Russia supplies Iran with missiles as U.S sharpen claws...
Discussion
Weapons sales is big business...
What`s going on here?.....
www.newkerala.com/news2.php?action=fullnews&id=6679
What`s going on here?.....
www.newkerala.com/news2.php?action=fullnews&id=6679
It`s nice to hear the Administration are pulling out all the stops to help those struck by the hurricane...Their in good hands....
http://robwire.com/?q=node/918
http://robwire.com/?q=node/918
( Quote )...
Last month, President George W. Bush murdered four children. This is not a controversial statement. There is no dispute about the facts. Indeed, Bush's own minions fully acknowledge -- even celebrate -- the deed. Nor has the political opposition or the national media offered the slightest objection to the principle of presidential murder.
Strange, isn't it? While the American Establishment is now convulsed over the issue of a president ordering wiretaps without court approval, the same president's assertion of the right to kill anyone on earth he chooses without charges, trial or judicial review is readily accepted on all sides. Even when these "targeted assassinations" go horribly awry -- as in Pakistan last month, when 18 innocent people, including four children, were obliterated in their homes by Hellfire missiles, as The Observer reports -- there is no demur, no moral shock. Just tough talk about "doing whatever it takes" to defend civilization from the barbarians.
The misfired Hellfires were directed by unmanned CIA Predator drones, acting on the usual "credible intelligence" that al-Qaida honcho Ayman al-Zawahiri was in the village of Damadola, near the Afghan border. But in this kind of shell game, you can never know which coconut the evil ones might be hiding under -- so the CIA destroyed not one but three houses, just to be sure. Thus even if the intelligence had not been the usual half-chewed cud and Zawahiri really had been in Damadola (hugging Saddam's phantom WMD, perhaps), the scattershot attack on the residential area would have guaranteed civilian casualties in any case.
In other words, "collateral damage" -- always "regretted" with copious crocodile tears from the damagers -- was actually built into the mission. As in Bush's ongoing, ever-intensifying, unreported aerial bombing of urban areas in Iraq -- which has killed thousands of civilians, TomDispatch reports -- the deliberate killing of noncombatants in Damadola and other targets of Bush's "extrajudicial" wrath is meant to convey a clear message: "Knuckle under -- or else."
Indeed, the Bush brass in Iraq have been explicit on this point. As Michael Schwartz reports in Mother Jones, the regular use of massive, indiscriminate force in anti-insurgent operations -- destroying an entire apartment building, and everyone in it, if suspected guerrillas are thought to be hiding there -- is a key component of Bush's "larger strategy" in the occupied land. Schwartz quotes an officer who told The New York Times that American attacks are meant to "punish not only the guerrillas, but also to make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating." This, as Schwartz accurately notes, is "the textbook definition of terrorism -- attacking a civilian population to get it to withdraw support from the enemy."
But of course the "War on Terror" has always been, in reality, a "War Between Terrors" -- state terror versus stateless terror, with one side marshalling a military force of incomprehensible scope and power, and the other side incapable of sustaining anything more than the occasional isolated spasm of bitter fury. In fact, it's not even a war at all; as many have noted, you can't wage war on a tactic -- "terrorism" (especially when you are employing it yourself). And the small band of criminal cranks loosely grouped under the scarifying rubric of "Islamofascism" poses no threat whatsoever to the national existence of the United States. And no, the well-sustained insurgency in Iraq has nothing to do with the "War on Terror"; it's a standard response to foreign occupation. Anyway, Bush is fighting with the Islamofascists in that one -- the Iran-backed theocrats he has empowered in Baghdad.
But magnifying the threat from the gaggle of knuckle-dragging goons in the bin Laden gang is a key component of Bush's "larger strategy" in another occupied land: the United States. By declaring endless war on a nebulous enemy whose mafia was spawned in part by the CIA -- and by allowing this Islamic Pimpernel to miraculously escape from Afghanistan and roam like a bogey-man in the back alleys of the American mind -- Bush has been able to claim the powers of a "war president" to implement a far-ranging authoritarian agenda that his handlers like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have been pushing since the days of Richard Nixon: a locked-down, militarized state, bent on geopolitical domination and run in secret by a small elite of ideologues and war profiteers without interference from Congress, the courts, the press or the people.
