Coming Soon - War with Iran?

[JackRiddler]

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Playing with a potential world war as if he was scripting the end of an episode in his neverending series. What could go wrong?

I'll upload the tweet set later if no one else does.

Here's a piece by me on the tanker attacks and subsequent propaganda. The corporate media dropped the tanker talk a.s.a.p. (since it was not looking good) and tried to restyle the crisis into an Iranian provocation because they're supposedly about to exceed uranium limits set in the nuclear agreement. As NYT wrote, Trump's just trying to coax them to the negotiating table!

Sanders had a great performance in response to this turn the other day, which I posted in the Sanders thread.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41597&p=674425#p674425

My dear American subjects:

By blaming Iran for the attacks on the Japanese and Norwegian tankers departing the Persian Gulf, your government is not merely lying but trolling you. Their real message has become all-too familiar: Only power matters. They no longer care about persuasion or credibility. Demands for evidence or logic are heresy. What they want goes beyond "with us or against us." It is a suicide pact. Anyone who isn't riding their missile and hooting with pleasure is a legitimate target.

This is a loyalty test for the empire's allies and vassal states. This is a message for the Japanese prime minister, who was in Tehran presenting his peace plan as the attacks occurred. Both of the tankers were heading for Japan. Will the conservative and pro-American Abe be the unexpected hero, call out the lies, stop the war push? It is unlikely, but how far are he and the rest of the world supposed to bend to accommodate the fake reality dictated by Pompeo and Bolton?

Meanwhile, there is no need to test the obedience of the domestic propaganda institutions. Riding along on the missile, The New York Times imagines it is straddling a fence. Yesterday the paper's resident War Department mouthpiece, David E. Sanger, did his part for the campaign.[1]

Sanger is not a simple cheerleader. He plays a sober analyst. His article headlines the same old nonsense about Iran as a nuclear threat and a belligerent party, which he has been doing for many years.[2] He loses no words on the tanker attacks. Iran is the threat, period. Any other problems are due to Trump's poor negotiating mettle.

A veteran lackey of the WMD propaganda push of 2002, Sanger dismisses the idea that the Europeans or Japanese will seriously challenge the unilateral US sanctions and proclamations. As his most important takeaway, he delivers a non-sequitur about the dire threat of peace... with North Korea. This is an alternate universe in which Trump is not the aggressor who promised to breach the existing agreement with Iran, and then did so in the absence of any Iranian violation, defying all other countries involved. Sanger's Newspeak reads Trump's threat to exerminate another country as a negotiating ploy, as if Iran is the recalcitrant one that needs to be brought to the table. Our real fear is supposed to be that Trump may prove weak or confused on Iran, allowing the wily Kim to take advantage.

1. David E. Sanger, "With a New Threat, Iran Tests the Resolve of the U.S. and Its Allies, June 17, 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/…/poli…/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html

2. David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon, "Future Risks of an Iran Nuclear Deal," Aug. 23, 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/…/poli…/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html

[JackRiddler]

3 July 1988: I Have Not Forgotten.

On that date, a US warship in the Persian Gulf, The Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane, killing the 290 people on board, including 66 children. A later US Navy report sought to exonerate the captain and crew of wrongdoing. As Linn Washington, Jr. writes in his piece today for Counterpunch, the report proved false on several key points. Most significantly, the plane never deviated from its announced route, as the Navy falsely claimed, before it was targeted and hit with a US missile. But the captain was given a combat medal anyway.

At the time of the Iranian Airbus shootdown, Iran and Iraq were locked in what would prove to be the final weeks of an eight-year war. It began in the summer of 1980, when the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq launched a surprise invasion of Iran's most oil-rich territories. No easy victory was forthcoming, and a long war of attrition followed. The major Western and Soviet-bloc arms-dealing nations not only profited from the 1980-88 bloodletting, but effectively helped to keep it going by supplying both sides. Iran and Iraq both managed to keep producing, shipping and selling oil on world markets, allowing them to pay war bills and continue enriching the international merchants of death.

Starting with the 1983 visit to Baghdad of its envoy, Donald Rumsfeld - or possibly earlier - the US government provided crucial arms, intelligence and loan guarantees to its de facto ally in Iraq. US aid, especially in the form of satellite intelligence, may have been decisive in allowing the Iraqi military to survive a series of Iranian "final offensives," after Iran gained the upper hand in the latter years of the war. US and other international arms shipments to Iraq continued even after Iraqi forces used poison gas to murder thousands of civilians for allegedly revolting against Hussein's rule in the predominantly Kurdish town of Halabjah in northern Iraq, in March 1988.

