One of neoconservatisms most rabid and delusional warmongering commentators, Clifford May, has written an article in National Review Online today arguing that Iran needs to be dealt with because of what Spanish ex-prime minister José Maria Aznar says he heard from Iranian leader Ali Khamenei back in 2000.
Apparently, Khamenei told Aznar in a ‘private discussion’ that “Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the Earth”. The rest of what Aznar reckons Khamenei told him can be read in Clifford May’s article and associated links.
Bear in mind, however, that we are talking about the same Aznar who told the Spanish people that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, was in cohorts with Bush, Blair and Australia’s John Howard in pushing for war against Iraq despite the protests of their own peoples, and this the same Aznar who insisted that ETA, the Basque separatist group, was responsible for the March 2004 Madrid bombing. This is the same Aznar that then ordered the destruction of evidence prior to an upcoming election proving that ETA actually had nothing to do with the bombing ETA.
Clifford May also refers to fellow neocon Anthony Cordesman, who May says is a “respected security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies”. According to Cordesman’s latest rambling report:
Iran has pursued every major area of nuclear weapons development, has carried out programs that have already given it every component of a weapon except fissile material, and there is strong evidence that it has carried out programs to integrate a nuclear warhead onto its missiles.
Naturally, Cordesman is unable to provide any hard evidence to support any of his claims and, one should also remember, that this is the same Anthony Cordesman who in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2002 during the run up to the war against Iraq, said that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. This was at a time when it was well known by the intelligence community that Saddam Hussein had already destroyed his WMDs after having been told by Iraqi defector Hussein Kamel (Saddam’s son-in-law who was later executed by Saddam). Hussein Kamel had told the West in secret debriefings what weapons Saddam had and that he had been in charge of destroying them all. The intelligence about what weapons Saddam had was later used in the propaganda leading up to the attack on Iraq, but the fact that they had been destroyed, of course, was never mentioned.
10 comments:
What about the story of Israel using secret 'stealthy' Blackhawk helicopters (ala last year's Bin Laden raid) operating out of Iraq where they fly into Iran and offload teams of spies to study Iran's nuclear programme!.
I'm not making this up!.
What do you think regarding the credibility of this story Damian?.
Use your favourite search engine and look up the 'story' and then ask yourself of the implications if something like this was true and the secret helicopter was downed and captured with the crew etc...
Must dash mate,
Nylon Shirt
G'day NS
Iran is a very big place and relatively easy for highly trained operatives to get in and out of using a helicopter.
Stealthy helicopters are a bit of a myth; all make a noise, it's just that some aren't as noisy as others. They're also not entirely radar invisible.
The bin Laden raid was pure nonsense and play-acting for propaganda purposes.
A downed Israeli crew would be very valuable to the Iranians.
The Israelis aren't interested in Irans 'nuclear weapons program'. They're only interested in making the West believe Iran has a weapons program so that they can bomb them into regime change.
Cheers
Damian
Khamanei's comments make sense.
Just this week, Iran's prodigy, Hassan Nasrallah, stated about Israel that:
"The time has come to declare that we are here to stay, and they must cease to exist."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4234287,00.html
The point is, we only have Aznar's word that Khamenei said that, and Aznar, as I have shown, has no credibility.
Nasrallah, of course, is referring to the Zionists in Palestine.
G'day Damian,
Yes its a matter of degree when it comes to helicopters and 'stealth'.
Do you recall over the years various stories published in 'Janes', 'Flight International' and 'Aviation leak' about various 'quiet helicopters'?.
Some referring to the late 1980's and the 'Prime Chance' U.S/Iran confrontation in the Persian gulf where quiet U.S helicopters with snipers shot at Iranians on oil rigs, then there were the 1990's stories of the 'TE-K' quiet helicopters tested out at 'Paradise Ranch' in Nevada, plus 'stealth kits' for the Kiowa helicopter after the 1991 Gulf war.
Now there is the Stealth Blackhawk story over the past year and some even claim now that a 'quiet' helicopter was used in the Vietnam war!.
Seems to be more of them about than we thought eh!. heh heh heh...
So do you think this helicopter into Iran story is a canard?.
I agree it would be a propaganda coup if the Iranians did shootdown or capture a machine and crew.
It does seem a bit strange, but then again I'm not surprised by the conceit of the yanks in thinking they can and do anything they wish to others regardless.
Its that kind of mindless optimism that sees such people making stupid mistakes in thinking 'nothing can happen to us'.