By September 2000, a Cheney-Rumsfeld "think tank," Project for the New American Century, was openly yearning -- in print -- for "a new Pearl Harbor" to "catalyze" the American people into supporting this militarist agenda. Six days after what Bush dutifully termed the "new Pearl Harbor" of Sept. 11, 2001, he signed a "presidential finding" allowing the CIA to kill anyone he arbitrarily designates a "terrorist," The Washington Post reports. The reign of authoritarian rule -- of a presidential despot beyond all legal and moral restraint, eagerly ordering torture, rendition, aggressive war and murder -- began that day. And it has never been challenged.
Not even when Bush kills children. U.S. and international law expressly forbid both the deliberate targeting of noncombatants and "extrajudicial killing," even in wartime. Yet, as Reuters reports, Bush personally ordered the Damadola hit -- with its guaranteed "collateral damage." This was, by any standard, deliberate, premeditated murder. But still the Washington Establishment -- Democrats included -- rose to cheer the killer this week as he mouthed his bloodstained lies and cynical pieties in the State of the Union address.
No doubt the loud and ultimately ineffectual noise about wiretapping will go on. But the voices of those murdered children -- killed without mercy, already forgotten -- will never be heard again.
Last month, President George W. Bush murdered four children. This is not a controversial statement. There is no dispute about the facts. Indeed, Bush's own minions fully acknowledge -- even celebrate -- the deed. Nor has the political opposition or the national media offered the slightest objection to the principle of presidential murder.
Strange, isn't it? While the American Establishment is now convulsed over the issue of a president ordering wiretaps without court approval, the same president's assertion of the right to kill anyone on earth he chooses without charges, trial or judicial review is readily accepted on all sides. Even when these "targeted assassinations" go horribly awry -- as in Pakistan last month, when 18 innocent people, including four children, were obliterated in their homes by Hellfire missiles, as The Observer reports -- there is no demur, no moral shock. Just tough talk about "doing whatever it takes" to defend civilization from the barbarians.
The misfired Hellfires were directed by unmanned CIA Predator drones, acting on the usual "credible intelligence" that al-Qaida honcho Ayman al-Zawahiri was in the village of Damadola, near the Afghan border. But in this kind of shell game, you can never know which coconut the evil ones might be hiding under -- so the CIA destroyed not one but three houses, just to be sure. Thus even if the intelligence had not been the usual half-chewed cud and Zawahiri really had been in Damadola (hugging Saddam's phantom WMD, perhaps), the scattershot attack on the residential area would have guaranteed civilian casualties in any case.
In other words, "collateral damage" -- always "regretted" with copious crocodile tears from the damagers -- was actually built into the mission. As in Bush's ongoing, ever-intensifying, unreported aerial bombing of urban areas in Iraq -- which has killed thousands of civilians, TomDispatch reports -- the deliberate killing of noncombatants in Damadola and other targets of Bush's "extrajudicial" wrath is meant to convey a clear message: "Knuckle under -- or else."
Indeed, the Bush brass in Iraq have been explicit on this point. As Michael Schwartz reports in Mother Jones, the regular use of massive, indiscriminate force in anti-insurgent operations -- destroying an entire apartment building, and everyone in it, if suspected guerrillas are thought to be hiding there -- is a key component of Bush's "larger strategy" in the occupied land. Schwartz quotes an officer who told The New York Times that American attacks are meant to "punish not only the guerrillas, but also to make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating." This, as Schwartz accurately notes, is "the textbook definition of terrorism -- attacking a civilian population to get it to withdraw support from the enemy."
But of course the "War on Terror" has always been, in reality, a "War Between Terrors" -- state terror versus stateless terror, with one side marshalling a military force of incomprehensible scope and power, and the other side incapable of sustaining anything more than the occasional isolated spasm of bitter fury. In fact, it's not even a war at all; as many have noted, you can't wage war on a tactic -- "terrorism" (especially when you are employing it yourself). And the small band of criminal cranks loosely grouped under the scarifying rubric of "Islamofascism" poses no threat whatsoever to the national existence of the United States. And no, the well-sustained insurgency in Iraq has nothing to do with the "War on Terror"; it's a standard response to foreign occupation. Anyway, Bush is fighting with the Islamofascists in that one -- the Iran-backed theocrats he has empowered in Baghdad.
But magnifying the threat from the gaggle of knuckle-dragging goons in the bin Laden gang is a key component of Bush's "larger strategy" in another occupied land: the United States. By declaring endless war on a nebulous enemy whose mafia was spawned in part by the CIA -- and by allowing this Islamic Pimpernel to miraculously escape from Afghanistan and roam like a bogey-man in the back alleys of the American mind -- Bush has been able to claim the powers of a "war president" to implement a far-ranging authoritarian agenda that his handlers like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have been pushing since the days of Richard Nixon: a locked-down, militarized state, bent on geopolitical domination and run in secret by a small elite of ideologues and war profiteers without interference from Congress, the courts, the press or the people.
