DebateGate

Exposing Iran's Facility B1 Nori-8500
Brings Israel-Iran Clash Near

Iran Speeds up Its Covert Nuclear Program

 
The Iranian exile group's exposure on Feb. 20 of Iran's secret B1 Nori-8500 facility for producing a nuclear warhead at Khojir represented another attempt by France and Israel to shoot down the American National Intelligence Estimate of Dec. 2007.

That document claimed Iran had given up its covert military nuclear program in 2003. In Brussels, Wednesday, Mohammad Mohaddessin, foreign affairs director of the exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), presented the media with satellite images, graphic evidence of a functioning Iranian defense ministry missile research site at Khojir on the southeastern edge of Tehran.

There, he reported, Iran is developing a nuclear warhead for delivery by its medium-range missiles.

Mohaddessin also said his clandestine group had identified a guest house on a military compound near the site, which it claimed housed North Korean specialists working at the warhead facility. He stressed that the information had been confirmed in recent weeks and was current.

This classified data, intelligence sources report, was released on the initiative of France and Israel to finally rebut the NIE's conclusions.

It was also timed to pre-empt the report Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is due to present Friday, Feb. 22, to the UN Security Council on the state of Iran's nuclear program.

Paris and Jerusalem have been reliably informed that the IAEA director will present his usual vapid, inconclusive findings. He will then ask the Council for more time for negotiations with Iran and a further delay before passing harsh punitive measures against the Islamic Republic.

North Koreans shown bussed to work

The NCRI spokesman?s information broke new ground:

1. While his organization first identified Khojir in 2005 as the new site of the B1 Nori 8500 missile facility transferred from Lavizan, its report that a small plant on the site is developing nuclear warheads is new.

2. Also new are the satellite photos depicting a well-fortified villa and a special bus carrying its North Korean occupants every morning under heavy guard to the secret site, and back again at the end of the working-day. Mohaddessin said he was holding back images obtained which identified the North Korean specialists.

Intelligence experts report that such images are withheld because they might give away the covert methods for obtaining them.

According to our sources, the Iranian exile group is first tipped off on the presence of key data by US, Israeli or French intelligence contacts and asked to send its spies and followers inside Iran to check it out.

After confirmation is received, the data is cross-checked.

In the next stage, the NCRI rents a commercial satellite for imagery of the suspect nuclear sites for public consumption. This system worked in 2002, when NCRI was employed by US intelligence to bring the existence of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz to the world?s attention.

Sensitive photographs, such as the faces of North Korean scientists and technicians at Khojir, can only be obtained by military satellites equipped with sophisticated high resolution cameras, such as those deployed by the secret services cooperating with the Iranian exile group. These images are never released to outsiders, because they would betray ultra-sensitive information about the equipment and angles from which the photographs were taken. Such information would also help targets develop new techniques of concealment.

Therefore, the NCRI and other dissident groups operating in Iran are only given photos which have been smudged to conceal their source. They are handed out among agents in the country to help them find out more about targeted individuals and trace their movements.

Washington sticks to the NIE's clearance of Iran

3. The commercial satellite images displayed at the Brussels news conference depicted a system of heavy security within the Khojir site, and restricted access to the putative nuclear warhead facility, known as "Eight-five hundred".

Visitors to the facility are required to leave their cars and drivers at a car park, Mohaddessin explained. They are then picked up by a car which passes through two checkpoints onto a road that ends at a small group of buildings cut into the hills a couple of kilometers away.

4. The Iranian exile group almost certainly has more secret data which it is holding back for a later date, or when necessary to rebut more negative releases by US intelligence or the nuclear watchdog. This data would back up the charges that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and vehicles for their delivery.

But even before the day was over, Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington, said the US intelligence community's view has not changed since the NIE's release.

Clearly, the Bush administration has no intention of checking out the Iranian group's revelations or reopening the discussion on Tehran's nuclear activities.

Intelligence sources comment that Washington?s response did not surprise Nicolas Sarkozy or Ehud Olmert, who were instrumental in bringing the NCRI's disclosures to the world in Brussels on Wednesday.

