North Korea

China Seeks Fresh Talks as N.Korea's Kim Eludes Cameras

Reuters
August 28, 2010

China is lobbying neighbors to sign up to a road map for renewed nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-il is visiting China amid conciliatory words and threats of "holy war."

The details of Beijing's plan for restarting stalled six-party nuclear talks came from a South Korean diplomatic source, who spoke on Saturday after discussion in Seoul with Wu Dawei, China's top envoy in the talks.

But the source, as well as a Japanese official speaking in Beijing, stressed that big obstacles remained, even if the secretive Kim's trip to China yields another vow of North Korea's willingness to sit down and discuss a dormant deal to scrap its nuclear weapons in return for aid.

"We don't want to restart six-party talks for the sake of talks," the South Korean diplomatic source said. "North Korea should change its attitude and show seriousness in denuclearizing."

China's regional lobbying, and courting of the reclusive Kim, highlight the pressures that North Korea -- isolated, poor and with a brace of primitive nuclear bombs -- has brought to bear on northeast Asia, home to the world's second and third biggest economies and a big U.S. military presence.

Kim, 68, and his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-un, were in China to visit the school of senior Kim's father and founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, a source with knowledge of the secretive trip told Reuters.

"Trust me, it's 100 percent both are here," the source said, declining to give details when asked.

Kim Il-sung attended the Yu Wen High School in the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin in the 1920s. The school houses a memorial hall to Kim which is not open to the public.

The museum was renovated recently ahead of a visit by a group of North Korean dignitaries, a second source said.

Classes were suspended on Thursday amid tight security and a school choir performed for the dignitaries, the second source added, but did not know if the Kims were among the guests.

"They sang 'The song of General Kim Il-sung' in Chinese and Korean. It's the school song," the second source said.

There had been no conclusive sightings in China of Kim, who has appeared frail and gaunt since reportedly suffering a stroke in 2008.

Neither source wanted to be identified because of the political sensitivity of the trip. The two neighbors do not disclose much information about Kim's travels, and then only after he has left for home.

DIPLOMAT'S WARNING

On Friday, a North Korean diplomat brandished the possibility of nuclear war with South Korea and the United States.

"If Washington and Seoul try to create conflict on the Korean peninsula we respond with a holy war on the basis of our nuclear deterrent forces," North Korea's ambassador to Cuba, Kwon Sung-chol, said in Havana, according to a report from there by China's official Xinhua news agency.

North Korea staged nuclear test blasts in 2006 and 2009, drawing international condemnations and U.N. sanctions backed by China, the biggest economic and diplomatic backer of Pyongyang.

China's envoy, Wu, proposed a three-stage process to restart the multilateral talks aimed at coaxing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons in return for aid and other assurances, the South Korean diplomatic source told Reuters.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter returned home from Pyongyang on Friday with an American who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korea. The North's state media said number two leader, Kim Yong-nam, had told Carter that Pyongyang wanted the nuclear talks resumed.

China has sought to defuse confrontation by hosting six-party nuclear disarmament talks since August 2003. But last April, North Korea quit the talks and reversed "disablement" steps intended to cripple its chief reactor complex, unhappy with implementation of an initial disarmament agreement reached in 2007.

North Korea has been retreating from its earlier public renunciation of the talks. South Korea and Washington say resuming the talks will be impossible until Pyongyang also faces up to their conclusion that it was behind the sinking of a South Korean navy ship, the Cheonan, in March.

South Korea lost 46 sailors when the Cheonan sank. Seoul said an inquiry found there was no doubt North Korea torpedoed the ship, but Pyongyang denied it was responsible.

North Korea Threatens Nuclear "Holy War" If Attacked

Reuters
August 28, 2010

North Korea would answer any attack on it with a nuclear "holy war," the country’s ambassador to Cuba said, according to official Chinese media, while the North’s leader Kim Jong-il appeared to be visiting China.

The ambassador Kwon Sung-chol made the remarks on Friday at a ceremony marking 50 years of diplomatic ties between North Korea and Cuba, the same day that Pyongyang said it was open to returning to nuclear disarmament negotiations.

"If Washington and Seoul try to create a conflict on the Korean peninsula, we will respond with a holy war on the basis of our nuclear deterrent forces," Kwon said, according to China’s Xinhua news agency on Saturday, in a story datelined Havana.

"Our government will strive for the denuclearisation of the peninsula and the establishment of a lasting peace as the beginning of the reunification process of the two Koreas," said Kwon.

Washington and Seoul have said Pyongyang must abandon its nuclear weapons development, but have not threatened to attack the poor and isolated North.

North Korea’s number two leader, Kim Yong-nam, told visiting former U.S. President Jimmy Carter that the reclusive state wanted to resume six-way nuclear disarmament talks, the North’s state news agency said on Friday.

The North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, appears to be visiting China in a secrecy-shrouded trip that analysts say appears intended to line up Beijing behind his succession plans.

S.Korea Military Drill Envisions 'Occupying N.Korea'

AFP
August 24, 2010

South Korean troops have been practising a war plan during joint military drills with the United States that envisions occupying and stabilising North Korea, news reports said Tuesday.

Communist North Korea has threatened fiery retaliation against the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) exercises involving tens of thousands of South Korean and US troops.

"Distinctive features of this year's exercises are the stabilisation operation, which is being led by the unification ministry," an unidentified military official was quoted as saying by the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper.

"The unification ministry is practising a programme aimed to turn North Koreans into Republic of Korea (South Korea) citizens, which is the culmination of such a stabilisation operation," he said.

Past UFG exercises practised restoring administration in occupied North Korean areas, but this one goes a step further, with re-education and stabilisation carried out by Seoul's unification ministry.

The South's Yonhap news agency, quoting an unidentified government official, also reported the stabilisation exercise, which is likely to further infuriate the North at a time when inter-Korean relations are at a new low.

"Various drills designed for different circumstances are being conducted," unification ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo told AFP, without elaborating.

The UFG exercises envision powerful counter-offensives into the North up to the Chongchon River, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Pyongyang, in case of aggression from the North, the Dong-A Ilbo said.

The August 16-26 joint exercise is the latest in a series being staged by the South -- either alone or with the United States -- after the sinking of one of its warships in March, which sharply raised tensions on the peninsula.

The South blamed the North for torpedoing the corvette, killing 46 sailors, an accusation the North angrily denies.

The current drill involves 56,000 South Korean and 30,000 US troops, as well as an unspecified number of American soldiers based in the United States who link up by computer, a South Korean Joint Chief of Staff spokesman said.

General Walter Sharp, who heads some 28,500 US troops based in the South, described the drill as "one of the largest joint staff directed theatre exercises in the world".

South Korea's Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek said Tuesday that the country was pursuing a "peaceful and gradual" reunification with North Korea, dismissing speculation that the South might be seeking to absorb its impoverished neighbour.

"We want to open the future of the Korean Peninsula through cooperation" between the two Koreas, Hyun said at an academic forum.

"We aim at a peaceful and gradual unification based on agreement between the North and South."

On Sunday, he said the possibility of the communist state imploding in the near future was slim, saying leader Kim Jong-Il remains healthy enough to keep his grip on the North.

"The possibility of the North collapsing in the imminent future is not high," he told KBS TV.

Seoul's defence ministry on Tuesday said it had detected a "massive" deployment of North Korean troops and arms near the capital Pyongyang.

The large number of soldiers, armoured vehicles and artillery have been stationed near the communist state's capital since July 12, the ministry said in a report to parliament.

The deployment appears to be related to political events such as a meeting of key communist party delegates next month and the party's 65th anniversary on October 10, a ministry spokesman told AFP.

"The massive deployment of troops could be designed to show their military power at home and abroad, or for security," he said.

Iran

Iran Unveils Nation's First Unmanned Bomber Drone

By The Associated Press
August 22, 2010

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday inaugurated the country's first domestically built unmanned bomber aircraft, calling it an "ambassador of death" to Iran's enemies.

The 4-meter-long drone aircraft can carry up to four cruise missiles and will have a range of 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), according to a state TV report — not far enough to reach archenemy Israel.

"The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship," said Ahmadinejad at the inauguration ceremony, which fell on the country's national day for its defense industries.

The goal of the aircraft, named Karrar or striker, is to "keep the enemy paralyzed in its bases," he said, adding that the aircraft is for deterrence and defensive purposes.

The president championed the country's military self-sufficiency program, and said it will continue "until the enemies of humanity lose hope of ever attacking the Iranian nation."