By September 2000, a Cheney-Rumsfeld "think tank," Project for the New American Century, was openly yearning -- in print -- for "a new Pearl Harbor" to "catalyze" the American people into supporting this militarist agenda. Six days after what Bush dutifully termed the "new Pearl Harbor" of Sept. 11, 2001, he signed a "presidential finding" allowing the CIA to kill anyone he arbitrarily designates a "terrorist," The Washington Post reports. The reign of authoritarian rule -- of a presidential despot beyond all legal and moral restraint, eagerly ordering torture, rendition, aggressive war and murder -- began that day. And it has never been challenged.
Not even when Bush kills children. U.S. and international law expressly forbid both the deliberate targeting of noncombatants and "extrajudicial killing," even in wartime. Yet, as Reuters reports, Bush personally ordered the Damadola hit -- with its guaranteed "collateral damage." This was, by any standard, deliberate, premeditated murder. But still the Washington Establishment -- Democrats included -- rose to cheer the killer this week as he mouthed his bloodstained lies and cynical pieties in the State of the Union address.
No doubt the loud and ultimately ineffectual noise about wiretapping will go on. But the voices of those murdered children -- killed without mercy, already forgotten -- will never be heard again.
www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&pubid=968163964505&cid=1139871011221&col=968705899037&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News
Iran postpones talks on nuclear solution
Feb. 13, 2006. 05:50 PM
NASSER KARIMI
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran notched up the brinksmanship over its disputed nuclear program Monday, abruptly postponing talks with Moscow on a plan to enrich Tehran's uranium on Russian territory to allay fears it is building an atomic weapon.
Diplomats in Europe said Iran had started small-scale enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce fuel for an atomic bomb.
"Uranium gas has been fed into three machines," said a senior diplomat in Vienna, Austria, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter. Another diplomat confirmed that limited enrichment had begun at Iran's Natanz site.
State-run Iranian television later reported that Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the national security and foreign relations committee in parliament, said the country had begun peaceful nuclear enrichment activities Monday. Boroujerdi said inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency were present.
The talks with Russia had been slated for Thursday but were postponed indefinitely because of the "new situation," said Iranian presidential spokesman Gholamhossein Elham. He was referring to the IAEA's decision this month to report Iran to the UN Security Council because of uncertainty over its nuclear intentions.
Iran maintains its nuclear program is designed solely to generate electricity, but the United States and some U.S. allies claim the program is a cover for producing an atomic bomb.
Moscow had proposed that Iran ship its uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched to a level suitable for nuclear reactors. It would then be returned to Iran for use at the Russian-built Bushehr plant, which is due to begin operating this year.
The plan, backed by the United States and the European Union, was an attempt to avoid international objections to Iranian uranium enrichment by providing oversight so no weapons would be made. Iran had said the plan did not fulfil its requirements but was worth pursuing.
Despite resumption of enrichment, uranium gas must be fed into hundreds of centrifuges to produce significant amounts of enriched uranium, which, depending on the degree of processing, can be used for civilian nuclear reactors or warheads.
Iran is years away from running the 50,000 centrifuges it says it wants to operate as a source of fuel for its Bushehr plant.
But even small-scale enrichment is significant because it represents symbolic determination by Tehran to go ahead with a technology that most countries want it to give up because of fears of misuse.
In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Iran's restarting of enrichment shows its "continued defiance of the world."
"The regime in Iran knows what it needs to do," he said. "So far, they're continuing to choose defiance and confrontation over co-operation and diplomacy."
Also Monday, Tehran issued its third veiled threat in as many days to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
If the international community does not agree to Iran's right to enrich uranium under the NPT, "there is no reason to continue our current nuclear policy while we are deprived of the positive aspects of the treaty," said a spokesman for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
North Korea, the world's other major proliferation concern, quit the treaty in January 2003, just a few months before U.S. officials announced that the North had told them it had nuclear weapons and may test, export or use them depending on U.S. actions.
Iran had warned it would resume large-scale enrichment of uranium after it was reported Feb. 4 to the UN Security Council by the 35-country IAEA board. The resolution indirectly linked the referral to breaches of the treaty and concerns that Tehran's activities represented a threat to world peace.
The IAEA is to issue a report on Iran at its March meeting. After that, the Security Council is expected to consider taking steps against the country
Whoops they've started again.
