The Plane That Would Bomb Iran
In June of last year, I went to Andersen Air Force Base, in Guam, to be embedded with the squadron flying the Air Force’s top-of-the-line strategic weapon: the B-2 Spirit, a massive, nuclear-capable stealth bomber that looks like a jagged boomerang and, with a price tag of nearly $1.2 billion, makes other planes seem cheap. It was my third visit in two years to Guam, an island of growing significance in America’s military-deployment strategy. The occasion for my visit was Valiant Shield, a military exercise—and the largest display of U. S. military power in the Pacific since the Vietnam War—in which several B-2s would be participating. Valiant Shield 2006 featured three aircraft-carrier strike groups, with all of their attendant destroyers, cruisers, frigates, submarines, and aircraft—290 aircraft in all, including B-2s, Marine F-18Cs, Navy F/A-18Es, and Air Force F-15Es. Never mind the official rhetoric—the point of this show of force was to impress adversaries like North Korea and competitors like China. (China had been invited to send a military delegation; the day before I arrived, Chinese officials were inspecting the bombers from the outside.)

Andersen Air Force Base has long had a squadron of heavy bombers, deployed there to be close to Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula. On one of my previous visits to the base, in the autumn of 2004, I’d spent time with B-52 pilots from Barksdale Air Force Base, near Shreveport, Louisiana. They were young, happy-go-lucky, uncomplicated. I was profoundly curious about the B-2 pilots. For a host of reasons, they had to be different. (Read more)

U.S. District Court Rules Iran Behind 9/11 Attacks

PR Newswire

NEW YORK, December 23, 2011

NEW YORK, December 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ –

A federal district court in Manhattan yesterday entered a historic ruling that
reveals new facts about Iran’s support of al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. U.S.
District Judge George B. Daniels ruled yesterday that Iran and Hezbollah
materially and directly supported al Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks
and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11
victims who are plaintiffs in the case.

Judge Daniels had announced his ruling in Havlish, et al. v. bin
Laden, et al. , in open court on Thursday, December 15, 2011, following a
three-hour courtroom presentation by the families’ attorneys. Judge Daniels
entered a written Order of Judgment yesterday backed by 53 pages of detailed
Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.

Fiona Havlish, whose husband Donald perished in the World Trade Center North
Tower on 9/11 said, “This is a historic day. For ten years we’ve wanted the
truth to be known about who was responsible for our losses. Now we have that
answer.”

Ellen Saracini, the wife of United Airlines 175 pilot Victor Saracini, which
the hijackers crashed into the WTC South Tower, said after the hearing last
Thursday, “We just came from Judge Daniels’ court where he ruled in favor of
holding accountable those who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11… I just smiled
up to Victor and I said we’re still thinking about you … we’re there for you
… we’ll always be there for you. But today’s very special.”

In Havlish, et al. v. bin La den, et al. , Judge Daniels held
that the Islamic Republic of Iran, its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini
Khamenei, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Iran’s
agencies and instrumentalities, including, among others, the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”), the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and
Security (“MOIS”), and Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, all materially aided
and supported al Qaeda before and after 9/11.

“The families have waited a very long time for this day and they have been
through a lot. (Read more)

Looks like there’s a website dedicated to this nonsense.

This will continue to quietly spread.

Iran and Russia have replaced US Dollar with their own currencies in their trade ties, a senior Iranian diplomat announced on Saturday.

Speaking to FNA, Tehran’s Ambassador to Moscow Seyed Reza Sajjadi said that the proposal for replacing US Dollar with Ruble and Rial was raised by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Astana on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting. (Read more)

1) Starting tonight, Ron Paul will begin winning caucuses. This will be followed by either an assassination, or, in the long term, prosperity. Remember, they killed Bobby Kennedy after he began winning primaries. The chances of this are probably small. I do think there are powerful people and institution who would consider it.

If Ron Paul is assassinated, it’ll be followed by isolated instances of violence against federal institutions. These will be used to discredit anything libertarian. Government will declare new powers for itself, and the gigantic anti-terrorism apparatus will turn its full attention to Americans. An assassination would also be followed by large scale tax protests which would cripple the state. They will resort to printing money and slander tax protesters as domestic terrorists.

If, on the other hand, Ron Paul wins the primary, he will defeat Obama. Democrats will defect en masse to support him. The media mud slingers will realize their impotence. The markets will celebrate, perhaps with the exception of large commercial banks. They will threaten to blow-up the economy as revenge upon a public that elected Ron Paul. We will call their bluff.

2) At least one country will leave the Euro Zone. The EU will remain intact, but calls to end it will grow louder and more insistent. The turmoil in Europe will continue to create the illusion of economic stability in the U.S. and capital will flow away from the headlines, but once things have stabilized there, expect the much bigger and much more destructive problems of the U.S. to resume their unfolding. The prices of precious metals will resume their climb. Let’s hope Ron Paul is in power so the crisis isn’t used to lead us further down the road to serfdom.

3) SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, a thinly veiled attempt to censor the internet will fail. However, it’s proponents will very quickly put another piece of legislation on the table. They will not stop until it is passed.

4) A massive troop reduction will occur in Afghanistan. It will be done for political reasons. The media will spend weeks praising Obama.

5) A galvanizing incident will be provoked or staged in Iran. There will be an outbreak of hostility, but the United States, despite the propaganda from neo-con politicians and the media will not fully commit to a war.

See also, predictions for:
2011
2010
2009
2008

I’m suspicious of the timing of this story.

Putin: See, all you Iran haters need to support me!

I’m pretty sure this isn’t even all of them. Sinai, for example. Countless smaller bases in Iraq.

Images show Iranian military officials inspecting the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft which appears to be undamaged.

US officials have acknowledged the loss of the unmanned plane, saying it had malfunctioned.

However, Iranian officials say its forces electronically hijacked the drone and steered it to the ground. (Read more)

They don’t give up. After a decade of blood-drenched failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, violent destabilisation of Pakistan and Yemen, the devastation of Lebanon and slaughter in Libya, you might hope the US and its friends had had their fill of invasion and intervention in the Muslim world.

It seems not. For months the evidence has been growing that a US-Israeli stealth war against Iran has already begun, backed by Britain and France. Covert support for armed opposition groups has spread into a campaign of assassinations of Iranian scientists, cyber warfare, attacks on military and missile installations, and the killing of an Iranian general, among others.

The attacks are not directly acknowledged, but accompanied by intelligence-steered nods and winks as the media are fed a stream of hostile tales – the most outlandish so far being an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US – and the western powers ratchet up pressure for yet more sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme. (Read more)

“The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.”

Current and former U.S. officials concede that CIA suffered difficult blow; sources say Lebanon informants were compromised by meeting CIA agents at a Beirut Pizza Hut.

Dozens of spies working for the CIA were captured recently in Lebanon and Iran, current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press and ABC News on Monday.

The CIA’s operations in Lebanon have been badly damaged after Hezbollah identified and captured a number of the U.S. spies, officials told The Associated Press.

Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, boasted on television in June that he had rooted out at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group closely allied with Iran. Though the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, current and former officials concede that it happened and the damage has spread even further.

According to a report by ABC News, there were two distinct espionage rings targeting Iran and Hezbollah in which spies were recruited by the CIA.

Current and former U.S. officials said the two different spy rings were discovered separately but both caused a significant setback in U.S. efforts to track Iran’s nuclear activities and Hezbollah actions against Israel. (Read more)

In a blunt warning amid an escalating crisis, the Harper government declared Friday that Canada stands ready to join with other nations in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Supporting a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency that expresses “deep and increasing concern” over evidence that Iran is proceeding with plans to become a nuclear power, the Harper government vowed in its submission to “continue to work with like-minded nations on next steps. (Read more)

Comment from reddit:

Given Iran’s history it’d be wise to seek a nuke. It’s a pity that it’s necessary but I’d do the same and nothing would stop me.

IRANS RECENT HISTORY

1953-CIA backed coup overthrows the popular democratic gov.

1953-1979 The US Supported a brutal dictatorship. 1000′s murdered by the Shahs secret police the SAVAK.

1979-81 US hostages taken and released.

1980-1988 Following popular revolution against the US backed dictator, Iran is invaded. The US supported the aggressor in the war that cost Iran 500,000 casualties.

The US escorts shipping up and down the gulf, except Iranian, which it allows Iraq to attack

When Iraq falters in its attack, the US provides chemical weapons satellite intelligence

1988- USS ship shoots down a commercial flight operated by Iran Air. refuse to apologize. Gives medals to the shooters. George H. W. Bush declared, “I will never apologize for the United States of America — I don’t care what the facts are” in reference to the incident

1998 Irans regional neighbours, India/Pakistan get nukes, no longterm sanctions are placed on them.

2002 USA places Iran in Axis of Evil

2003 Iran offers full transparency on WMD, aid on the war on terror including HAMAS hizbollah, and co-ordination on Iraq, normalisation of relations. Offer rejected by USA

2003 US invades countries on either side of Iran’s borders.

2003-9 Israel calls for Iran to be bombed, launches practice raids.

Western security agencies are most likely behind the killing of an Iranian scientist in an operation that underlines the complexities of the conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme, analysts say.

Gunmen shot university lecturer Darioush Rezaie, 35, dead in eastern Teheran on Saturday, the third murder of a scientist since 2009.

One was killed by a car bomb detonated remotely.

Iran’s responses to such incidents looked confused, but in Rezaie’s case it was more muddled as the authorities spoke in strikingly different voices from the start.

London-based analyst Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of Cornerstone Global Associates, said: “Assassinations will continue to be a tool used in this covert war. While it’s impossible to tell with certainty whether Rezaie was an active nuclear scientist, his death appears to be another episode in that war.

“The Iranian narrative has been confused about Rezaie’s work. This adds credence to the speculation that he has been involved in the nuclear programme.” (Read more)