Iran launched an arms development program during its 1980-88 war with Iraq to compensate for a U.S. weapons embargo and now produces its own tanks, armored personnel carries, missiles and even a fighter plane.

Iran frequently makes announcements about new advances in military technology that cannot be independently verified.

State TV later showed video footage of the plane taking off from a launching pad and reported that the craft traveled at speeds of 560 miles per hour (900 kilometers) and could alternatively be armed with two 250-pound bombs or a 450-pound guided bomb.

Iran has been producing its own light, unmanned surveillance aircraft since the late 1980s.

The ceremony came a day after Iran began to fuel its first nuclear power reactor, with the help of Russia, amid international concerns over the possibility of a military dimension to its nuclear program.

Iran insists it is only interested in generating electricity.

Referring to Israel's occasional threats against Iran's nuclear facilities, Ahmadinejad called any attack unlikely, but he said if Israel did, the reaction would be overwhelming.

"The scope of Iran's reaction will include the entire the earth," said Ahmadinejad. "We also tell you — the West — that all options are on the table."

Ahmadinejad appeared to be consciously echoing the terminology used by the U.S. and Israel in their statements not ruling out a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities.

On Friday, Iran also test-fired a new liquid fuel surface-to-surface missile, the Qiam-1, with advanced guidance systems.

Iran Starts Nuclear Reactor, Defends Intent

The Washington Times
August 21, 2010

Trucks rumbled into Iran's first reactor Saturday to begin loading tons of uranium fuel in a long-delayed startup touted by officials as both a symbol of the country's peaceful intentions to produce nuclear energy as well as a triumph over Western pressure to rein in its nuclear ambitions.

The Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant will be internationally supervised, including a pledge by Russia to safeguard it against materials being diverted for any possible use in creating nuclear weapons. Iran's agreement to allow the oversight was a rare compromise by the Islamic state over its atomic program.

Western powers have cautiously accepted the deal as a way to keep spent nuclear fuel from crossing over to any military use. They say it illustrates their primary struggle: to block Iran's drive to create material that could be used for nuclear weapons and not its pursuit of peaceful nuclear power.

Iran has long declared it has a right like other nations to produce nuclear energy. The country's nuclear chief described the startup as a "symbol of Iranian resistance and patience."

"Despite all pressure, sanctions and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the startup of the largest symbol of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities," Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters inside the plant with its cream-colored dome overlooking the Persian Gulf in southern Iran.

In several significant ways, the Bushehr plant stands apart from the showdowns over Iranian uranium enrichment, a process that can be used both to produce nuclear energy or nuclear weapons. It also could offer a possible test run for proposals to ease the impasse.

The Russian agreement to control the supply of nuclear fuel at Bushehr eased opposition by Washington and allies. Bushehr's operations are not covered by U.N. sanctions imposed after Iran refused to stop uranium enrichment. And last week, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the Russian oversight at Bushehr is the "very model" offered Tehran under a U.N.-drafted plan unveiled last year.

That proposal — so far snubbed by Iran — called for Iran to halt uranium enrichment and get its supplies of reactor-ready material from abroad.

Western leaders fear Iran's enrichment labs could one day churn out weapons-grade material. Iran claims it has no interest in nuclear arms, but refuses to give up the right to make its own fuel.

Iran has some of the world's biggest oil reserves, but lacks refinery capacity to meet domestic demand and must repurchase fuel on international markets. Nuclear power is seen as both a goal to meet power needs and an important technological achievement for the Islamic government.

Israel Has '8 Days' to Hit Iran Nuclear Site: Bolton

AFP
August 17, 2010

Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said.

Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia's help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant's core.

At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians.

"Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they're in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it," Bolton told Fox Business Network.

"So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days."

Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said,

"Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor."

But when asked whether he expected Israel to actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was skeptical.

"I don't think so, I'm afraid that they've lost this opportunity," he said.

The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticized Russia's role in the development of the plant, saying:

"The Russians are, as they often do, playing both sides against the middle."

"The idea of being able to stick a thumb in America's eye always figures prominently in Moscow," he added.Iran dismissed the possibilities of such an attack from its archfoes.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday:

"These threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning."

"According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences," he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran.

Iranian officials say Iran has stepped up defensive measures at the Bushehr plant to protect it from any attacks.

Russia has been building the Bushehr plant since the mid-1990s but the project was marred by delays, and the issue is hugely sensitive amid Tehran's standoff with the West and Israel over its nuclear ambitions.

The UN Security Council hit Tehran with a fourth set of sanctions on June 9 over its nuclear programme, and the United States and European Union followed up with tougher punitive measures targeting Iran's banking and energy sectors.

The Bushehr project was first launched by the late shah in the 1970s using contractors from German firm Siemens. But it was shelved when he was deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

It was revived after the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, as Iran's new supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his first president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, backed the project.

In 1995, Iran won the support of Russia which agreed to finish building the plant and fuel it.

Iran and Russia Alliance

Russia Helps Iran Load Fuel into Its First Nuclear Plant

By Thomas Erdbrink and Janine Zacharia, The Washington Post
August 22, 2010

Iranian and Russian engineers began loading nuclear fuel into Iran's first atomic power plant Saturday amid international concern that the Islamic Republic is seeking a nuclear weapon.

State television showed what appeared to be fuel rods being loaded into the core of the reactor, which is on the shores of the Persian Gulf near Bushehr. The plant is one of the first tangible results of Iran's controversial nuclear program, which has been the target of increasingly tough international sanctions.

Overseen by Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the plant is not widely regarded a dangerous expansion of Iran's nuclear program. Russia is also supplying the uranium fuel for the plant, for 10 years, at an enrichment level well below what is needed for a nuclear weapon.

The plant has taken more than 35 years to build, with construction disrupted by the 1979 revolution, the war with Iraq in the 1980s and a decision by the original German contractor, Siemens, to pull out of the project.

"When a nation decides to live with freedom, it will finally reach its goal," Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told state media.

Rosatom, a Russian state nuclear corporation, helped finish the plant, which has cost Iran nearly $1 billion.

The Iranian government says its nuclear development is for peaceful purposes, such as electricity production and medical research. Although Iran says it has been open, the United States and its allies say the country has concealed parts of its nuclear fuel program, possibly to build a nuclear weapon, which Iran denies.

Iranian officials say they fear that outside pressure could ultimately force Russia to stop supplying nuclear fuel.

"We are looking for assurance of supply of fuel to the reactors," Salehi told reporters. He said Iran has had bad experiences with Germany and France, which had committed to starting up the reactor but later reneged.

"That was instrumental in making our government decide to have its own enrichment facilities in Iran," Salehi said. "We want to have the capacity and capability to assure the continuous supply of the fuel to the reactors."

The U.S. State Department said it did not view the plant as a proliferation risk but stressed its continued concerns about Iran's nuclear program.

"Russia's support for Bushehr underscores that Iran does not need an indigenous enrichment capability if its intentions are purely peaceful," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement.

Israeli officials also said they were not particularly worried about the fuel being loaded into Bushehr.

"Our problem is with the other facilities that they have, where they enrich uranium," Uzi Landau, Israel's minister of national infrastructure, said in an interview Thursday in Tel Aviv.

Unlike other nuclear successes, Iranian officials and state television refrained from huge celebrations Saturday. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not at the opening of the plant.

"Faced with international pressure, they are keeping a low profile," said Masallah Shamsolva'ezin, an analyst critical of the government. "Maybe they will need to make some kind of compromise in the future, so now might not be the time for nationalistic celebrations."

Israel, the U.S. and the Arab World

HR 1553 Authorizing ‘Use of Force’ Against Iran is Based on Pure Propaganda

By Activist Post
August 21, 2010

America has not officially declared war on a nation since World War II. Yet we are now entangled in endless wars with no feasible goals, except sustained military profits and resource grabs.

Instead, Congress votes to “authorize the use of force” just in case we may need it, which strategically limits the public debate. Although many believe that the stiff Iran sanctions detailed in HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act was an Act of War, the Republican proposed HR 1553 is the actual authorization of the “use of military force” backing Israel’s right to “use any means necessary” to protect itself from Iran, including preemptive strikes.

HR 1553: Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.

RESOLUTION

Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.