But the US government also broke its own law by selling arms to its official enemy, Iran, under a secret operation run out of the Reagan-Bush White House. According to the government's later cover story, this was done in exchange for Iran's help in gaining the release of US hostages held in Lebanon. The White House used the proceeds of these sales to fund the CIA-created Contra death-squad militia in Nicaragua, also in contravention of a US law known as the Boland Amendment. When news of these dealings broke in 1986, it was called "the Iran-Contra scandal." While the illegal US sales to Iran were minor compared to the help for Iraq, they supplied spare parts vital to keeping the Iranian military afloat. Iran relied mainly on US arms bought before the 1978 revolution by the earlier dictator, the Shah.

Starting in 1987, the US and other NATO nations deployed naval fleets to the Gulf, ostensibly to protect Kuwaiti oil traffic. In April 1988, the US claimed damage to a US warship was caused by an Iranian sea mine. Although there were no casualties, US forces responded with an April 18 attack on forces in Iranian territorial waters (Operation Praying Mantis). In the largest US naval engagement since the Korean War, the US Navy sank one-half of Iran's small fleet and killed about 60 on the Iranian side, with two US dead. This action may have reflected the true purpose of the US intervention: to force Iran out of the war.

By contrast, on May 17, Iraqi forces fired a missile at a US destroyer, The Stark, killing 30 US naval personnel. This was called an accident of war, and Iraq was forgiven. Six weeks later, on 3 July, The Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 after it took off from Tehran on its way to Dubai. The jet was still over Iranian territorial waters and following its usual route when it was hit. Iran and Iraq entered the ceasefire ending the war on 20 August 1988. The war is estimated to have killed one million people. No territory changed hands.

[Iamwhomiam]

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/19/donald-trump-iran-and-the-gulf-of-tonkin-redux/

Donald Trump, Iran, and the Gulf of Tonkin Redux
Intercepted

June 19 2019, 6:01 a.m.


At left, an oil tanker is on fire in the Gulf of Oman on June 13, 2019. At right, the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1964. Photo Illustration: Elise Swain/The Intercept; Images: AP (2), NSA

Powerful forces within the Trump administration appear intent on war against Iran. This week on Intercepted: As the U.S. accuses Iran of attacking civilian ships while offering scant evidence, grave historical parallels are emerging with the Gulf of Tonkin incidents in 1964 that were manipulated to justify Lyndon Johnson’s dramatic escalation of the war in Vietnam. California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna is preparing legislation aimed at stopping an attack on Iran, and he says he would not put it past national security adviser John Bolton to manipulate evidence. Journalist Negar Mortazavi of The Independent analyzes what war with Iran would look like and exposes the State Department’s funding of propaganda operations against Iran. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman talks about the parallels with the build up to the Iraq invasion of 2003 and shares stories from her early life as a journalist.

Transcript coming soon.

Podcast: https://theintercept.com/2019/06/19/donald-trump-iran-and-the-gulf-of-tonkin-redux/

Scahill Interview with Democracy Now co-founder Amy Goodman begins at minute 42.

[cptmarginal]

I listened to this episode twice as soon as it was posted Wednesday

[Iamwhomiam]

I also needed to listen to it twice. captain. A portion of Friday's Democracy Now show focused on Trump's early withdrawal and Bolton's chagrin of being deprived of the dead babies he imagined his, Reviewing the website afterwards I found the Intercept interview.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/21/trump_cancels_iran_strikes_after_drone

Trump Pulls Back from Iran Attack as Bolton & Pompeo Continue to Push for War
June 21, 2019

After threatening to strike Iran in retaliation for shooting down an unmanned U.S. drone, President Trump reportedly approved, and then abruptly called off, military strikes. The move came after the operation was already underway in its initial stages, with warships and planes already being put into position. We go to Tehran to get response from Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran who was part of the nuclear deal negotiations in 2015. We also speak with CUNY professor and historian Ervand Abrahamian, author of several books about Iran. Whether or not Trump wants war with Iran doesn’t ultimately matter, says Abrahamian. “The long-term agenda in the White House” from Bolton, Pompeo and others is much more aggressive. “They want basically the destruction of the Islamic Republic.”

Visit link for video & full transcript:
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/21/trump_cancels_iran_strikes_after_drone

We've been plotting against certain middle eastern countries since WWI.

