iraq war, rejected the U.S. notion that an alliance training mission could develop into a NATO presence in the Iraq.
French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder insisted that any training must be outside Iraq.
Al-Bayati argued that help from the French and the Germans was more important for the Iraqis than for the Americans.
"We want balanced relations with all the countries of the world, and we are seeking the help of the international community to build a new Iraq built on democracy and respect for human rights," al-Bayati said.
An oil pipeline outside the southern Iraqi town of Zubayr was breached Saturday, but sabotage was not suspected and oil flow was unaffected, a British military spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Unless you’re in the upper echelons of the American Political Science Association, or involved with the academics of the German Lutheran Mecca known as Valparaiso University in Greater Chicagoland, the name of Dr. Richard Balkema probably doesn’t resonate as a household name. This is a pity, since his steel-trap archival mind, analytical and communicative teaching skills, and basic human decency have been serving professional colleagues and mere student mortals with a Servant’s heart for decades.
It was Dr. Balkema who enhanced my own ability as a mere college freshmen in 1973 to quickly collate a diverse and voluminous variety of public sources of information, to read and evaluate them, to think independently, and to search for the deeper meaning behind what was–and wasn’t–printed in the controlled and corporately owned American news media. His tutelage has served me well for over thirty (30) years. To the extent that I effectively share anything of value with my own readers and friends in a variety of diverse locations and disciplines around the world, he may be legitimately recognized as one of the great influences upon my life that God has graciously bestowed along the linear passageway of time.
A brief collation of excellent public sources of information, followed by quiet reading, prayer, and consultation has recently led me to several political conclusions I sincerely hope are wrong. Only time will tell.
The first of these is that the United States--and/or its surrogate presence in the Middle East, a Sharon-led Likudnik government in Israel–will engage in a preemptive military strike against the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) regime in Iran and its budding nuclear facilities at Bushehr and Natanz. The only serious questions remaining are the timing of the strike, and whether or not an American-Israeli air assault on the facilities in question will be followed by a larger American military application of aerial and ground forces to enact the Neo-Conservative mantra of “regime change” in Tehran.
The emerging public data on this from reputable sources is beginning to multiply ominously. Eric Margolis’s piece for Pat Buchanan’s June 21st issue of The American Conservative entitled, “Iran Builds a Bomb: Will Joint U. S.-Israeli Attacks Be Bush’s October Surprise?” is but one excellent place to begin examination of the impending dangers. Scott Peterson’s essay on June 3rd for the Christian Science Monitor is yet another. And the excellent English language posts on the IRI’s clash with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Bush Administration, and the Europeans provided by Safa Haeri, Editor-in-Chief of Iran Press Service are simply invaluable information for both American and international readers concerned about the direction in which events seem to be moving with inexorable speed. The icing on the cake for web browsers will be the June 10th posting on the Guerrilla News Service of Bush & Sharon: The Oil Connection by Conn Hallinan, a provost at the University of California and consultant for Foreign Policy Focus. Mr. Hallinan quotes my good friend, Gordon Thomas of Ireland, author of Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, as indicating the Bushehr and Natanz preemptive military operations are a virtual certainty in a reasonably proximate time frame. Thomas is a brilliant thinker and writer with some of the best sources within the Israeli Mossad, American CIA, and British MI6 of any man alive. As E. F Hutton would put it, when he talks, smart people listen. And if all of this seems especially daunting, the reading public would do well to read the text of United States House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 398, which passed the House on May 6th and was sent to the United States Senate for similar consideration and ultimate adoption. The subject? Iranian nuclear weapons development. The proposed means of American governmental opposition to this scenario? “All appropriate means.” Translation: Get ready for a good preemptive, offensive military strike by the United States against Iran.