Whereas with the dawn of modern Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, some 150 years ago, the Jewish people determined to return to their homeland in the Land of Israel from the lands of their dispersion;

Whereas in 1922, the League of Nations mandated that the Jewish people were the legal sovereigns over the Land of Israel and that legal mandate has never been superseded;

Whereas in the aftermath of the Nazi-led Holocaust from 1933 to 1945, in which the Germans and their collaborators murdered 6,000,000 Jewish people in a premeditated act of genocide, the international community recognized that the Jewish state, built by Jewish pioneers must gain its independence from Great Britain;

Whereas the United States was the first nation to recognize Israel’s independence in 1948, and the State of Israel has since proven herself to be a faithful ally of the United States in the Middle East;

Whereas the United States and Israel have a special friendship based on shared values, and together share the common goal of peace and security in the Middle East;

Whereas, on October 20, 2009, President Barack Obama rightly noted that the United States-Israel relationship is a ‘bond that is much more than a strategic alliance.’;

Whereas the national security of the United States, Israel, and allies in the Middle East face a clear and present danger from the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran seeking nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile capability to deliver them;

Whereas Israel would face an existential threat from a nuclear weapons-armed Iran;

Whereas President Barack Obama has been firm and clear in declaring United States opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran, stating on November 7, 2008, ‘Let me state–repeat what I stated during the course of the campaign. Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable.’;

Whereas, on October 26, 2005, at a conference in Tehran called ‘World Without Zionism’, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, ‘God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism’;

Whereas the New York Times reported that during his October 26, 2005, speech, President Ahmadinejad called for ‘this occupying regime [Israel] to be wiped off the map’;

Whereas, on April 14, 2006, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ‘Like it or not, the Zionist regime [Israel] is heading toward annihilation’;

Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ‘I must announce that the Zionist regime [Israel], with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion, and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene’;

Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ‘Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come, and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started’;

Whereas, on May 20, 2009, Iran successfully tested a surface-to-surface long range missile with an approximate range of 1,200 miles;

Whereas Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons;

Whereas Iran has been caught building three secret nuclear facilities since 2002;

Whereas Iran continues its support of international terrorism, has ordered its proxy Hizbullah to carry out catastrophic acts of international terrorism such as the bombing of the Jewish AMIA Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1994, and could give a nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization in the future;

Whereas Iran has refused to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency with full transparency and access to its nuclear program;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 1803 states that according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, ‘Iran has not established full and sustained suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities and heavy-water-related projects as set out in resolution 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) nor resumed its cooperation with the IAEA under the Additional Protocol, nor taken the other steps required by the IAEA Board of Governors, nor complied with the provisions of Security Council resolution 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) . . .’;

Whereas at July 2009’s G-8 Summit in Italy, Iran was given a September 2009 deadline to start negotiations over its nuclear programs and Iran offered a five-page document lamenting the ‘ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global relations’ and included various subjects, but left out any mention of Iran’s own nuclear program which was the true issue in question;

Whereas the United States has been fully committed to finding a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear threat, and has made boundless efforts seeking such a resolution and to determine if such a resolution is even possible; and

Whereas the United States does not want or seek war with Iran, but it will continue to keep all options open to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) condemns the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for its threats of ‘annihilating’ the United States and the State of Israel, for its continued support of international terrorism, and for its incitement of genocide of the Israeli people;

(2) supports using all means of persuading the Government of Iran to stop building and acquiring nuclear weapons;

(3) reaffirms the United States bond with Israel and pledges to continue to work with the Government of Israel and the people of Israel to ensure that their sovereign nation continues to receive critical economic and military assistance, including missile defense capabilities, needed to address the threat of Iran; and

(4) expresses support for Israel’s right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran, defend Israeli sovereignty, and protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within a reasonable time.

This entire resolution is loaded with war mongering propaganda reported in the New York Times and others — not based on actions, or even concrete intelligence gathering. They are basing this legislation (declaration of war) on mistranslated statements that Ahmadinejad made in speeches. Based on this reasoning, it seems that Iran and North Korea are justified to use force against America because George W. Bush threatened and labeled them the “axis of evil.” If the American people fall for this once again, perhaps we deserve the ramifications of World War III.

Israel, the U.S. and the Arab World

Troubled Days Ahead for the Middle East and America

By Don Koenig, The Prophetic Years
August 17, 2010

There are troubled days ahead for the Middle East and America. It is not like this nation really deserves anything less. The Marxists could never have taken over our educational system, the media, our government and even many of our churches if those that call themselves Christians in this nation really believed, lived a Christian lifestyle and kept a Christian worldview.

Believe it or not, with all the talk of a take over by the conservative Right it still looks like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed and John McCain will all get reelected and stay in power. With that information in mind, how much do Americans really care that they have allowed socialist idealists to reshape America into their ideal of America being a secondary colony on the world collective ant farm?

Do you really think that any House and Senate elected in 2010 will get us out of this economic slump and create more real jobs with less national debt? If so, you are also living in some fantasy-land. That simply is not going to happen. Much more likely by 2011 we will be dealing with a rapidly falling dollar, terrorism, inflation in imports and necessities of life and deflation on most American investments. As fatalistic as this sounds, by next summer I think their will be riots in our cites, another Middle East war that we will be involved in and almost dictatorial control of the people of America by our government.

Men of integrity are really getting hard to find in this nation but even good men that do nothing too keep a system of government where moral laws and justice prevails are rather useless. We will fall into tyranny because most Americans are now entangled in their own various sins and everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes. Most are worshiping idols in Washington, Hollywood, New York and various images on electronic screens. Few of those that even call themselves Christians are following the words of God. Many go to a service on Sunday morning but for most that is the extent of their Christian service for the week. Dying with Christ and living for Christ is just a cliché in mostly sorry apathetic Protestant (SAP’s) and CINO’s (Catholics in name only) “Christian” America. That is just the plain truth of the matter. So if you think correction is not coming to this kind of Christianity in America you are living in denial.

Take a clear look at the Middle East and you will see that the handwriting is already on the Wailing Wall and the words on the wall also contain a message for America. We will be involved in another war before or during 2011. There are 50,000 missiles pointing at Israel right now and they are in the hands of radical Muslims that have been bred to hate Israel. Some of those missiles contain chemical weapons. Syria might even use biological weapons. The leadership of Iran have a martyr disorder that makes them suicidal. They are intentionally creating an impossible situational for Israel – forcing a war – thinking that some Mahdi myth will save Iran from the West and make all the world convert to their concept of Islam.

The leader of Egypt will be dead in months from cancer so one of the few voices of reason that have influence in the Middle East will soon be out of the picture. Radicals will soon call the shots in Egypt if not outright take over the nation. There is a similar situation in Saudi Arabia. The royal family is really getting old and royal family control is not likely much longer unless they do exactly what the Islamic radicals tell them to do. And believe me, the Islamic radicals in Saudi Arabia are every bit as nuts and demonic as the cult that is running Iran.

So we do see a situation in the next year or two where the war of Psalm 83 becomes almost a certainty. Probably Israel’s actions against Hezbollah and Hamas and Lebanon will be the trigger that brings the Arab Confederacy to call for a united front to cut off Israel from being a nation. Today we see that all the nations mentioned in Psalm 83 are armed and are ready to war against Israel. So Israel will be in action very soon. If you are expecting some peace agreement to come to the rescue and settle the issues of hate in the Middle East go hold hands with Jimmy Carter and whistle with him past the graveyard.

I do not know what happens to Iran during the coming war. They are not involved in the imminent psalm 83 war. So either we take them out or their own people revolt and keep Iran out of the Psalm 83 conflict. Iran comes against Israel later with Russia in the war described in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 but that is a different war and a more future war. The nations in that war are not the Arab nations surrounding Israel. Something obviously takes these nations out of the picture first.

All Israel ever wanted since it was reborn as a state in the Middle East was peace. Nevertheless, you can be sure that Israel and America will be blamed by the ruling elite of the world for the troubled days that lie ahead for the world. I think we will soon see outright hatred for Jews and also for Christians that take Bible prophecy about Israel and the return of Jesus to Israel literally. This will force what is left of America to distance themselves from Israel setting the stage for the Ezekiel 38 war led by Russia.

My point is that it is very evident that war is coming in the Middle East and if you do not think that will effect your lifestyle in America you are in for a rude awaking very soon. There will be much terrorism in the United States and riots and martial law. There will be inflation, rationing and price controls. There will be compulsory service and there will be a dictatorial government in America whether the Left retains control or the Right gains control through a coup. With the level of apathy, misguidance and brainwashing displayed among our (SAP’s) and (CINO’S). I really do not think any real change for the better in America with morality and justice will be coming via ballots of an immoral people. Troubled days lie lie ahead for America the handwriting is already on the Middle East Wailing Wall.