Convinced that the US intelligence estimate of last December tied President George W. Bush?s hands for a military option against Iran's nuclear sites, the French and Israeli leaders decided to go forward without America towards an Israeli military operation. France intends to take America?s place in providing intelligence and diplomatic backing in the European and international arenas.

Hizballah plans to precipitate the opening for an Iranian attack on Israel

The chronology of events leading up to this ultimate prospect, is instructive:

September 6, 2007: Israeli air and ground forces raided two presumed nuclear sites in Syria. North Koreans were involved in their development.

The information broadcast by these attacks was that Israel is capable of striking nuclear sites similar to Iran's B1 Nori 8500 facility. This capability demonstratively extends to demolition and removing the equipment housed at the facility, lock, stock and barrel, to home base.

The operation also demonstrated that the Russian air defense systems guarding Iran's most sensitive military sites were electronically permeable and therefore not proof against Israel air attack.

January 17, 2008: Israel tested a ballistic missile over the Mediterranean fitted with a powerful new propulsion engine. This told Tehran that the Israel Defense Forces has missiles capable of reaching any point on earth. Before this test, the Iranians had judged large areas of their north and east outside Israeli missile range.

February 4, 2008: Tehran quickly responded by launching its Kavoshgar-1 long-range missile to test its launching systems.

February 12, 2008: Imad Mughniyeh, master of Tehran?s overseas military-terrorist branch, was killed in the heart of Damascus. Iran thus lost the key strategist assigned with charting and commanding its overseas reprisals for a possible Israeli attack.

That day, too, Israel took the precaution of placing its military forces and intelligence services on the ready in case of a comeback from Iran, Syria, or Hizballah.

February 20, 2008: Iran's secret plants for producing nuclear weapons and warheads were identified and exposed at the Brussels news conference.

For the last six months, tensions around Iran and its nuclear activities can be seen by these events to have steadily escalated.

Also on Feb. 20, the Israeli chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi commented dryly at the graduation ceremony of an IDF officers training course: "Unfortunately, I cannot promise that we will not be caught up in a tough ordeal in the near future."

His comment gained little attention.

Military sources report that Ashkenazi was alluding to current predictions of a Hizballah attack on Israel, both to avenge the death of its military commander and to draw Israel into a conflict to precipitate Iran's intervention for a pre-emptive strike against the Jewish state.

Sarkozy's game

Our sources in Paris analyze Sarkozy's rationale for pursuing a proactive course on Iran alongside Israel: He believes an unambiguous and strong French line on Iran's ambition to attain a nuclear bomb could be the vehicle that carries him to European if not world leadership.

Secondly, he is bound by a commitment to Saudi and other Gulf rulers.

During his mid-January tour of their region, Sarkozy informed his hosts that French intelligence had obtained incontrovertible evidence that Iran had begun building nuclear bombs and warheads. The decision to establish a French base in Abu Dhabi was presented as necessary for tracking Iran's nuclear and military activities. He promised to keep Gulf rulers abreast of events with full updates.

At home, the French public had been told repeatedly by officials in the president's bureau and government from the end of last year that Iran is heading for a nuclear bomb. Sarkozy needs to show he is not all talk, but also capable of action.

Saudi-Syria Feud Heats up

Riyadh Arms Syria's Lebanese Foes, Washington Clamps down on Damascus

Syria's most implacable foes in Lebanon were furnished this week with an urgent supply of weapons from an unusual source.

Scenting a new civil war in the air, Saudi Arabia shipped arms by air and ground routes to the Lebanese national army, as well as to three allied militias, without whom the pro-Western government of Fouad Siniora has little chance of survival.

Middle East sources reveal the end-users as being the Maronite Christian Phalange headed by Samir Geagea, the majority leader Saad Hariri's private Sunni army and the Druze militia of Walid Jumblatt.

These forces are steeled for pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian opposition forces, led by the Shiite Hizballah, to launch into violence to break the political impasse in Beirut over the election of a president.

To punish the Assad regime for stirring up trouble in Lebanon, the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control has reached high into Bashar Assad?s inner circle and placed his kinsman Rami Makhlouf on its sanctions list.