American military involvement in this looming escapade is a cataclysmic disaster within sight on the horizon of dusk, headed toward an endless night. In the first place, as New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer chronicles in his brilliant work, All the Shah’s Men, it was the covert intervention and involvement of the American CIA in overthrowing Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 that led directly to the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 and the ensconcement of a theocratically oriented Islamic regime in that country. Well meaning, but misguided Iranian human rights groups who now openly call for American military and intelligence involvement in overthrowing the IRI regime must understand that the blowback from such an operation would be incalculable, both in Iran and around the world. It would produce the very support for radical Islamic elements in Tehran currently on the wane in popularity due to a quarter of a century of bad economics and political repression beyond description. The 50 million Iranians born since the Revolution are the key to getting rid of the odious Mullahs and installing an indigenous government that repristinates neither Islamic fundamentalism nor a monarchy in the back pocket of Western oil consortiums and the Sharon regime in Tel Aviv. Iranian expatriates in the United States and Europe who yearn to return home under such a new regime, must be willing to risk their own lives and treasures in the recapturing of their beloved nation–not those of average Americans in Peoria. It simply cannot occur in any other fashion–nor should it. And Iranian human rights organizations with palpable links to American Corporate and Zionist associations and sources of funding will forfeit their own claim to be a reservoir of hope for Iranians worldwide who seek neither theocracy nor a repeat of the tragedy of 1953-79. The IRI will expose these links–while reminding an indigenous Iranian population that the worst tragedies and excesses of its predecessor were embodied in the dreaded repression of the Shah’s SAVAK secret police–a creation of both the American CIA and the Israeli Mossad.
And assuming that striking Bushehr and Natanz with American air power is in the moral framework and political interest of the average American (a major assumption for the sake of argument), it will fly in both American and world opinion only under the most specific, publicly enumerated, and stringently defined guidelines. This is especially the case after the quagmire created by George W. Bush and Company in Iraq in the last 16 months. What are these guidelines? I believe they include the following:
1. The employment of consistent, coalitional international diplomacy against the IRI regime in Iran on the issue of the latter’s burgeoning nuclear program, with a first-resort to political, economic, and trade sanctions against Tehran in the event of a demonstrable non-compliance with the inspections and standards of the IAEA where the Bushehr, Natanz, and Arak projects are concerned. Vladimir Putin’s involvement in this process is essential. Mr. Putin is no idiot where it comes to his own self-interest and that of Russia, which assumed construction of the Bushehr reactor in Iran after the Siemens Corporation of Germany bowed to American pressure and ceased involvement with the project. He will surely grasp that a nuclear Tehran under IRI auspices will eventually arm Putin’s own Islamic adversaries in Chechnya, currently conducting terrorist operations on an ongoing basis within the Russian President’s own capital city and nation.
2. The United States cannot reasonably insist upon Iranian submission to IAEA inspection and potential dismantlement of militarily-related nuclear programs without insisting upon the application of the same standard to the government of Israel, its Dimona nuclear-weapons production plant, and its Institute of Biological Sciences and Research in Tel Aviv, among other operations and sites in that country that meet neither IAEA standards nor those of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPF). The notion that Tehran has no right or legitimate claim to Weapons of Mass Destruction while the regime of international war criminal Ariel Sharon does, is morally and politically unsustainable. Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry must jointly level with their financial backers in the American-Israeli lobby in saying publicly that this tenet is non-negotiable in the wider context of fairness and international stability. The necessary confrontation with the blood-stained Sharon regime and its supporters within the continental United States over Israeli nuclear and biological weaponry must similarly be accompanied by American insistence that the days of Uncle Sam’s bankrolling of ongoing Israeli land thievery, illegal occupation of territories, and genocidal policies against Palestinians are over as of right now. Preemptive military action against the enemies of Israel in the Middle East without addressing the honest grievances of the former against the latter is a simple case of undiluted immorality. It will also achieve ongoing blowback: continued and exponential increases in hatred and ill-will toward the United States that will only increase the membership numbers and activities of Middle Eastern terrorist organizations hell-bent on retaliation against America both abroad and within her continental borders.