Majority of Americans Support Iran Attack

Corporate Media Poll Claims Majority of Americans Support Iran Attack

By Kurt Nimmo, Infowars.com
August 22, 2010

According to a Rasmussen poll posted last week, most Americans consider Iran an enemy of the United States, believe Iran’s nuclear program is developing weapons, and they would support the United States helping Israel attack the Islamic country.

57% say Iran is an enemy. 66% say Iran’s uranium enrichment program is developing nuclear weapons (53% state an Iranian nuke is very likely). 51% say if Israel attacks Iran, the United States should lend a helping hand.

Is it possible these numbers are correct? Should we trust Rasmussen and other corporate media polling operations?

If you doubt the numbers, consider the overwhelming support for the attack on Iraq. Before the invasion in March 2003 polls showed 47-60% of the U.S. public supported an invasion. A Gallup poll conducted after Bush made his neocon fabricated case against Iraq showed that an astounding 67% believed the neocon generated propaganda and outright lies. Following Colin Powell’s dog and pony show at the United Nations claiming Iraq had biological weapons, only 27% opposed military action. Most Americans actually believed Saddam Hussein posed a direct threat to the United States.

The invasion launched by Bush’s daddy enjoyed even larger support. 79% of polled Americans were in favor at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War, more accurately described as the Persian Gulf Turkey Shoot. The numbers during Bush Junior’s invasion may be somewhat smaller because opposing information was available on the internet. The web did not exist in 1990.

(See Popular opinion in the United States on the invasion of Iraq.)

As Scott Horton pointed out on RT, there is absolutely no evidence Iran is manufacturing nuclear weapons and in fact does not have the capability to do so.

So, if we are to believe Rasmussen, why do Americans believe otherwise? Because millions of them get their news from the corporate media — and the corporate media is the lick-spittle handmaiden of the military-industrial complex and the global elite that have a vested interest in back-to-back wars of the sort we have endured since the establishment of the national security state.

Of course, it is possible most Americans oppose attacking Iran or helping Israel to attack Iran. But that is irrelevant to the propaganda machine.

The numbers will be used to make the case for mass murder the same way the numbers were used during all previous illegal, immoral, and criminal invasions.

A Neocon Preps U.S. for War with Iran

By Ray McGovern, Consortiumnews.com
August 12, 2010

I guess I was naïve in thinking that The Atlantic and its American-Israeli writer Jeffrey Goldberg might shy away from arguing for yet another war — this one with Iran — while the cauldrons are still boiling in Afghanistan and Iraq ...

Goldberg had just produced a new magnum opus for another prestige journal, The Atlantic, entitled “The Point of No Return,” explaining Israel’s case for bombing Iran and the reasons why the United States should join in.

On Wednesday, Goldberg swatted away softball questions from MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell, who joined in a friendly chat about whether the U.S. or Israel or both should opt for what Mitchell described as a “military response” to the “Iranian nuclear threat,” and when.

Goldberg claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sees the challenge from Iran as being on a par with the Holocaust, believing that Iran is bent on the destruction of Israel with its 6 million people.

“Are you persuaded that Israel would take action against Iran unilaterally?” asked Mitchell. “Yes, I am; I am,” Goldberg responded.

Goldberg added that he believes that President Barack Obama is not prepared to live with a nuclear Iran but that it remains an open question whether he would take military action to prevent that eventuality. Goldberg said Obama “probably” would not.

And that being the case, Goldberg thought Netanyahu would be inclined to unleash Israeli forces unilaterally and absorb any damage this might do to bilateral relations with Washington.

At the end of the Mitchell interview, she lofted what appeared to be a canned question and, in response, Goldberg seemed downright eager to share what he called a “secret,” as he put it.

Mitchell asked when Obama planned to visit Israel. Goldberg, however, expressed a concern:

“The Israelis are worried about Obama coming; they don’t want him to be boo-ed wherever he goes; that’s the last thing they need. Obama is not popular in Israel in the way Bush and Clinton were.”

The unmistakable message: An Obama tour of Israel could be an ugly affair.

Chatting with Wolf

Goldberg walked through a similar discussion on the merits of war when he appeared on CNN, a guest of Wolf Blitzer’s “The Situation Room.”

Goldberg: “The question is what can the Obama administration do to stop the Iranians from pursuing the nuclear program … it seems unlikely to me at this point that Iran is simply going to say, because President Obama asks, you know, we’re going to end our nuclear program.”

Blitzer: “You have concluded that an Israeli air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities is — in your word — a near certainty?”

Goldberg: “Well, it’s a near certainty, in the long term, but even in the next year I give it a 50 percent or better chance. Next year, meaning by next July.”

Not that it probably would have mattered, but someone probably should have told Andrea Mitchell and Wolf Blitzer that more skeptical observers have described Goldberg’s previous “journalism” in very unflattering terms.

One critic deemed Goldberg’s pre-Iraq War reporting for The New Yorker as “a journalism-school nightmare: bad sources, compromised sources, unacknowledged uncertainties … with alarmist rhetoric that is now either laughable or nauseating, depending on your mood.”

For instance, the fact that many civilians were gassed as Iraqi and Iranian forces clashed on March 16, 1988, in the area of Halabja, just barely inside Iraq’s border with Iran, is beyond dispute.

However, what is not clear is the blockbuster charge that it was the Iraqis, rather than the Iranians, who used the deadly chemical warfare agents. The U.S. government has pointed the finger in both directions, often depending on which side of the conflict Washington was tilting toward.

A joint CIA and Defense Intelligence assessment focused in on the “blood agents (cyanogen chloride) deemed responsible for most of the deaths in Halabja and determined that the Iraqis had no history of using those particular agents, but that the Iranians did.

That particular CIA-DIA report concluded that, despite the conventional wisdom, “the Iranians perpetrated this attack.”

Dr. Stephen Pelletiere, a senior CIA analyst on Iraq during its war with Iran, told Roger Trilling of the Village Voice that he is one among many who believe that Goldberg’s account of the killings at Halabja was wrong and that the issue was far from academic.

Pelletiere said: “We say Saddam is a monster, a maniac who gassed his own people, and the world shouldn’t tolerate him. But why? Because that’s the last argument the U.S. has for going to war with Iraq.”

It may well have been the most emotionally riveting argument, I suppose.

Debunking the Junk

But what about Iraq’s alleged WMDs and supposed ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda? Goldberg made an attempt to include those canards as well, focusing mostly on chemical and biological warfare agents. (He left to the New York Times’ Judith Miller, who was later fired, and Michael Gordon, who is still chief military correspondent, to do the heavy lifting for the lies about Iraq’s supposed nuclear weapons.)

A final story about Jeffrey Goldberg’s pre-Iraq-invasion stories: Just a week before Congress bowed to Bush’s request for war authorization against Iraq, Goldberg was writing in Slate about the dangers of “aflatoxin,” which he had cited 15 times in his New Yorker article.

“Aflatoxin does only one thing well,” Goldberg wrote. “It causes liver cancer. In fact, it induces it particularly well in children.”

However, Goldberg’s obsession with “aflatoxin” didn’t stand up too well after the U.S.-led invasion found no evidence that Iraq still had bio-weapons stockpiles. Regarding aflatoxin, Charles Duelfer, the Bush administration’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that there was “no evidence to link those tests [of aflatoxin] with the development of biological weapons agents for military use.”

Ken Silverstein of Harper’s, among the more serious journalists who have had macabre fun critiquing Goldberg’s contribution to the Iraq War effort, wrote “Goldberg’s War,” one of the best critiques.

Silverstein wrote:

“Whatever Saddam’s regime intended to do with the aflatoxin … it did not involve wholescale tot-slaughter. But it seems to me that Goldberg was out to prove that Saddam was singularly evil — a man who would kill kids using cancer, no doubt cackling with glee as he watched them expire — because the American public might be less willing to support a war if he was merely an evil dictator, which are a dime a dozen.”

But who is Jeffrey Goldberg and how did he achieve such influence, helping to create the false conventional wisdom that sleep-walked the American people into war with Iraq and is now pointing toward a new war with Iran.

For a 44-year-old writer, Goldberg surely has been around. He left college to move to Israel where he served with the Israeli army as a prison guard at the Ketziot military prison camp during the First Intifada; he also wrote for The Jerusalem Post.

Upon his return to the U.S., he worked for the Jewish daily Forward and eventually got hired by The New Yorker. Now, he’s a star writer for The Atlantic.