This was a shrewdly aimed move. Makhlouf is one Syria's richest men and the godfather of its national economy.

At home, the Assad regime is in trouble.

This week, several score officers serving in the air force, intelligence and armored brigades were secretly arrested, intelligence sources disclose, after the heads of intelligence laid before the president proofs that they were in mid-preparation to overthrow him.

The conspiracy's brains were named as two of the opposition leaders in exile, former vice president Khalim Haddam, who lives in Brussels, and the president's tycoon uncle, Rifat Assad.

Hearing that his two enemies were royally hosted in Riyadh, the president concluded that the Saudi royal house had aided the conspirators with support, money and intelligence aid.

Damascus accuses Saudi Prince Muqrin of masterminding Mughniyeh hit

This alleged conspiracy marked another stage in the flaming dispute between Saudi King Abdullah and President Assad, and their respective political and military establishments.

It was not the first. After the death of Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus on Feb. 12, Syrian officials threw out hints alleging Saudi intelligence complicity in the planning and execution of his murder. They suggested the purported Israeli Mossad assassins could not have made their hit in the Syrian capital without Saudi confederates.

This week, Syrian intelligence officers, in briefings to local elite politicians and business leaders, said they had proof that the director of Saudi General Intelligence Prince Muqrin had personally run those confederates.

By then, Damascus had embellished its allegations with detail. This Syrian version now goes like this, according to our sources:

Saudi and Jordanian spies picked up Mughniyeh's trail in Lebanon, followed him from Beirut to the point where he crossed over from Lebanon to Syria and trailed him as far as Damascus.

These agents then filed the information to Riyadh, whereupon Prince Muqrin passed it on to US intelligence in Washington knowing it would be bounced to the Mossad.

Damascus contends that the Mughniyeh killing was the work of a joint US-Saudi-Israeli intelligence operation. Without Saudi collaboration, the Mossad could never have pulled it off.

Gulf sources report that when the Syrian allegations were brought to the attention of King Abdullah at the beginning of the week, he ordered all Saudi-Syrian contacts and communications cut off forthwith.

As one Gulf source put it: Abdullah there and then wiped Syria off the map of Arab nations worthy of his recognition.

Assad plans to parody Abdullah at Arab summit

The crisis caught Syrian foreign minister Walid Mualem making the rounds of Middle East and North African capitals, handing out official invitations to the Arab League summit scheduled for the end of March in Damascus.

A sharp note reached him on his travels informing him he had better not try and land in Riyadh.

Abdullah is enraged with Assad on more than one score.

Intelligence sources report that he hit the ceiling when Prince Moqrin told him about the surprise or rather bad shock - the Syrian president was preparing for the forthcoming summit.

According to our sources, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be spirited into the presidential palace in Damascus shortly before the summit opens. He will then be produced with a big flourish at the opening. Assad proposes to walk in hand in hand with his surprise guest.

The Saudis can hardly object; the spectacle would be a parody of King Abdullah's own much photographed and loudly applauded entrance to the GCC summit in Doha, Qatar, on Dec. 4, 2007, hand in hand with the Iranian president.

Assad is scheming not on to ridicule Abdullah?s gesture, but to make one of his own: He believes it will seal the reconciliation between Iran and the Arab governments and mark the failure of American Middle East strategies.

The Syrian president means to force the Arab rulers present in Damascus to acknowledge not only Iran's strategic eminence in the region, but also that of its partner, Syria.

But before Assad achieves his ambition, a number of powder kegs threaten to blow up in the region, notably in Lebanon
 
Iran Is Coiled to Spring

Israeli and Jewish Targets Are on Guard
 
A special emissary from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) special units with the rank of colonel arrived secretly in Beirut on Feb. 20. He assumed his role in the intensive preparations in progress in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut for revenge attacks against Israel, which is accused of killing Imad Mughniyeh.

Intelligence sources identify the Iranian colonel, who goes by the code name of ?Ramadan,? as an outstanding specialist in the planning of terrorist operations.

Tehran is set on staging a spectacular act of violence against an Israel-Jewish target, major enough to spark a world crisis that will distract attention from Iran?s nuclear weapons program.