3. Any proposed American or Israeli preemptive strike on Iran must be accompanied by a complete and verifiable public case to both the American and international communities that Tehran possesses a nuclear program specifically related to military purposes and intended first-strike utilization. The package of lies and absurdities presented by Colin Powell to the UN on Dubya’s behalf before the preemptive strike against Saddam Hussein and Iraq creates a future high-bar standard for the United States in proving a case against the Iranians that even exceeds what Adlai Stevenson legitimately presented to the UN on John Kennedy’s behalf in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The international community–and an increasingly angry American public–will not let Mr. Bush repeat his smoke-and-mirrors performance of a year ago–nor should they.
4. Mr. Bush and a comatose American Congress largely owned by the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) must read Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. It informs them (and the rest of us), that the Founding Fathers of America eschewed monarchy and capricious foreign wars. The legal and American Constitutional prerogative to declare war between the United States and any foreign power rests solely in the Congress of the United States. Mr. Bush has committed the United States to a $200 billion dollar war of counterinsurgency and foreign occupation in Iraq on the basis of fraudulent intelligence and analysis provided by American Neo-Conservative advisors with direct and indirect links to the Israeli government–and a crook named Ahmad Chalabi with alleged links to the IRI regime in Iran—and without a Congressional Declaration of War according to the Constitutional standards of Article 1, Section 8. Dubya should not be facing a re-election bid, but impeachment hearings and resolutions. He and his pals–along with Mr. Kerry—should not be allowed a similar and tragic free pass in Iran, or anywhere else.
Finally, the American Presidential elections are approximately four (4) months away. The War for Israel and Empire Party that owns the political process in the United States has every bet covered at the race track in the first Tuesday in November. The chances are excellent, the betting odds prohibitive, that either Bush or Kerry will lead the American people into more war, death, and debt in the months beyond. Arguments about Iran, Israel, and Middle Eastern policy that presently seem too esoteric for average Americans to comprehend, or to follow, will become pivotal in the first half of 2005. Why? Because presently well-hidden legislation on Capitol Hill in the twin forms of Senate Bill 89 and House of Representatives Bill 163 plans to re-institute a policy of military draft and conscription in the United States after the Republicrat War Party “wins” another Presidential election. Pax Romanica has undergone a metamorphosis into Pax Americana. But the Regime may not understand the Second American Revolution brewing against both Washington and Tel Aviv. Stay tuned.
The beginning of this Second American Revolution is being duly ignored by the Bush Administration and the Republicrat Establishment at its peril. This coming week in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, between June 22nd and 27th, begins the National Convention of the Constitution Party, which will be on the ballot in approximately 42 states by the first Tuesday in November. Its presumptive Presidential nominee is a Baltimore-based Christian attorney named Michael Peroutka. Mr. Peroutka is notably a Christian conservative who strenuously opposes un-Constitutional wars and foreign interventions on behalf of Pax Americana and the Elite that drives it. His message is beginning to resonate among Americans previously enamored of George W. Bush and an Israel First Foreign Policy. The American Media will ignore him as long as it can. Yes, he will not win the election in November. But by June of 2005, he will be heralded as the Prophet of the Old American Republic when his predictions about the direction of a Bush-Kerry led America are fulfilled in a wider Middle Eastern war fueled by the wholesale drafting of American sons and daughters for the sacrifice of life and limb in a foreign conflict inimical to the American interest as defined by the Founding Fathers of the nation--- and the Farewell Address foreign policy of President George Washington undoubtedly shaped by the wintry snows and adversities at Valley Forge during the American War of Independence in the 18th century.
Pastor Dankof is an orthodox Lutheran minister and a freelance writer, occasionally contributing to Iran Dokht, Al Bawaba, Nile Media, CASCFEN, and other Internet news sites. Once a 3rd party candidate for the United States Senate in Delaware [2000], he maintains the web-site Mark Dankof’s America
The following text lists Pakistan as an occupied country.
The 70,000 Pakistani troops that have been scouring the tribal border areas in tandem with the US Task Force 121 and British SAS troops will never get the “high value targets” because they are either not there or getting them is not a priority at the moment when the focus in on melting down the “most high value target” — Pakistan.
Resistance to the US occupation will be taken person by person and tribe by tribe. Like Lieutenant General Safdar Hussain, there would be other commanders, singling out other tribes like Yargul Khel and state: “I’m determined to punish this tribe and make them an example.” More and more innocents would be forced in thousands to leave their homes and orchards. It is just the beginning of the war.