For the foolish individual, such a mindset sees people walking regularly into trees, but for nations the consequences are more stark!.
Nylon Shirt
Hi NS,
The noisiest bits of a helicopter are its rotor blades. You can make the engine quieter and make the tail rotor quieter by putting a shroud around it. The tail rotors also have a symetric airfoil section and, since the angle of attack of the blades are used to direct thrust out of either side to assist in steering in the yaw plane and to counteract the torque of the main rotors, the noise can flucuate from quiet to loud when changing direction.
The tips of the main rotors blades are moving close to transonic and very difficult to keep quiet. All sorts of tip designs have been tried in the effort to reduce tip noise.
The only way to be stealthy is to come in at nigh on ground level over sparsely populated areas.
The other way to get to get special forces quietly in is to use High Alltitude Low Opening (HALO) parachutists but then you've got the problem of getting them out after they've done their dirty deed.
HALO drops has always been the best way to get spies into a country. They then have to find their own way out.
As far as Iran's so-called nuclear weapons program is concerned, Israel aren't really at all concerned about it, they know that Iran has no such thing and it's just a useful piece of propaganda. Israelis are more than likely dropping spies in to check out Irans facilities, not because they think they're building bombs, but to find out the best ways of hitting them when the war does get going.
While Israel knows Iran's nukes aren't a threat, if war starts then Israel needs to start it by makig a show of hitting Irans nuke facilites first just to make it fit with their propaganda. Then they'll leave it to the US to bomb the Iranian government into capitulation while Israel invades and attacks Hezbollah and Hamas on the pretence of preventing reprisal attacks on Israel.
Permanent occupation in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and south Lebanon followed by annexation.
Voila! Greater Israel!
Damian,
Thanks for that summary on helicopter noise suppression.
A lot of work is being done by Eurocopter I hear in rotor tip dynamic suppression in the civil field too.
I recall the 'Aviation leak' of the 1990's vis a' vis the TE-K claimed the rotors could be curved and their disc diameter reduced, supposedly suppressing noise, but like all things claimed by the yanks and that magazine, scepticism is advised as they're usually wrong.
By co-incidence today there is claim and counter claim that the yanks and South Koreans are parachuting into North Korea to spy on the many underground tunnels believed to be there.
How they escape after the spying is the wider question the story says they take little equipment to avoid detection.
Still I suppose a friendly submarine can wait for them....
Of course vociferious denials by the yanks.
Finally, it again makes me wonder about the hidden meddling done by the CIA and their twit mates leading to the obvious question where in a world of concocted stories and false 'news', just how do we know whether the claims asserted by some are really true.
eg Iran and its nuclear programme or the Syrian situation, how do we know the yanks or their proxies aren't already there stirring up trouble, recall their many death squads operating in other countries in the past.
Hmmmm
Cheers mate,
Nylon Shirt
There's a need, NS, to take everything you read in the Western mainstream media with a pinch of salt.
Take the latest atrocities in Syria where so many kids, women and civilians have died. Assad is getting the blame for it. No matter who did it, it is a crime. But, given that Assad knows the eyes of the world are upon him, can we really say that he ordered this atrocity knowing what the response was likely to be? He's treading on thin ice as it is; why on earth would he want to do such a silly thing? People might think he's a lot of things but he's not stupid. Having said that, that's not to say that his more fanatical followers didn't take it upon themselves to do this crime, in which case Assad would be mightily pissed off, but I doubt very much he gave the order.
Assad and the Shabiha are denying they had anything to do with it and are blaming al Qaeda. Another scenraio is that the opposition set it up as a false flag to demonise Assad and get international support to get rid of the Assad regime.
Analysis of the geopolitical realities rather than screaming hysterical propaganda is the best way to approach these matters.
Cheers
Damian
Indeed, I recall in the case of Iran the U.S congress has for many years allocated many millions toward covert programmes inside Iran to topple the 'regime'.
That kind of money buys a lot of 'paid off' troublemakers, thugs and ratbags as well as computer technology that can SMS messages to mobile phones purporting to be from sources that in truth they are not!.
By that I mean the CIA and their proxies
putting on a pretence....
You know mate, you could be right about Syria and the claims there.
I wouldn't put it past some yank death squad (or one of their mercenary mates) to slaughter innocents and then blame the government.
They're own psychopathic soldiers have no trouble doing that in Afghanistan eg Bales.
Thanks for an interesting discussion mate.
Nylon Shirt
No worries, NS. Always good to chat.
Cheers
Damian
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