http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh

esp for the part about Obey. what a perfect example of their cluelessness, our fine dems.

As "A true friend of Israel", I have to wonder if Obama is truly going to try to prevent a war with Iran, or whether he is just playing the role of front man. You wonder of some kind of deal has been struck whereby they can tolerate him as president as long as he doesn't interfere with certain policy agenda being put forth by AIPAC and other conservative groups.

Call me cynical (that's probably accurate), but I think we have to watch Obama very closely. His silver tongue may turn out to have a fork in it.

He seems to be on an all-too disturbing track of telling progressives what they want to hear, then doing what conservatives want done.

Questions arise of US support of Baluchis.

I would think it would be dangerous to support Iranian Balochs without at the same time destabilizing Balochiston in Pakistan.

Well kids what do think this Oct. suprise will be? I do beleive Irans elections are about then also.

I have been rambling a bit around here about this risk of splinter chains of command around Cheney - and how they might start the wars up.

Looks like that was what did in Fallon - he was trying to find out about the special ops / covert ops in his OWN DAMN ZONE and a 'small group' at the White House did him in. Scary as hell....

--
Hongpong.com

Shiite sources: Hezbollah helping Iraqi militia
Lebanese said to have led training camps; Iran seen as waging proxy war

By HAMZA HENDAWI and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

updated 8:40 p.m. CT, Tues., July. 1, 2008
BAGHDAD - Hezbollah instructors trained Shiite militiamen at remote camps in southern Iraq until three months ago, when they slipped across the border to Iran — presumably to continue instruction on Iranian soil, according to two Shiite lawmakers and a top army officer.

The three Iraqis claim the Lebanese Shiites were also involved in planning some of the most brazen attacks against U.S.-led forces, including the January 2007 raid on a provincial government compound in Karbala in which five Americans died.

The allegations, made in separate interviews with The Associated Press, point not only to an Iranian hand in the Iraq war, but also to Hezbollah's willingness to expand beyond its Lebanese base and assume a broader role in the struggle against U.S. influence in the Middle East.

All this suggests that Shiite-dominated Iran is waging a proxy war against the United States to secure a dominant role in majority-Shiite Iraq, which has supplanted Lebanon as Tehran's top priority in the Middle East.

"The stakes are much higher in Iraq, where there is a Shiite majority, oil, the shrine cities and borders with Saudi Arabia," said analyst Farid al-Khazen, a Christian Lebanese lawmaker whose party is allied with Hezbollah.

"The big story is Iraq, and the Americans unwittingly opened it up for the Iranians" by their invasion in 2003, al-Khazen said.

The allegations come as the United States and Iran are engaged in a showdown over Tehran's nuclear program and each country's role in Iraq.

Iran, Hezbollah's mentor, denies giving any support to Shiite extremists in Iraq.

more

The Pentagon consultant told me, “We’ve had wonderful results in the Horn of Africa with the use of surrogates and false flags—basic counterintelligence and counter-insurgency tactics.

What wonderful results? The bombings of civilians?

On Monday, Mottaki met with several US editors and reporters at Iran's mission to the UN, and in addition to sounding conciliatory and in favor of earnest negotiations without preconditions, he promised to reply to the letter of the "Iran Six" foreign ministers accompanying their package "within a couple of weeks".

At the outset of his interview, Mottaki emphasized the need to have a "correct analysis" of situations, otherwise it would lead to "incorrect policies". He also emphasized the importance of "common understanding" of problems and hinted at his own flexibility by stating that "the first word a diplomat learns is compromise".

More

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

EXCLUSIVE: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them

Think Progress, July 31

Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran. (YouTube Video)

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.

During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.