"The actual “high value target” — Pakistan — has already been captured. General Musharraf, however, ignores that he won’t be able to play around this game of deceiving both the East and the West for far too long."
In the U.S. strategy for the invasion of Iran, Pakistan would be the base for mounting massive air reconnaissance and surveillance of Iran. Apparently one of the reasons for the military quest for the ‘high value target’ in Pakistan is the occupation of Pakistan, the country rather than the ‘terrorist’ being the real ‘high value target’. An occupied Pakistan would be used as a base from which to attack Iran.
While this may change, an amphibious attack was originally targeted against Iran from the Arabian Sea, with a provocative US blockade in the Gulf of Oman to choke Iran’s sealanes of communications. Pakistan would be the base for mounting massive air reconnaissance and surveillance of Iran, while Iranian dissidents, backed by the US army, would launch land assaults from the Iraq-Iran border. Diplomatic sources say, the main body of the plan would remain the same, although component tactics could change. http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3480614
-Am
Pakistan: the "high value target" by Abid Ullah Jan (Friday 02 July 2004)
"The actual “high value target” — Pakistan — has already been captured. General Musharraf, however, ignores that he won’t be able to play around this game of deceiving both the East and the West for far too long."
In March 2004, Colin Powell unveiled the plan to classify Pakistan as a "major non-Nato ally" and refrained from publicly criticising General Musharraf's handling of the controversy over Abdul Qadeer Khan.
In a reciprocal move, Pakistan’s military dictator had to send tens of thousands of troops to occupy South Waziristan and claim the surrounding of a "high-value target" from Al-Qaeda. Many lives have been lost since then but the “high-value-target” still remains one of the post September 11, 2001 mysteries, many not knowing that Pakistan, itself a high value target has long surrendered and is under total control.
It is not that the General is in the habit of making claims that later on prove wrong. Undoubtedly, he declared the war in Afghanistan over; Osama and Mulla Omar dead; Daniel Pearl alive; 85 per cent Pakistanis his supporters, and the widely criticised referendum as "free, fair and transparent." However, he makes such statements on purpose.
This time the purpose for highlighting a "high value target" was to use Pakistani forces for a war on Pakistan — for invasion, occupation, massacre, home demolitions and human right abuses like any occupied force. Occupation of South Waziristan followed almost like invading another nation.
Helicopter gunship have been used to spew fire from safe stand off heights from where, by implication, it is impossible to separate a terrorist from accompanying civilians. Heavy artillery – an even more undiscriminating weapon – is regularly employed. US U-2 spy planes, flying at 70,000 feet, unmanned Predator drones, equipped with Hellfire missiles, and unattended ground sensors (UGS) dropped from air at passes on the Hindu Kush are samples of the technological weight thrown against a people for the may be non-existent “high value targets.”
Well before General Musharraf’s declaration of a “high value target,” the US had forced Pakistan to take all the necessary steps for a successful operation. In an extraordinary development, the Pashtun Corps Commander in Peshawar, Lieutenant-General Ali Jan Orakzai, was retired prematurely. Major General Safdar Hussain, from Punjab, took his place and instantly dispatched troops to South Waziristan.
Orakzai has been in Washington's bad books since 2003, when he openly condemned as “discriminatory” the behavior of US authorities towards Pakistanis. He made these stinging remarks at functions hosted by the Pakistani embassy in the US. Despite being an official guest, Orakzai was forced to go through a plethora of screenings and checks at the immigration counter on his arrival.
There were reports about the US authorities’ special request for splitting armed forces on ethnic basis. It was proposed that in the next phase of Pakistan’s war on Pakistan, all Pashtun officers should be separated from non-Pashtun officers. Pashtoon are considered sympathetic to the ethnic Pashtun in the areas chosen for occupation.