Pitching for War

Goldberg’s mission this time? Pitching war with Iran.

This time, Goldberg and the Israelis want us to buy into a syllogism without a valid major premise. Their argument presupposes that Iran has made the decision to develop nuclear weapons and is hard at work on such a program, which is what they want Americans to believe whether there’s evidence or not.

The Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) and the neocons who brought us the war on Iraq, and occasionally the President himself, speak as though Iran has restarted work on the nuclear weapons part of their nuclear energy program.

This internal government debate (and the external propaganda) is a replay of three years ago, when the FCM succeeded in convincing most Americans that Iran either had nuclear weapons or was on the verge of getting them.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney were out in front hyping the danger, whipping the American people into another war frenzy — when an honest National Intelligence Estimate stopped them in their tracks.

Two things saved the day: integrity and fear.

Integrity on the part of analysts who, after the corruption before the Iraq War, were able to revert to the tell-it-like-it-is-without-fear-or-favor ethos that obtained during my 27 years as a CIA analyst; and fear on the part of the senior U.S. military that Cheney and Bush were about to order them to commit U.S. forces to war with Iran.

The integrity played out during work on a congressionally mandated National Intelligence Estimate that it took almost all of 2007 to complete. Most of those intelligence officials who had “fixed” the intelligence on Iraq had been given the heave-ho.

New leadership was installed under the direction of a non-corruptible Director of the National Intelligence Council, Tom Fingar, from the State Department.

Under Fingar, intelligence analysts rose to the occasion on the delicate issue of Iran’s nuclear development program by performing a bottom-up assessment. There would be no “fixing” of intelligence around the policy. Main question: Had Iran decided to go for the bomb?

The NIE’s first sentence conveyed the unanimous conclusion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.”

Fearing Another War

Fear now came into play and, for once, played a salutary role. Fear is simply a by-product of a sane appraisal of what war with Iran would mean. The senior U.S. military had enough good sense to be afraid and saw the NIE as an opportunity to stop the juggernaut toward war.

And so, they and those in Congress who had commissioned the NIE insisted that its key judgments be declassified and made public, despite reluctance on the part of the Director of National Intelligence to do so.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and CENTCOM commander William “Fox” Fallon had been living in fear of a Cheney-inspired order to commit U.S. forces to war with Iran. Fallon actually had told retired Col. Patrick Lang, a few months before Fallon was cashiered,

“We are not going to do Iran on my watch.”

Fear? Yes, fear — an altogether sensible reaction. No commander worth his salt looks with equanimity at the prospect of being on the receiving end of an order that could decimate his troops and lead to a wider war for which his forces would not be adequate.

On a more personal basis, no commander wants to be faced with a choice between having to resign on principle on the one hand and carrying out an order he knows to be fatefully misguided on the other.

Good sense prevailed, over Cheney’s strong objections, and Bush sent Mullen to Israel in June 2008 with instructions to warn the Israelis in no uncertain terms not to provoke war with Iran with any expectation that the U.S. would pull their chestnuts out of the fire.

Fast forward to the present. Where is Iran now in its nuclear program?

When an important National Intelligence Estimate needs updating, the art form often chosen is what is called a “Memorandum to Holders” — in the case at hand, holders of the original NIE of November 2007.

Such a paper need not repeat the bottom-up research and analysis completed immediately prior to November 2007; it simply requires a close look at evidence acquired from the end of 2007 to the present to determine whether there is reason to change the key judgments of three years ago.

Pressure to Rewrite?

We hear nothing from our sources about any substantial change over the past three years. That is not what the Goldbergs and other neocons of this world want to hear, and this presumably is why the Memorandum to Holders has been held up for months and months. Not a good sign.

Authoritative statements for the record have been sparse but reassuring, inasmuch as they seem to confirm the 2007 NIE’s key judgments. Congressional testimony in February by then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and in April by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs revealed no major developments.

Moreover, Blair consistently hewed to the 2007 judgment that Iran’s eventual decision on whether or not to build a nuclear weapon can still be influenced by “the international community.”

Scattered statements by other high officials, including President Obama, sometimes convey a sense that Iran is again working toward a nuclear weapon, and the FCM has been leaving hints left and right that this is the case.

Folks like Jeffrey Goldberg refer casually, but intentionally, to “Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

The neocons seem to be as strong now as under George W. Bush, with their Real-Men-Go-to-Tehran-type macho undiminished.

Can integrity trump macho this time? Without a strong man at the helm in the intelligence community, it will be very difficult. And the administration let drop months ago that this time the key judgments of the Memorandum to Holders will not be made public.

Meanwhile, Goldberg and his neocon colleague flaks are trying to create as much pressure as they can on Obama to produce a scarier Estimate … or to delay the one in progress sine die.

The outlook would seem even bleaker were it not for the availability of WikiLeaks and other non-FCM news outlets that would be ready and willing to publish documents about what is actually going on behind the scenes.

It would seem a safe bet that there are enough folks with access to the Memorandum to Holders drafts to recognize swiftly any attempt to corrupt honest judgments.

Some government officials will probably be able to recognize their own conscience, their integrity and their oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, as values that properly supersede other promises — like the promise not to release classified information that is a condition of employment.

Those who are tempted to exaggerate the threat from Iran will, at least, have to take into account how relatively easy it has become to evade the FCM’s gatekeepers and expose government dishonesty to the people.

Israel, the U.S. and the Arab World

U.S. Assures Israel That Iran Threat Is Not Imminent

By Mark Mazzetti and David E. Sanger, The New York Times
August 19, 2010

The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran’s nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a “dash” for a nuclear weapon, according to American officials.

Administration officials said they believe the assessment has dimmed the prospect that Israel would pre-emptively strike against the country’s nuclear facilities within the next year, as Israeli officials have suggested in thinly veiled threats.

For years, Israeli and American officials have debated whether Iran is on an inexorable drive toward a nuclear bomb and, if so, how long it would take to produce one. A critical question has been the time it would take Tehran to convert existing stocks of low-enriched uranium into weapons-grade material, a process commonly known as “breakout.”

Israeli intelligence officials had argued that Iran could complete such a race for the bomb in months, while American intelligence agencies have come to believe in the past year that the timeline is longer.

“We think that they have roughly a year dash time,” said Gary Samore, President Obama’s top adviser on nuclear issues, referring to how long it would take the Iranians to convert nuclear material into a working weapon. “A year is a very long period of time.”

American officials said the United States believed international inspectors would detect an Iranian move toward breakout within weeks, leaving a considerable amount of time for the United States and Israel to consider military strikes.

The American assessments are based on intelligence collected over the past year, as well as reports from international inspectors. It is unclear whether the problems that Iran has had enriching uranium are the result of poor centrifuge design, difficulty obtaining components or accelerated Western efforts to sabotage the nuclear program.

American officials said new intelligence information was being fed into a long-delayed National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program.

Now, American and Israeli officials believe breakout is unlikely anytime soon. For one thing, Iran, which claims it is interested in enriching uranium only for peaceful purposes, would be forced to build nuclear bombs from a limited supply of nuclear material, currently enough for two weapons. Second, such a decision would require kicking out international weapons inspectors, eliminating any ambiguity about Iran’s nuclear plans.

Even if Iran were to choose this path, American officials said it would probably take Iran some time to reconfigure its nuclear facilities to produce weapons-grade uranium and ramp up work on designing a nuclear warhead.

Israeli officials have indicated that if they saw a race for the bomb under way, they would probably take military action and encourage the United States to join the effort. A spokesman for Israel’s embassy in Washington declined to comment for this article. In interviews, Israeli officials said their assessments were coming into line with the American view, but they remain suspicious that Iran has a secret enrichment site yet to be discovered.

American officials said, in contrast to a year ago, that Iran’s nuclear program was not currently the central focus of discussions between top leaders in Washington and Jerusalem. During the last visit to Washington by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in early July, the Iranian program was relatively low on the agenda, according to one senior administration official.

To block Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the United States and the European Union recently imposed harsh economic sanctions aimed at choking off Iran’s energy supplies and prohibiting foreign banks from doing business with financial institutions inside the country.

Several officials said they believed the mounting cost of the economic sanctions, especially those affecting Iran’s ability to import gasoline and develop its oil fields, has created fissures among Iran’s political elite and forced a debate about the costs of developing nuclear weapons.

“The argument is over how far to push the program, how close to a weapon they can get without paying an even higher price,” said the senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because American assessments on these debates are classified. “And we’re beginning to see a lot of divisions inside the leadership on that question.”

