IRAN'S FAILED ATTACKS ON US

stumbler · Oct 15, 2011

Kimiko said: ↑

No, what it proved is that with good intelligence and good police work, attacks like this can be prevented. It wasn't necessary to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran to prevent it, and it still isn't necessary.

As for whether or not Iran "sponsored" the attack, we have only the Obama Administration's word for that. Haven't you learned yet to be skeptical of such claims?
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Brilliant as usual, my dear. Especially the skeptical part. Because it was pointed out by some commentator last night that every time the Obama Administration has a domestic policy set back another terrorist plot is broken up or some high level terrorist killed.

I don't know if I'm willing to be that cynical yet but I am getting very suspect of all the characterizations I'm seeing about the alleged terrorist with the latest one being "look we're talking more Austin Powers than 007 here."

Those kinds of descriptions seem to ring true to me for some reason.

stumbler · Oct 15, 2011

padiddle said: ↑

I don't believe we can honestly know how far up the chain of command these plans went. Iran is a mystery even to the people who make their living studying and analyzing it. The power structure, behind the scenes is constantly shifting from what I can see. I doubt the supreme leader or the president signed off on this, but I could see a SF general or somebody lower down on the food chain being involved. That is if this isn't one big false flag operation of course. Generals and Functionaries all have their private turf, and use them as a power base to push their own agendas. ( we've never seen that happen in our own country of course *cough cough*)

I also think it would be dangerous to apply western thinking to the leaders of Iran. Who says Ahmidinejad wouldn't be willing to take massive casualties in his own country in return for being the leader who wiped Israel off the map? If he actually has the power to, lets say, launch a nuke, he might actually do it. We've seen self immolation in extremely religious types before, suicide bombers come to mind. I could see that happening with a country, if one nutter had too much power. In the second battle of Fallujah the insurgents injected themselves with Hiv/aids just on the off chance they could infect an American, that kind of thinking is scary, but it's real.
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I actually think its far more dangerous to assume that Iranian leaders think that much differently than we do in the west and that's especially true when you're dealing with nations that can turn you to glass in an instant.

In fact, there's actually been a lopsided power struggle going on in Iran between and the Supreme Leader and the president ever since the last election and the Supreme Leader has essentially boxed Ahmidinejad's ears publicly a few times. And that's still one step removed from where the real power (and power struggle) is which resides in the elected council that can actually remove the supreme ruler.

So there's actually a great deal of not only western thinking but good ol' down home western politics going on behind the scenes in Iran, I believe.

That's not to say that someone in the Iranian government might not have known about this but I'm going to need a little more evidence than just the Justice Department's word for that before I believe it.

Kimiko said: ↑

The problem is not that such a thing is inconceivable. The problem is that if you react to every horror your imagination can conjure up, things you imagine that some bogeyman MIGHT do, you end up starting a lot of unnecessary, unprovoked wars and get a lot of people needlessly killed.
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This is not only the beneficial and safety conscious truth we've got a very sad decade and more than 5,000 casualties to prove what happens when we allow ourselves to be governed by our fears.

You'd really hope we could learn from that mistake, I'd think.

stumbler · Oct 15, 2011

I was wondering if some US government analysts might not jump ship on the Obama Administration claims and suspicions and it appears they are.

RAISED EYEBROWS
The odd facts of the case -- including Arbabsiar's apparently bumbling nature, and his approach to a supposed Mexican drug cartel figure, who happened to be a U.S. federal informant -- have raised eyebrows among Iran specialists.
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2...ls_question_response_to_iran_plot.php?ref=fpa

stumbler · Oct 15, 2011

And don't you just love this glaring hypocrisy?

AIPAC Gives Koch A Pass For Flouting Iran Sanctions

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Koch Industries had been flouting U.S. sanctions with Iran when the company sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to the Islamic Republic over several years. But the powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC — which has for years been one of the most vocal proponents of tougher sanctions on Iran — has given the conservative mega-corporation a pass for dealing with the country.

As Politico’s Ben Smith reports, in a memo AIPAC sent to members of Congress with suggested questions for Obama administration officials, the Israel lobby suggests it is uninterested in holding Koch accountable (the memo presents questions lawmakers could use, so “I” represents the congressman):

Last week, the Bloomberg Markets Magazine ran a story titled, “Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales.” The article alleges that a foreign subsidiary of the U.S.company, Koch Industries Inc., sold petrochemical equipment to Iran. My concern today is not with the Koch Brothers. That company did the right thing in 2007 and voluntarily ended all of its subsidiary’s business in Iran. However, I am concerned that other American companies continue to use foreign subsidiaries to profit from sales to Iran, and it is completely legal. [...]

Do you know which American companies have foreign subsidiaries conducting business with Iran that would be illegal for their parent companies to do? Do you do anything to discourage this practice?

“Every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else, they did,” said George Bentu, a former employee of Koch-Glitsch, a German Koch subsidiary which did much of the company’s business with Iran. The company “took elaborate steps” to sidestep the sanctions, Bloomberg reported.

But apparently to AIPAC, Koch is off the hook because they stopped trading with terror-sponsor Iran in 2007. This seems a little disingenuous, since U.S. companies have been banned from trading with Iran since 1995. One would think AIPAC would condemn any company that did business with Iran, especially after elements of the country’s government have been tied to a potential assassination plot against Israeli and Saudi officials, instead of going out of their way to defend them.
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http://thinkprogress.org/security/2...ives-koch-a-pass-for-flouting-iran-sanctions/

CS natureboy · Oct 15, 2011

stumbler said: ↑

And don't you just love this glaring hypocrisy?