Several soldiers and a few officers of Pashtun origin have refused to participate in actions taken against the Pashtun tribes. As an example of who are actually chosen to serve in Wanna, a Major from Punjab, whose appeal for political asylum in Canada was rejected, went back and was instantly sent to Wanna. The decision on the case pertaining to his four-year absence and seeking asylum abroad is still pending.
Traditionally, a majority of Pakistan army belongs from Punjab, but at the top level the ratio of Punjabi and Pashtun officers was not reflecting much disparity. For the past two years, Pashtun officers have been greatly cut to size. In recent promotions, 18 brigadiers were elevated to the position of major-general, while only one Pashtun could earn the same title.
It will take some time before the facts resurface about some colonels, who have been arrested for refusing to fight against their own people in Waziristan. Who are these army officers, what is their background and what is their status right now, say in terms of trial, is a challenge for the journalists and human rights groups in Pakistan to dig out.
Just like all the failed reasons and logic for the so-called war on terrorism, justification for the Pakistan army to use force in the tribal areas purported to flush out “Islamist militants” does not make any sense at all.
Using the US war lords’ terminology makes it sound reasonable when Musharraf states he is “clearing Pakistani territory of foreign militants who are pursuing global Jihad.” What does not add, however, is the fact that the same people, if they are there, were fully trained and supported when their Jihad was against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Now the US supported “intellectuals” argue: “Even those Pakistanis, who until recently sympathized with the struggles of fellow Muslims under oppression, for example those of the Kashmiris, Palestinians and Chechens, are beginning to recognize that the methods of the Jihadis are a threat to global order.” Do we see any change in the methods from the times of Afghan Jihad? If not, why were they not a threat to global order then?
It is naïve to assume that Pakistanis have changed their mind because they “do not want their country to be subjected to an international military operation, like the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Such an argument fails to realise that there is no “global” operation in Iraq. As far Pakistan, it is already subjected to such an operation to the advantage of the US. Actually, it is Pakistan that is trapped as a “high value target.”
Consequently, the desired domestic instability is well before our eyes. Military, the only intact institution in Pakistan is on the way to disintegration. Its image has already been shattered beyond repair. The family members of Pakistani forces not only have difficulty reconciling to loss of lives resulting from battles with fellow Muslims, they are also doubtful of their family members’ status in the hereafter.
This is how the “extremists” are born — this time out of the family members of the killed “soldiers of Islam” who were not meant to fight the much reverend Mujahideen, now labelled as “extremist brethren in faith.”
The institution of armed forces in Pakistan has already been constantly eroding due to the dubious political role it is playing for the United States. The transition from Jihad- fi-sabeelillah (Jihad in the cause of Allah) to Jihad in the cause of America has put the final nail in the coffin of army’s respect in civilian eyes. The Karachi attack on the Corps Commander’s car is a glaring sign.
The negative fallout of Pakistan’s military war on Pakistan would have been worth it if it had been part of a strategic decision to close the chapter of Pakistan’s raison d'être, change the motto of the armed forces and openly declare the country a secular state and its armed force a professional army. It is not that only this is impossible. What also is beyond the control of Washington and Islamabad is closing the chapter on Afghan Jihad and propping up of the Taliban with the faint hope of United States’ regaining a foothold in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, that is impossible as well because accepting mistakes does not seem to be happening in Washington at all.
History of the British chicanery and deceit is repeating itself in the tribal areas. The Shakai agreement, reached between the local and Pakistani officials on April 24, was not acceptable to Lt. Gen. David Barno, the top US commander in Afghanistan. His May 3 criticism and preparation of an airstrip in Paktika, a few miles from the Durand Line, capable of landing AC-130 gunships, sent Pakistani troops once more marching into Wanna. The break up of Shakai agreement triggered a fresh round of military offensive. One of the signatories of the accord, Commander Nek Mohammad has become a principal substitute for the “high-value-target,” killed most probably with a missile fired by the CIA predator drone.
The regime’s decision to fulfil the US designs in the doubtful “war on terrorism” with a tactic of going after “high-value-targets,” which might be dead long ago, undermines the respect of the people the armed forces must enjoy if they are to perform their role properly. Besides Pakistan’s integrity, it puts the General’s own life and that of hundreds of thousands of servicemen all over Pakistan in peril.