Nuclear experts agree that the hardest element of producing a weapon is obtaining weapons-grade material. And for Iran that quest, which stretches back more than 20 years, has not been going well, by most accounts.

For most of this year, Iran has added relatively few centrifuges — the machines that spin uranium at supersonic speed, enriching it — to its main plant at Natanz. Only about half of those installed are operating, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. So far, Iran has produced about 5,730 pounds, enough, with considerable additional enrichment, to produce roughly two weapons.

The public explanation by American officials is that the centrifuges are inefficient and subject to regular breakdowns. And while Iranian officials have talked about installing more advanced models that would be more efficient and reliable, only a few have been installed.

“Either they don’t have the machines, or they have real questions about their technical competence,” Mr. Samore said.

Some of Iran’s enrichment problems appear to have external origins. Sanctions have made it more difficult for Iran to obtain precision parts and specialty metals. Moreover, the United States, Israel and Europe have for years engaged in covert attempts to disrupt the enrichment process by sabotaging the centrifuges. Officials concede there are potential vulnerabilities in their assessments. Chief among them is whether Iran has hidden another enrichment center somewhere in the tunnels it has dug throughout the country, including some near Natanz.

Last September, Iran acknowledged to inspectors that it had spent years building such a hidden facility near the city of Qum, buried in a mountain near a major military base. The admission came just days before Western leaders revealed the existence of the facility. But after detailed surveys, and interviews with defectors, officials say they have no evidence a second such facility is under construction.

The current draft of the intelligence report also describes considerable division in Iran about whether the goal of the nuclear program should be to walk right up to the threshold of building an actual bomb — which would mean having highly enriched uranium on hand, along with a workable weapons design — or simply to keep enough low-enriched uranium on hand to preserve Tehran’s options for building a weapon later.

Even as American and Israeli officials agree that the date that Iran is likely to have a nuclear weapon has been pushed into the future, that does not mean that Israel has abandoned the idea of a possible military strike.

American officials said that Israel was particularly concerned that, over time, Iran’s supreme leader could order that nuclear materials be dispersed to secret locations around the country, making it less likely that an Israeli military strike would significantly cripple the program.

North Korea

U.S. Boy Returns from Outreach Visit to North Korea

By Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press Writer
August 19, 2010

A 13-year-old American boy who made a rare visit to Pyongyang says officials there welcomed his idea for a "children's peace forest" in the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea, although they said it would only happen if the countries signed a peace treaty first.

Jonathan Lee returned Thursday from an eight-day visit to the reclusive country during which he was taken on a tour of the DMZ. A hoped-for meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il did not materialize, although Lee said the officials forwarded to Kim a letter from him.

"On this trip, I discovered that both sides want reunification and that Korea is one, so I see hope on the Korean peninsula," Lee, who made the visit with his parents, Kyoung and Melissa Lee, told The Associated Press.

Impoverished North Korea is one of the most isolated countries in the world and its hard-line communist regime is under United Nations sanctions for launching missiles and refusing to comply with nuclear weapons inspections. Since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a cease-fire and not an armistice, the U.S., South Korea and North Korea remain technically at war.

Lee, of Ridgeland, Mississippi, said the officials told him his proposed children's forest was dependent on North Korea first signing a peace treaty with the United States to formally end the war — a longstanding demand of Pyongyang's.

Click here to see more photos of Jonathan Lee

AP

The 2 1/2 mile (4 kilometer)-wide DMZ is the most heavily guarded border in the world, sealed off with electric fences and studded with land mines, watchtowers and military bases.

Despite the political hurdles, Lee said he'll continue pushing the idea for a peace forest to allow interaction between children from the two sides and hopes to visit the North again next year.

The lack of diplomatic relations between Pyongyang and Washington makes private visits to the North by Americans extremely rare. In recent months North Korea has detained four Americans for illegal entry, and one is still in prison there.

Melissa Lee said concerns about the family's safety in the north had proved unfounded.

"We were taken care of. At no point did I feel unsafe," she said.

Although initially taken aback by her son's desire to visit the North, she said the trip proved to be a moving experience.

"For him to want to do this on his own, I'm fairly proud of him. He may not have met (Kim), but the fact that he did it was something," she said.

The Lee family said they received permission this summer to visit North Korea from the country's representative to the United Nations. Visas were granted last week in Beijing.

Home video shot by the family during their visit showed Jonathan Lee talking to tourists inside a meeting room at the DMZ, presenting flowers at a children's music performance, and visiting a museum, library and Pyongyang's famed mass games.

In his letter submitted to the North Korean leader, Lee said he wrote that former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung had talked with him about his "sunshine policy" of peaceful coexistence with the North.

That policy of rapprochement has been abandoned by the current conservative South Korean government, and relations between Seoul and Pyongyang are at their most tense in years.

North Korea

North Korea and South Korea Exchange Warnings Ahead of War Games

By Defense.Professionals
August 16, 2010

As DD India reports, South Korea urged the North on Sunday to end its military provocations but Pyongyang threatened Seoul with the "severest punishment" over massive joint war games planned with the United States.

The rivals exchanged tit-for-tat warnings as the South unveiled a roadmap for the reunification of the Korean peninsula on the eve of the 10-day exercise involving some 56,000 South Korean and 30,000 American soldiers.

"It is about time Pyongyang looked straight at reality, made a courageous change and came up with a drastic decision," South Korea's President Lee Myung-Bak said.

The Koreas "need to overcome the current state of division and proceed with the goal of peaceful reunification," he said in a speech to celebrate Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.

Lee warned that South Korea would not tolerate any military provocations from its neighbour.

"The North must never venture to carry out another provocation nor will we tolerate it if they do so again," he said.

Pyongyang issued a fresh warning Sunday that its army and people would "deal a merciless counterblow" to the United States and South Korea over the war games "as it had already resolved and declared at home and abroad".

"The military counteraction of (North Korea) will be the severest punishment... ever met in the world," a spokesman for the North's army General Chief said in a statement quoted by state media.

Cross-border tensions have been high since May when Seoul and Washington, citing multinational investigation, said Pyongyang was behind the March torpedoing of a South Korean warship that left 46 sailors dead. (DD India)

The Drumbeats of War with Iran are Getting Louder

The Drumbeats of War with Iran are Getting Louder

Dire signs in ramping up of rhetoric, military preparations

By Muhammad Sahimi,Tehran Bureau
July 31, 2010

Back in September 2002, Andrew H. Card, George W. Bush's chief of staff, was asked why the Bush administration had not yet begun a propaganda campaign to prepare the American public for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Practically anyone who had been following political developments, particularly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, knew that Bush was bent on attacking Iraq, yet there was still no major propaganda program in place. Card responded, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," meaning that much of the public is then on summer vacation and does not pay much attention to what is going on in or coming out of Washington.

It is the end of July now, but the propaganda campaign to prepare the public for possible military attacks on Iran is already in high gear. The drumbeats of war are getting louder by the day and, unless the public is fully informed of the potentially catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and the rest of the world, we may soon see another illegal war waged by the United States and Israel against a Muslim country -- in addition to all the secret and not-so-secret attacks against nations such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Some are even saying that the situation is eerily similar to the one right before the 1967 war between the Arab countries and Israel, when the entire Middle East was seething. This time, too, Israel is making sure that the drumbeats of war are as loud as possible.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of Israel have been shuttling between Washington and Tel Aviv, pushing for crippling economic sanctions that even they concede will not change Iran's nuclear policy. These sanctions are being put in place, both by the United States and its allies. The open prediction that they will fail is meant to indicate just one thing -- military attacks are inevitable.

While visiting Washington this week, Barak told the Washington Post,

"It's still time for sanctions." But he continued, "Probably, at a certain point, we should realize that sanctions cannot work."

Never mind that Tzipi Livni, Israel's former foreign minister, stated in 2007 that even if Iran did develop a nuclear arsenal, it would pose little threat to Israel. She even criticized Ehud Olmert, her predecessor, for exaggerating the Iranian nuclear issue for political gain.