Iran postpones talks on nuclear solution
Feb. 13, 2006. 05:50 PM
NASSER KARIMI
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran notched up the brinksmanship over its disputed nuclear program Monday, abruptly postponing talks with Moscow on a plan to enrich Tehran's uranium on Russian territory to allay fears it is building an atomic weapon.
Diplomats in Europe said Iran had started small-scale enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce fuel for an atomic bomb.
"Uranium gas has been fed into three machines," said a senior diplomat in Vienna, Austria, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter. Another diplomat confirmed that limited enrichment had begun at Iran's Natanz site.
State-run Iranian television later reported that Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the national security and foreign relations committee in parliament, said the country had begun peaceful nuclear enrichment activities Monday. Boroujerdi said inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency were present.
The talks with Russia had been slated for Thursday but were postponed indefinitely because of the "new situation," said Iranian presidential spokesman Gholamhossein Elham. He was referring to the IAEA's decision this month to report Iran to the UN Security Council because of uncertainty over its nuclear intentions.
Iran maintains its nuclear program is designed solely to generate electricity, but the United States and some U.S. allies claim the program is a cover for producing an atomic bomb.
Moscow had proposed that Iran ship its uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched to a level suitable for nuclear reactors. It would then be returned to Iran for use at the Russian-built Bushehr plant, which is due to begin operating this year.
The plan, backed by the United States and the European Union, was an attempt to avoid international objections to Iranian uranium enrichment by providing oversight so no weapons would be made. Iran had said the plan did not fulfil its requirements but was worth pursuing.
Despite resumption of enrichment, uranium gas must be fed into hundreds of centrifuges to produce significant amounts of enriched uranium, which, depending on the degree of processing, can be used for civilian nuclear reactors or warheads.
Iran is years away from running the 50,000 centrifuges it says it wants to operate as a source of fuel for its Bushehr plant.
But even small-scale enrichment is significant because it represents symbolic determination by Tehran to go ahead with a technology that most countries want it to give up because of fears of misuse.
In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Iran's restarting of enrichment shows its "continued defiance of the world."
"The regime in Iran knows what it needs to do," he said. "So far, they're continuing to choose defiance and confrontation over co-operation and diplomacy."
Also Monday, Tehran issued its third veiled threat in as many days to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
If the international community does not agree to Iran's right to enrich uranium under the NPT, "there is no reason to continue our current nuclear policy while we are deprived of the positive aspects of the treaty," said a spokesman for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
North Korea, the world's other major proliferation concern, quit the treaty in January 2003, just a few months before U.S. officials announced that the North had told them it had nuclear weapons and may test, export or use them depending on U.S. actions.
Iran had warned it would resume large-scale enrichment of uranium after it was reported Feb. 4 to the UN Security Council by the 35-country IAEA board. The resolution indirectly linked the referral to breaches of the treaty and concerns that Tehran's activities represented a threat to world peace.
The IAEA is to issue a report on Iran at its March meeting. After that, the Security Council is expected to consider taking steps against the country
Whoops they've started again.
Ironically a lot of Iranian military equipment is actually American, or locally produced stuff based on the US tech they had 
Don't see why Russia would need oil though, they have tons of the stuff themselves, S300s are technically defensive missiles (and Iran has some already anyway) which is fair enough from the objective viewpoint.
I would imagine the US should be quite keen to see how they fare against them, the S300 has quite a reputation, it will be interesting to see if it deserves it.
Don't see why Russia would need oil though, they have tons of the stuff themselves, S300s are technically defensive missiles (and Iran has some already anyway) which is fair enough from the objective viewpoint.
I would imagine the US should be quite keen to see how they fare against them, the S300 has quite a reputation, it will be interesting to see if it deserves it.
RobDickinson said:
One wonders how you would use a SAM offensivly.
If the US decide to go in hard against their nuke facilities a few of these wont slow them down any.
they won't have to go in hard, fast will do, a few of their latest stealth bombers delivering the goods at supersonic speed will be enough.
To the American military this would be an ideal win-win situation.
They would rationilise this scenario for the purpose of 'live training' and another empirical strategy to add to their offensive capabilities. In short a mini-wargame where the prize is the taking out of the bad guys with the big bad bomb.
They win, when their applied tactics score the hit; and they win by 'making the world a safer place'
its going to happen...
Gazboy said:
they won't have to go in hard, fast will do, a few of their latest stealth bombers delivering the goods at supersonic speed will be enough.
Are stealth bombers able to fly supersonic? Would have thought the boom would have given them away...
That won't be the boom that matters...
...besides, they'll be long gone before it really matters.
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