There is always going to be “high-value-targets” before every new operation in the “war on terror” and Claims that Zawahiri or Uzbek cleric Qari Tahir Yaldash have been trapped or killed would then be downplayed at the end of the bloody adventures.
The 70,000 Pakistani troops that have been scouring the tribal border areas in tandem with the US Task Force 121 and British SAS troops will never get the “high value targets” because they are either not there or getting them is not a priority at the moment when the focus in on melting down the “most high value target” — Pakistan.
Resistance to the US occupation will be taken person by person and tribe by tribe. Like Lieutenant General Safdar Hussain, there would be other commanders, singling out other tribes like Yargul Khel and state: “I’m determined to punish this tribe and make them an example.” More and more innocents would be forced in thousands to leave their homes and orchards. It is just the beginning of the war.
The actual “high value target” — Pakistan — has already been captured. General Musharraf, however, ignores that he won’t be able to play around this game of deceiving both the East and the West for far too long. Even the power of America has failed to secure the submission of Iraqis. The Afghans brought the Soviet power to its knees.
The armed forces ruling and operating without the support of the people will always prove to be powerless in the long run, irrespective of their winning a few battles for the US and irrespective of the US strategic planners pride over capturing the "high value target."
Iran's Revolutionary Guards reinforced amid new "threats": official
TEHRAN (AFP) Jul 04, 2004 A senior commander in the Revolutionary Guards Corps said Sunday that Iran's ideological army has been strengthened amid new threats against the Islamic republic, the official news agency IRNA reported.
"The armed forces must be prepared to protect the Islamic republic," Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jafari was quoted as saying.
The Revolutionary Guards Corps "has committed itself to organisational transformations, considering the changes in the nature of threats against Iran," he said.
"So far the battalions have been reinforced, while the necessity to act fast and pay attention to military tactics have been taken into consideration," added the commander of the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces.
The commander did not elaborate on the structural changes in the Corps, founded after the 1979 revolution to protect the Islamic regime against both internal and external threats and now one of Iran's most powerful entities.
"During the past 25 years America has carried out several plots to destabilise the Islamic Republic. The only thing they have not done is military attack, which it would not dare to given the people's support of the regime," he said.
The commander said the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan -- both neighbours of Iran -- were merely a part of Washington's campaign against Tehran, which he boasted had "messed up America's plans in the Persian Gulf region".
The Revolutionary Guards, or Sepah-e Pasdaran, exist in parallel to the regular armed forces. They also have their own naval and air forces, and are largely deployed to protect Iran's borders.
As the Bush administration concludes it cannot risk Iranian retaliation against a fragile Iraq under U.S. occupation, Israel is dusting off contingency plans to take out Iran's nuclear installations.
On June 24, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (41), asked the key question: "Are we serious in our efforts to prevent [Iranian] nuclear proliferation, or will we watch the world descend into a maelstrom where weapons-grade nuclear material is plentiful, and unimaginable destructive capability is available to any country or group with a grudge against society?"
It did not require an overwhelming effort of imagination for Israel's national security establishment to conclude the Jewish state would be the first threatened by Iranian nukes.
One scenario now bruited would involve a joint U.S.-Israel precision-guided strike against the Bushehr, Natanz and Arak nuclear projects in Iran. But the Bush administration has concluded a U.S. air attack against Iran would trigger a major Iranian campaign to destabilize Iraq. The two countries share a 1,458-kilometer (906-mile) border stretching from Turkey to the Shatt al Arab terminal on the Gulf. Iran also enjoys wide grass-roots support among Iraq's dominant Shi'ite population.
A U.S. House of Representatives resolution last May 6 authorized "all appropriate means" to end Iranian nuclear weapons development. The Senate is yet to vote on the resolution. But it leaves no doubt it is a green light for offensive military strikes against Iran's three nuclear facilities.