Iran also intends the attack to be a striking example of Iran's capacity to wreak pain, enough to deter the United States and other Western governments from expanding their sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Some members of Iran's ruling elite would prefer restraint, fearing that an extravagantly brutal operation would be a boomerang; instead of acting as a deterrent, Russia and China might be driven to supporting harsh sanctions. These advocates of moderation have been silenced; supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has forbidden them to voice their views in public. Badly shaken by the loss of Mughniyeh, the Ayatollah feels his death keenly as a home hit to the very survival of the Iran?s Islamic regime.

This week, Iranian leaders resorted to exceptionally vicious language for their threats to Israel.

Wednesday, Feb. 20, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, never one for cultured speech, outdid himself when he declared: "World powers have created a black and dirty microbe named the Zionist regime and unleashed it like a savage animal on the nations of the region."

?Billions will rejoice over the Zionist entity's destruction"

Monday, the Revolutionary Guards chief Mohammad-Ali (Aziz) Jaafari said the Hizballah Umah (community, people) will soon destroy ?this cancerous microbe Israel.?

He added: "We have overcome all security impediments and the time has come to start exporting the revolution."

The gush of Iranian warnings of Israel?s approaching extinction began Sunday, Feb. 17 at a private memorial ceremony in Tehran for the dead Lebanese terrorist.

Gen. Hassam Firouz-Abadi, supreme commander of all Iranian armed forces, including the Revolutionary Guards, declared that Israel would soon be destroyed by the "strong arm of Hizballah Umah." He sent on to say: "Billions of people the world over will soon rejoice when they hear the news of the Zionist entity's destruction."

The general did not elaborate on how this was to happen, but there were indirect allusions to nuclear or radioactive weapons.

Iran's Vice president Parviz Davoodi, in his message of condolences to Hizballah?s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, vowed that Iran and Hizballah would together teach the "Zionist entity" a lesson so harsh that nothing would remain.

Another general, Yahya Rahim-Safavi, until last year, commander of the Revolutionary Guards, accused Israel of an error that would cost it its very existence.

For Iranian leaders, vicious anti-Israel rhetoric is routine. But experts on Iran find the intensity and frequency of their diatribes unusual. Even when Ahmadinejad last year declared Israel should be wiped of the map, he never committed Iran to executing the threat. But this week, two top generals pointed for the first time to the "Hizballah Umah" as the instrument of Israel?s demise.

This concept encompasses Iranian citizens, the Shiites of Lebanon and all Shiites and other Muslims who follow the precepts of the Iranian Islamic regime.

The most comprehensive threat was published in the Revolutionary Guards weekly publication Sobh-e Sadegh (Dawn of Truth) this week.

Various Israeli-Jewish massacre options bandied

An editorial dedicated to the life and death of Imad Mughniyeh quoted Sura 5 (Repent) which says: After the passing of the Month of Haram (in which belligerent activity is prohibited), you must kill the infidels wherever they may be, trap them, torture them and lay ambushes for them.

The Month of Haram ended Wednesday, Feb. 20. The next day, the month Safar began, during which (from the day of the Prophet) it is permissible to renew attacks on pagans and infidels.

The founder of Iran?s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini defined infidels for his followers as the Jews and the Christians of this day and age, who falsify the Torah and the New Testament and do not live according to the precepts of Moses or Jesus. It is therefore permitted to kill them.

The Sobh-e Sadegh editorial continues: "Hizballah's eagle of death" has been freed from its cage and is soaring towards its prey. It is seeking out prominent Zionist figures across the world to slaughter them. Nasrallah's words are a message of death for high-placed Zionist personalities around the world. The brave men of Hizballah will soon carry out the prophecy of the Koran.

Intelligence and Tehran sources reveal the following options are being tossed back and forth in the conferences of Iranian and Hizballah terror experts attended by Colonel "Ramadan:"

1. A showpiece operation inside Israel, such as a combined attack on crowd centers. They include bombing attacks in air ports; bombardment from drones of select targets; multiple-casualty hits in population centers, the poisoning of water sources and explosions of office towers.