When Netanyahu recently visited Washington, President Barack Obama did not demand accountability for Israel's recent acts of violence involving the Freedom Flotilla and other humanitarian aid efforts to Gaza. What he did instead was to greet Netanyahu with his signature smile and warm words -- as all U.S. presidents are obligated to do when meeting with any Israeli leader. But the president did not stop there. He gave Netanyahu carte blanche regarding Iran, to the extent that the meeting was dubbed "Netanyahu 1, Obama 0." The President said,

Finally, we discussed issues that arose out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Conference. And I reiterated to the Prime Minister that there is no change in U.S. policy when it comes to these issues. We strongly believe that, given its size, its history, the region that it's in, and the threats that are leveled against us -- against it, that Israel has unique security requirements. It's got to be able to respond to threats or any combination of threats in the region. And that's why we remain unwavering in our commitment to Israel's security. And the United States will never ask Israel to take any steps that would undermine their security interests.

Note how at one point the President used "us," not "it," in reference to Israel -- although he quickly corrected himself -- as if the interests of Israel and the United States were identical. Note also how he states that Israel has "unique security requirements." Well, every nation has unique security requirements. Why can Iran not say the same? Its national security requirements are also unique. This was recognized by both the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the Islamic Republic. When the Shah was in power, Iraq, backed by the Soviet Union -- with which Iran shares a long border -- was involved in a series of confrontations with Iran. In the post-Revolution era, Iran has continually been threatened and attacked, first by Iraq, then by the United States and its NATO allies during the "tankers war" of 1987-88, then by U.S.-backed terrorist groups, ranging from Jundallah to PJAK.

The rhetorical rationale for attacking Iran keeps coming out of Washington. Most astonishingly, there is a resolution before the U.S. Congress, signed by one-third of the Republican caucus, that urges support for Israeli military attacks on Iran.

The resolution, H. Res. 1553, represents a green light for a bombing campaign. It provides explicit support for military strikes, stating that Congress backs Israel's use of "all means necessary" against Iran "including the use of military force." This is while many top U.S. military leaders have warned that strikes could be catastrophic to national security interests and engulf the Middle East in a "calamitous" regional war. The hubris of the warmongering supporters of Israel in Congress knows no limit, however. If the bill were actually to pass, it would probably be the first time in history that the parliament of one nation urged a second nation to attack a third, and promised support for such an action.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a recent TV interview,

I think the sanctions will have some impact.... Will it deter [Iran] from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability? Probably not.

And Michael Hayden, CIA director under George W. Bush, said recently that during his tenure "a strike was way down the list of options," but that such action now "seems inexorable." He continued,

"In my personal thinking, I have begun to consider that that may not be the worst of all possible outcomes."

He said that the likelihood of a U.S. strike on Iran has risen in the face of Tehran's refusal to halt its contentious nuclear program.

"We engage," he stated. "They continue to move forward. We vote for sanctions. They continue to move forward. We try to deter, to dissuade. They continue to move forward."

Senator Joseph "bomb-Iran-for-Israel's-sake" Lieberman (I-Connecticut) said in April,

I think it's deeply important that the fanatical leadership in Iran understands that we are very serious about their nuclear weapons program, and when we say it's unacceptable for Iran to go nuclear, we mean it -- that we can and will do everything to stop Iran from going nuclear. The next step is tough sanctions, economic sanctions. Frankly it's a last chance for Iran to avoid giving the rest of the world, including the United States, a hard choice between allowing Iran to go nuclear and using military power to stop them from doing that.

I cannot stress enough that this is a turning point in history. If we allow Iran to become a nuclear power, the world becomes terribly more unsafe for everybody. It's the end of the global nuclear nonproliferation attempts. All the work that President Obama's doing on the START treaty, trying to keep nukes from terrorists -- if Iran goes nuclear, that's over.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has declared time and again that there is no evidence that there is a nuclear weapons program in Iran, and has certified time and again that there has been no diversion of Iran's nuclear materials to nonpeaceful purposes. The National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 states that Iran stopped its work on a nuclear weapon in 2003, even though it actually did not present any evidence that Iran had such a program prior to that point. Lieberman thus brazenly lies when he talks about Iran's "nuclear weapons program."

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) recently stated,

"I believe Hashem [Orthodox for God] actually gave me that name [Schumer]. One of my roles, very important in the United States Senate, is to be a shomer [guardian] -- to be a, or the shomer Yisrael [guardian of Israel]. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body...."

To thunderous applause at a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he declared,

Diplomacy has failed. Iran is on the verge of becoming nuclear and we cannot afford that.

Now, if a U.S. senator can invoke God to justify what he is doing when he urges war on another nation, why can the clerics and hardliners in Tehran not justify their crimes by invoking God? If the clerics are exposed as fanatics when they suggest God embraces violence, how is it that Schumer is not?

Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) declared,

We have to contemplate the final option, the use of force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Does the "final option" of Senator Bayh not remind us of the Nazis' "final solution," the murder of six million innocent Jews? Would a military attack on Iran not kill a devastating number of innocent people, both there and in the rest of the Middle East?

And then we have the rants of Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina), who told the AIPAC conference,

War is a terrible thing, but sometimes it is better to go to war than to allow the Holocaust to develop a second time.

As if a war with Iran would not result in a Holocaust for Iranians and the rest of the Middle East. And the imbecilic senator, who has difficulty pronouncing the word "nuclear" correctly, wants not just war, but total destruction:

If military force is ever employed, it should be done in a decisive fashion. The Iran government's ability to wage conventional war against its neighbors and our troops in the region should not exist. They should not have one plane that can fly or one ship that can float.

In a Washington Post op-ed piece, former senator Charles S. Robb and retired general Charles Wald opined,

The administration needs to expand its approach and make clear to the Iranian regime and the American people: If diplomatic and economic pressures do not compel Iran to terminate its nuclear program, the U.S. military has the capability and is prepared to launch an effective, targeted strike on Tehran's nuclear and supporting military facilities.

Both are members of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a hawkish group established in 2008. Led by neoconservative Michael Makovsky, it was formed specifically to advocate tough sanctions and military attacks on Iran. The center released a document with the provocative title, "Meeting the Challenge, When Time Runs Out."

To demonstrate U.S. resolve and readiness to go to war, it urges the Obama administration to augment the Fifth Fleet presence in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman [whose headquarters are in Bahrain], including the deployment of an additional [aircraft] carrier battle group and minesweepers to the waters off Iran; conduct broad exercises with its allies in the Persian Gulf [and] initiate a "strategic partnership" with Azerbaijan to enhance regional access....

The report continues, If such pressure fails to persuade Iran's leadership, the United States and its allies would have no choice but to consider blockading refined petroleum imports into Iran, which the report conceded would "effectively be an act of war and the U.S. and its allies would have to prepare for its consequences" -- meaning outright war. Makovsky was formerly a consultant to a controversial Pentagon office created in the run-up to the Iraq war to find evidence of operational ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. When such evidence proved nonexistent, it was cooked up anyway and used to justify the invasion.

In urging war with Iran, the neoconservative allies of Israel even shed crocodile tears for Iranians. Writing in the neoconservative Weekly Standard, Jamie M. Fly and William Kristol -- dubbed the little Lenin of the neocons -- stated,

Unfortunately, President Obama waffled while innocent Iranians were killed by their own government. It's now increasingly clear that the credible threat of a military strike against Iran's nuclear program is the only action that could convince the regime to curtail its ambition.

And who are these two "humanitarians?" Beginning in 1996, Kristol, with his neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC), was the leading advocate of the invasion of Iraq, which killed up to one million innocent Iraqis. He has applauded the president's policy on war in Afghanistan that is rapidly piling up casualties, both among the innocent Afghan people and U.S. soldiers. He has campaigned for every war ever realized or imagined with a Muslim nation. Yet Kristol wants us to believe that he really feels the pain of the Iranian people. Fly is a Bush-era hawk, who worked at the Pentagon and the National Security Council. These two men now direct the Foreign Policy Initiative, which succeeded the PNAC, after that organization was totally discredited.

Other discredited leftovers from the Bush regime are making similar pronouncements. Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security advisor, and Israeli Brigadier General Michael Herzog stated in a position paper published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of AIPAC,that:

By the first quarter of 2011, we will know whether sanctions are proving effective.

The administration should begin to plan now for a course of action should sanctions be deemed ineffective by the first or second quarter of next year. The military option must be kept on the table both as a means of strengthening diplomacy and as a worst-case scenario.

Elliot Abrams, who was senior director responsible for Near East and North African affairs in the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration -- and who was convicted for his key role in the infamous Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s -- told the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) on April 25,

I believe Israel will act [attack Iran], and I hope the U.S. will. We keep saying it's unacceptable for Iran to have a bomb, but we don't mean it. We mean it's terrible, we don't want it. But when Israel says it's unacceptable, they mean it.