AIPAC Gives Koch A Pass For Flouting Iran Sanctions

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2...ives-koch-a-pass-for-flouting-iran-sanctions/
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And this has what to do with the topic of this thread?

Oh yeah, NOTHING!

stumbler · Oct 16, 2011

Ok now I'm getting more suspicious all the time about this because it looks like they are rolling out Madelyn Albright to try and make the case for Iran being involved in this plot but calling for sanctions while discouraging military action.

And I'm getting this off Chris Wallace and Fox News no less. Even though it appears to me they are reading off scripts or something.

This is getting a little shakier all the time.

stumbler · Oct 16, 2011

I t. hink it was this thread where I said I didn't think that political thinking in Iran was not all that different than that in the west. Well take a look at the Supreme Ruler's response and see if it seems familiar.

Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran, said that the U.S. accused Iran of terror in order to divert attention from its economic woes and from the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.

"By attributing an absurd and meaningless accusation to a few Iranians, they tried ... to show that Iran is a supporter of terrorism. ... This conspiracy didn't work and won't work," he said.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for his part, dismissed the U.S. accusations as a fabricated "scenario."

"Iran is a civilized nation and doesn't need to resort to assassination," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying Sunday by the official IRNA news agency. "The culture of terror belongs to you," he said, addressing the United States.

Iranian officials have consistently denied the allegations since they first emerged last week. An earlier statement by Khamenei on Saturday, and Ahmadinejad's remarks on Sunday, were the first comments made by the country's two highest leaders.
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http://news.yahoo.com/irans-khamenei-warns-us-over-assassination-claims-133154053.html

Now I have to stumble over the phrase "a few Iranians." That looks like almost an admission to me. But the rest of it looks like politics as usual.

Especially when I think these commentators make a very good case for wagging the dog in this instance.

In our initial reporting of the alleged Iranian assassination/terrorism plot, I stated that I had some niggling questions on the Tom Clancy-like plot forwarded by the State Department. Turns out, other bloggers, far more well versed in Middle East politics, did as well. Former intelligence office Col. Pat Lang had this to say:

We are asked to believe that Iran and its skilled covert action force chose to set up an operation in which they ("they" being members of the "Quds Force" with approvals reaching up to Ayatollah Khamenei) relied on a used car salesman from Texas to recruit Mexican drug thugs to kill Adil al-Jubeir. This is a problem involving the suspension of belief. Why on earth would they create a situation in which they had to rely on this untested, untrained, unguided, and uncontrolled asset rather than their own people?[..]
None of this is "rocket science." If as FBI Mueller said, this "plot" is like a Hollywood screenplay, then it is a screenplay written by a couple of kids high as a kite on a weekend and pitched in a producer's cottage on a film company's "campus." It is trash.
The overwhelming likelihood is that this is someone's "information operation" intended to condition public attitudes for some purpose. The over riding question is that of where the ovens are located in which this confection was baked and who the bakers might be.

Listen to House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers, here with Christiane Amanpour, talks about how "action" *MUST* take place in response to a plot to assassinate someone on American soil (don't think about that too closely, Americans) and that not even military action should be off the table (because with Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Uganda, we have the resources for another front.). Those words should be a red flag to us all. Prof. Juan Cole:

I personally do not understand how the corporate media in the US can report the following things about Manssor Arbabsiar and then go on to repeat with a straight face the US government charges that he was part of a high-level Iranian government assassination plot.

It seems pretty obvious that Arbabsiar is very possibly clinically insane.

Here are the top 10 reasons that he cannot be Iran’s answer to 007:

10. Arbabsiar was known in Corpus Christi, Texas, “for being almost comically absent-minded”

9. Possibly as a result of a knife attack in 1982, he suffered from bad short-term memory

8. He was always losing his cell phone

7. He was always misplacing his keys

6. He was always forgetting his briefcase and documents in stores

5. He “was just not organized,” a former business partner remarked

4. As part owner of a used car dealership, he was always losing title deeds to the vehicles

3. Arbabsiar, far from a fundamentalist Shiite Muslim, may have been an alcoholic; his nickname is “Jack” because of his fondness for Jack Daniels whiskey

2. Arbabsiar used to not only drink to excess, but also used pot and went with prostitutes. He once talked loudly in a restaurant about going back to Iran, where he could have an Iranian girl for only $50. He was rude and was thrown out of some establishments.

1. All of his businesses failed one after another
The downward trajectory of Arbabsiar’s life, with his recent loss of his mortgage, all his businesses, and his second wife, along with his obvious cognitive defect, suggests to me that he may have been descending into madness.

I hypothesized yesterday that Arbabsiar and his cousin Gholam Shakuri might have been part of an Iranian drug gang. But after these details have emerged about the former, I don’t think he could even have done that. Indeed, I have now come to view the entire story as a fantasy.

That a monumental screw-up like Arbabsiar could have thought he was a government secret agent is perfectly plausible. I’m sure he thought all kinds of things. But that he was actually one is simply not believable.

I have a question that I wish Christiane Amanpour had asked Rogers and Sanger as they advocate going to our allies to further isolate Iran for such hubristic attempts on American soil: Will you also ask Americans like the Koch brothers, Dick Cheney and current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romneyas well? Shouldn't that be on the table as well?
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http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/wagging-dog-iranian-threat

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IRAN'S FAILED ATTACKS ON US

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