I hope Jack shared the Clawson video with his FB friend who was bored with the so-called right-wing term "False flag."

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6LKmhDRWFc/url]

My feeling is that The Washington Institute, founded in 1985, is a mossad operation. Just a feeling.

I'd advise many to watch the Clawson video, especially those Patriot Tea Party Radical RIght Revolutionaries who feel the USA can do no wrong.

It would be wise to suggest to those who show support for middle eastern intervention by the US an old, grainy video in three parts, Fight for Oil: 100 Years in the Middle East

The videos relate our history and documents the disbursement among the Allied forces, the victors in WWI, of the Central Powers or Axis countries of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, the losers.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMWNtMYe93w


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMWlBGZRneg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY-XhsrDGH8

Another film worthy of watching for those wishing for a better understanding of our involvement in mining in Saudi Arabia, though not at all academic, but instead all Hollywood, would be the Day of the Falcon. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1701210/

If there is an Illuminati, I believe it would be the lamplighters. First came the whale oil barons, then the barons of coal and they developed coal oil, from which they created coal oil gas, then came the discovery of oil, first in Pennsylvania and New York, from which they refined kerosene. They finally managed to capture the methane that always vents from oil wells, to light our gas lights. Now we use, oil and gas to power electrical generation, our lamps now being electric.

It matters little to those eager to pursue ascertaining full control of if an agenda is delayed by an uncooperative administration, So it really matters little who is "running the show;" the USA will ruthlessly get their way concerning "their" interests in foreign lands. Eisenhower warned us and Kennedy wasn't listening.

Ultimately, Trump is terrified he won't be re-elected and is under the false impression that all wartime Presidents are automatically re-elected. Really doesn't matter to him where we wage war; Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, anywhere will do. And that scares the hell out of me. Evan Regan had Grenada to brag about.

[Grizzly]

Follow the Money: Three Billionaires Paved Way for Trump’s Iran Deal Withdrawal
https://lobelog.com/three-billionaires-paved-way-for-trumps-iran-deal-withdrawal/

Trump and the GOP are deeply indebted to anti-Iran deal billionaires who aren’t afraid to advocate for policies that push the country closer to another war in the Middle East.

<...>

[...] Trump and the Republican Party are effectively captive to a small cohort of hawkish billionaires dead set on steering the country away from any sort of detente with Iran, even a multilateral agreement that ensures limits on enrichment and subjects the Islamic Republic to invasive inspections of its nuclear facilities.

<...>

2013

https://mondoweiss.net/2013/10/adelson-nuclear-negotiate/
Sheldon Adelson calls on Obama to fire a nuclear weapon at Iran, not negotiate


Lindsey Graham Says Israel Will Attack Iran, And The U.S. Will Follow

[Iamwhomiam]

Wow! Kim Iverson. Quite extraordinary, imo. Hope she remains independent and YT doesn't boot her.


https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2018/Crawford_Costs%20of%20War%20Estimates%20Through%20FY2019%20.pdf


Map Shows U.S. Is Fighting Terrorism in 80 Countries




Depending upon one's perspective it can be a very scary world.

Ask any of the scarry ones, I'm sure they'll agree.

[JackRiddler]

Kim Iverson bouncing Graham around was fun up until 10:30ish, when she tries to explain recent Iranian history and shows she knows little and probably has read less. Wouldn't have been so hard to get some precision on it.

[Harvey]

This carefully constructed scene from Sydney Lumet's masterpiece Network (1976, written by Paddy Chayefsky) has almost all of it, an exercise in lasting and powerful concision.

[Grizzly]

How come Stuxnet, Zero days malicious computer worm/virus is not mentioned? We and our 'chosen people' ally and Harem Keeper (read slave owner) the (chop chop square) Oil Sheiks, has long ago declared war on Iran by cyberwarfare. Conveniently forgotten or highly likely NOT mentioned on purpose.
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1142835332083326977
Live vid at link




p.s. If anyone knows how to direct link the vid, please do... Note: found it, and reposted above

We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set.

[JackRiddler]

How come Stuxnet, Zero days malicious computer worm/virus is not mentioned?

I mention Stuxnet (discovered 2010, likely commissioned 2008, thus a Bush-Obama operation in apparent alliance with Israel) as an example of illegal aggression against Iran all the time. It is now the granddaddy of international state-led cyberwarfare, the starting shot that everyone is supposed to forget. (Russians invented it day before yesterday, don't you know?)