Then there is Steven Rosen, long a highly influential figure within AIPAC and now an aide to Daniel Pipes -- an Islamophobe who runs an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim website - who told ZOA,

The majority of Americans support force on Iran, yet there's a taboo against saying we must force them now.... The U.S. would be more efficient than Israel at suppressing Iran. We have to have the ability to stare directly into the light bulb.

Does the light bulb not remind you of the infamous nuclear mushroom cloud invoked by Condoleezza Rice to justify the invasion of Iraq?

And let us see what so-called scholar Danielle Pletka has to say. Pletka, a strong supporter of the invasion of Iraq, is the vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, where some of the "brains" behind the invasion, such as Richard N. Perle -- the "Prince of Darkness" -- reside. She has been constantly hyping the nonexistent threat from Iran. In July 2009 testimony to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, she shed crocodile tears for the Iranian people, declaring that:

It is only by applying the toughest possible sanctions that we stand any chance of persuading Iran's leaders to consider serious negotiations with the international community.

Her opinion has, shall we say, evolved since then. In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal this March, Pletka declared,

The only questions remaining, one Washington politico tells me, are who starts it, and how it ends.

Former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has advocated bombing Iran as the "better safe than sorry" option. He downplays the backlash throughout the Middle East that many experts, including those in the U.S. military, anticipate would result from such a preemptive strike. Gerecht was at the American Enterprise Institute and involved with Kristol's PNAC; he once infamously said, "The Iranians have terrorism in their DNA."

A few years ago, Gerecht, who used to write under the pseudonym Edward Shirley and is supposedly an Iran pundit, participated in a symposium on Iran at the University of Southern California, where I teach. He did not know the simplest information about Iran's internal political structure, the various factions, or their positions. When I confronted him with the most basic facts, he became upset.

The Arab nations of the Persian Gulf have also gotten into the act of advocating war with Iran. Yousef al-Otaiba, ambassador to the United States from the United Arab Emirates, recently told neoconservative Washington Times reporter Eli Lake,

I think it's a cost-benefit analysis [when it comes to attacking Iran]. I think despite the large amount of trade we do with Iran, which is close to $12 billion ... there will be consequences, there will be a backlash and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country; that is going to happen no matter what. If you are asking me, "Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran?" my answer is still the same: "We cannot live with a nuclear Iran." I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the U.A.E.

Now, why a country that is benefiting immensely from Iran, that has absorbed thousands of educated Iranians, and that has purchased billions of dollars worth of the most modern weapons, feels threatened by a nation that is surrounded on three sides by U.S. forces is beyond my comprehension.

That is not all. On June 5, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia reportedly told French Defense Minister Hervé Morin,

"There are two countries in the world that do not deserve to exist: Iran and Israel."

This statement was reported by Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro, who said that it was confirmed by two sources from diplomatic and military circles.

Almost simultaneously, the Times of London reported that Saudi Arabia has practiced standing down its air defense systems to allow Israel to use its air space for an attack on Iran.

I believe that King Abdullah probably did not even mention Israel at all (Israel never raised a protest in response to the reported statement). The Arab nations of the Persian Gulf, which rely on the United States and France for everything, have no issue with Israel, despite their rhetoric. It is Iran with which they have a problem. This is, of course, not new. It goes back decades, even centuries. These nations also resented the military power of Iran during the Shah, and provided $50 billion to Iraq to continue its war with Iran in the 1980s.

The danger in such reckless statements, however, is that they provide ammunition for those in Washington who want war. They can claim that it is not just Israel that feels threatened by Iran and its (nonexistent) nuclear weapon program -- "The Arabs feel the same way."

One might think that this is nothing more than rhetoric and psychological warfare. Yet persistent reports for the past two months indicate that the United States has stepped up covert operations and preparations for action against Iran. There have been credible reports that American forces have been concentrating around the Persian Gulf and the Caucasus, most remarkably in Azerbaijan. There have also been reports of Israeli activities in Azerbaijan, and of the U.S. and Israeli air forces practicing joint bombing drills. Add the fact that the United States recently increased the number of its carrier strike groups opposite Iran to three, and one gets a terrifying picture of what might happen.

If war with Iran does come, it will be to a large extent Washington's fault. When he was running for president, candidate Obama offered to negotiate with Iran without any preconditions. But the offer, without any fundamental change in the way the United States views Iran, was meaningless. Yes, the Obama administration did not demand that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program before negotiating to swap its low-enriched uranium (LEU) with fuel for the Tehran research reactor that provides medical isotopes for 850,000 ill Iranians. Yes, as always, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said one thing last October -- yes to the swap -- but did something else -- backtracked. Eventually, however, he and the hardliners were forced to accept the original October 2009 deal, in the process making concessions that amounted to capitulation.

So why did Washington reject the pact brokered by Turkey and Brazil, and effectively chastise them -- "How dare you make a deal with Tehran?"

At the same time, Obama's goal has always been the same as that of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, namely, to dismantle Iran's uranium enrichment facilities and program. There is a negligible difference between demanding suspension of the uranium enrichment program before entering the negotiation room, and demanding the same just as soon as one enters the room. The president also set a superficial deadline, December 2009, for significant progress on the issue. Why is it that Washington politicians -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- oppose deadlines when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, but enthusiastically support one when dealing with Iran? Because when it comes to Iran, their bellicose fantasies have yet to be realized.

In fact, it is becoming abundantly clear that the president's promise to pursue diplomacy with Iran has always been similar to many other promises that he made during his campaign: bogus. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has repeatedly made it clear that the "diplomatic effort" is not directed at reaching a solution but about convincing the Europeans that diplomacy will not work.

So, it is now crystal clear -- if it had not long been already -- that the administration's plan has been to go through the diplomatic motions, as Israel's man in the White House, Dennis Ross, wanted, in order to set the stage for crippling sanctions and possible war against Iran.

What should be the position of those of us who oppose Tehran's hardliners and their repressive rule? There is no fundamental contradiction between, on the one hand, opposing the hardliners and advocating a democratic political system, and on the other, opposing sanctions and war against Iran. The last thing that Iran's democratic Green Movement needs at this point is military attacks, or sanctions that will hurt only ordinary people, further empower the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and provide the hardliners with the excuse of an overt threat to national security to crack down even harder on the movement. The invasion of Iraq did wonders for the Guards for precisely the same reason, helping it to consolidate its grip on power in Tehran. Any attack on Iran now will completely decimate the democratic movement.

Make no mistake. The hardliners' reckless foreign policy -- if it can even be called a "policy" -- has contributed significantly to the creation of the atmosphere of threats, sanctions, and potential war. The Islamic Republic's current position regarding its nuclear program is the same as that during 2003-2005 when Mohammad Khatami was president, namely, that having the complete cycle for producing nuclear fuel -- including uranium enrichment -- is Iran's fundamental right, with which I agree completely. But Khatami was willing to work with the Europeans to clarify the scope of the program -- he even suspended it for nearly two years, though without receiving the benefits for Iran that had been promised by the European Union in turn. Ahmadinejad and his team have simply committed one blunder after another. His reckless policy, adventurism, and rhetoric regarding Israel have provided the perfect excuse for the warmongers to advocate tough sanctions and even war on Iran.

I am not inveterately opposed to all sanctions. If some measures can be identified that target only the hardline clerics and their cronies, as well as ways that can help break their hold on the means of mass communications and free flow of information, they can be supported. Given that the Guards control a large part of Iran's economy -- both official and black-market -- it would be difficult to identify sanctions that hurt only the hardliners. However, if such sanctions can be identified, each time new ones are instituted, others that the United States has imposed for decades that hurt only the common people, such as those on selling civilian aircraft, must be lifted. This has not happened because the United States has single-mindedly made Iran's nuclear program the only issue. In fact, the nuclear program is not even among Iranians' top priorities Establishing a democratic political system and the rule of law is. If that happens, it will automatically solve the nuclear problem, as well.

Moreover, the United States and its allies have no right to demand Iran suspend its nuclear program, so long as Iran has abided by its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its Safeguards Agreement. Every report by the IAEA has confirmed that there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. I believe that Iran should suspend its uranium enrichment program for a mutually agreed upon period and ratify the Additional Protocol of the Safeguards Agreement to allow intrusive inspections by the IAEA, making the program more transparent. But demanding that Iran give up its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is not acceptable.

Thus, all those who do not want to see a new war in the Middle East -- which, if it comes to pass, will make the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look like child's play -- must oppose military threats and preemptive strikes, as well as any sanctions that hurt ordinary people.