The worldwide reaction against a U.S. attack on Iran's theocratic regime would almost certainly put an end to growing moderate dissent. Rival Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain (headquarters for the U.S. 5th Fleet) would close ranks against U.S. interests. America's allies would denounce a return to dangerous U.S. unilateralism after President Bush's recent moves back to multilateral diplomacy.
While an "October surprise" of U.S. air strikes to rid the world of Iran's looming nuclear threat might help President Bush Nov. 2, the blowback of unintended consequences would further destabilize the world's most volatile region — the Middle East.
U.S. air strikes at this juncture would quickly be equated with the CIA-engineered coup that overthrew Iran's socialist leader Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, which many Iranians say led to the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 that overthrew the monarchy, forced the late shah into exile, and allowed obscurantist mullahs to rule the country. The mullahs made the excesses of the shah's Savak secret police seem like child's play compared to the tens of thousands executed by the religious extremists and their Revolutionary Guards.
Israeli leaders concluded years ago that A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and the world's biggest nuclear proliferator, had sold bomb-making wherewithal to Iran and nothing would reverse this capability short of air strikes, similar to the one Israeli fighter-bombers conducted in 1981 against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. It had been built with French assistance, including 27.5 pounds of 93 percent weapons-grade uranium.
When Israeli intelligence confirmed Iraq's intention of producing weapons at Osirak, Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided military action was the only remedy. Elections then and now were a consideration. Mr. Begin feared his party would lose the next election, and the opposition Labor Party would fail to pre-empt prior to production of the first Iraqi nuclear bomb. Iraq was believed to be two years from its first nuclear weapon.
So Israel had to strike before the Iraqi reactor went critical, before the first fuel was poured into the reactor, lest the surrounding community fall victim to radiation.
The target was 1,100 kilometers (660 miles) from Israel. Target mock-ups were part of a full-scale dress rehearsal. Briefing the cream of Israeli Air Force pilots, Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Gen. Rafael Eitan said, "The alternative is our destruction." The surprise attack by F-15s and F-16s vaporized Osirak in 80 seconds, too fast for Iraqi anti-aircraft gunners to get off their first salvo.
Similar preparations to take out Iran's capabilities — also judged to be two years from nuclear fruition — have been completed. Standoff, precision-guided munitions will have to be used to avoid Iran's thick air defenses, including missiles purchased from Russia.
Under an $800 million contract, Russia began building Iran's Bushehr reactor in May 1995 with 150 technicians at the site. The Russian contract called for 3,000 Russian engineers and construction workers. By 1999, some 300 Russians were among the 900 workers there.
After several years of denial about an Iranian bomb-making potential, President Putin of late has sided with the International Atomic Energy Agency's chief Mohamed el Baradei's strong criticism of Iran's bad faith in its refusal to comply with the international inspection regime. Mr. Putin presumably realizes a nuclear-armed Iran ruled by religious fanatics would probably be tempted to pass on dangerous stuff to Islamist guerrillas in Chechnya.
Originally started during the shah's reign in a deal with Siemens, some 2,100 German and 7,000 Iranian workers completed 85 percent of the work before the 1979 revolution. The ayatollahs then decided to drop the entire project as "anti-Islamic," before changing their minds in favor of construction in the early 1990s. Fearful anxiety prevailed among the clerics after they watched in awe the deployment of half a million American soldiers and the five weeks of saturation U.S. bombing that preceded Operation Desert Storm — and the collapse of the Iraqi army. They watched a rerun of another U.S. military spectacular in 2003 — with yet another collapse of the Iraqi military.
The Europeans still believe political, economic and trade sanctions will eventually bring Iran into compliance. The Bush administration is on the horns of a painful dilemma. How can it claim Iran has no right to nuclear weapons when Israel not only possesses both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, but has several hundred in its arsenal? Pre-empting Iran would also undermine the administration's last shred of credibility as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians.
After all the blue-smoke-and-mirrors "intelligence" that justified the U.S. invasion of Iraq 15 months ago, CIA evidence of an Iranian nuclear bomb would have to be incontrovertible. This sets the bar impossibly high. Hence Israel's conclusion it is on its own. Bombs away? Not yet, but they've rehearsed it.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
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