The good Wiki page on Stuxnet is in German, by the way. Very sober & expert, not so much because it's German but because it specifically targeted a Siemens system that by 2008 was used almost exclusively in Iran only. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet#Vermutungen_über_die_Urheber_und_Ziele

Nevertheless, Stuxnet does not belong on a list titled "Key steps Trump has taken to create Iran war," as Trump did not commission, approve, or order the launch of Stuxnet. You may question why the Congresswoman talks about Trump only, and doesn't cover US-Iran history back to 2003 or 1953 or earlier in a single tweet. I'd ask you instead to remember that the Stuxnet aggression despite everything was followed by negotiations that led to the 2015 six-party agreement with Iran and the lifting of tensions as well as of many sanctions. Iran has remained in compliance ever since. While Israel and Saudi Arabia never stopped lobbying for a US war, the US had pulled back from it. US-led aggression was only resumed in May 2018, when Trump announced US withdrawal from the agreement and unilaterally escalated sanctions on Iran, against the will of all of the other participants in the agreement. So Tulsi's list is actually relevant and true, even without Stuxnet (or the Mossadegh coup), although these are always relevant to understanding the situation more broadly. Why are you complaining about the only contender (sadly a term that cannot include Gravel, though we love him) who is speaking the truth about the push for a war on Iran so admirably and correctly?

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[Grizzly]

The foreign policy entity that doesn't change with the executive is what the fuck I'm talking about, BushSr., Clinton, Bush Jr. Obomber, and the orange one. Is what I see as key...

[Iamwhomiam]

Kim Iverson bouncing Graham around was fun up until 10:30ish, when she tries to explain recent Iranian history and shows she knows little and probably has read less. Wouldn't have been so hard to get some precision on it.

True, Jack. She should have written a script and kept to it after she had researched the relevant histories. Getting Shia and Sunni mixed up? Beginning 16:40 she really screwed up, saying "The Iranians, who did the revolution..." was particularly annoying. Why not "The Iranian revolutionaries" instead? Unpracticed.

Still, she covered the all bases (with little US flags) with fair accuracy more completely than any msn clip I've seen. And that was a breath of fresh air for me, until she farted. I'd listen to her again. Thanks for sharing her video, Grizzly.

[JackRiddler]

The foreign policy entity that doesn't change with the executive is what the fuck I'm talking about, BushSr., Clinton, Bush Jr. Obomber, and the orange one. Is what I see as key...

Yeah, I get that. And you know I get it, so don't insult me. Except it's not a transhistorical essence that always stays the same. It changes in subtle and unsubtle ways with the executive, and the zeitgeist, and the global situation, and the war developments, and the movements, and the developments in political economym and the general decaying tendencies of any empire. It could change radically with an executive, and most here would accept the premise that this is why Kennedy was murdered and why Carter was by light years the best of the bad pack. In more recent decades, the interchange between D and R has been its vital life-force. The Rs are the revolutionaries and cowboys, generally speaking -- note I write generally speaking -- they break all the heretofore norms of how much barbarism and recklessness and naked murder is acceptable, they rip up international law and debase the alliances and open new theaters. Then the Ds come in pretending they will change that and taming the antiwar energy, so that once in office they can instead consolidate and legalize the achievements of the Rs and expand on them in more gradual, responsible seeming fashion. Having thus wasted all the energy that elected them, they give way again to the next round of R atrocity-plus. This dynamic allows the system to continue. It also shows the leeway. It is still possible that an election can contribute to changing this (if the election involves a big movement that doesn't just demobilize afterward). Again, this board is almost premised on the idea that this is why the coup of 1963 happened, because it was feared (rightly or wrongly) that one of these executives could go off the farm. Trump shows no such danger, by the way.

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[Iamwhomiam]

I think they're just about done with that dead fish, especially since he's backed down. Time to dump Trump and raise the Barr.

I believe the Rs are no longer playing the game as it been being played since Ike was in office, if not before. Its a new day and we've never before been so threatened economically and we certainly are an empire in decline. No, the Rs are playing by their own rules - no more will they support the illusion of democracy, of equality and liberty for all, and that we have a real choice for change when we vote. This country has been steadily moving to the right since FDR, with some of the worst harm coming from the Democrat Presidents and senators.

I'm not so sure Biden's wife and daughter weren't killed to bring him, a young DINO upstart, into line, and and that Beau's Brain cancer seems a reminder for the '88 presidential candidate of who's in charge, reminding him to not rock the boat.