2. A painful attack outside Israel against a sensitive target, such as a government minister or high-ranking army or police officer on overseas trips.

3. The transfer of unconventional weapons to the Gaza Strip for striking at the heart of Tel Aviv.

4. A long-range Hizballah rocket attack from Lebanon.

5. An attack on Israeli and Jewish locations in Europe and the Persian Gulf. The countries under consideration are Italy, Austria, Spain, Paraguay, Argentina, India, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

[e-mail]

America's economy risks mother of all meltdowns
By Martin Wolf

February 19 2008



"I would tell audiences that we were facing not a bubble but a froth of lots of small, local bubbles that never grew to a scale that could threaten the health of the overall economy." Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence.

That used to be Mr Greenspan's view of the US housing bubble. He was wrong, alas. So how bad might this downturn get? To answer this question we should ask a true bear. My favourite one is Nouriel Roubini of New York University's Stern School of Business, founder of RGE monitor.

Recently, Professor Roubini's scenarios have been dire enough to make the flesh creep. But his thinking deserves to be taken seriously. He first predicted a US recession in July 2006*. At that time, his view was extremely controversial. It is so no longer. Now he states that there is ?a rising probability of a "catastrophic" financial and economic outcome?**. The characteristics of this scenario are, he argues: "A vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe."

Prof Roubini is even fonder of lists than I am. Here are his 12 yes, 12 steps to financial disaster.

Step one is the worst housing recession in US history. House prices will, he says, fall by 20 to 30 per cent from their peak, which would wipe out between $4,000bn and $6,000bn in household wealth. Ten million households will end up with negative equity and so with a huge incentive to put the house keys in the post and depart for greener fields. Many more home-builders will be bankrupted.

Step two would be further losses, beyond the $250bn-$300bn now estimated, for subprime mortgages. About 60 per cent of all mortgage origination between 2005 and 2007 had "reckless or toxic features", argues Prof Roubini. Goldman Sachs estimates mortgage losses at $400bn. But if home prices fell by more than 20 per cent, losses would be bigger. That would further impair the banks' ability to offer credit.

Step three would be big losses on unsecured consumer debt: credit cards, auto loans, student loans and so forth. The "credit crunch" would then spread from mortgages to a wide range of consumer credit.

Step four would be the downgrading of the monoline insurers, which do not deserve the AAA rating on which their business depends. A further $150bn writedown of asset-backed securities would then ensue.

Step five would be the meltdown of the commercial property market, while step six would be bankruptcy of a large regional or national bank.

Step seven would be big losses on reckless leveraged buy-outs. Hundreds of billions of dollars of such loans are now stuck on the balance sheets of financial institutions.

Step eight would be a wave of corporate defaults. On average, US companies are in decent shape, but a ?fat tail? of companies has low profitability and heavy debt. Such defaults would spread losses in ?credit default swaps?, which insure such debt. The losses could be $250bn. Some insurers might go bankrupt.

Step nine would be a meltdown in the "shadow financial system". Dealing with the distress of hedge funds, special investment vehicles and so forth will be made more difficult by the fact that they have no direct access to lending from central banks.

Step 10 would be a further collapse in stock prices. Failures of hedge funds, margin calls and shorting could lead to cascading falls in prices.

Step 11 would be a drying-up of liquidity in a range of financial markets, including interbank and money markets. Behind this would be a jump in concerns about solvency.

Step 12 would be a vicious circle of losses, capital reduction, credit contraction, forced liquidation and fire sales of assets at below fundamental prices?.

These, then, are 12 steps to meltdown. In all, argues Prof Roubini: Total losses in the financial system will add up to more than $1,000bn and the economic recession will become deeper more protracted and severe. This, he suggests, is the "nightmare scenario" keeping Ben Bernanke and colleagues at the US Federal Reserve awake. It explains why, having failed to appreciate the dangers for so long, the Fed has lowered rates by 200 basis points this year. This is insurance against a financial meltdown.

Is this kind of scenario at least plausible? It is. Furthermore, we can be confident that it would, if it came to pass, end all stories about "decoupling". If it lasts six quarters, as Prof Roubini warns, offsetting policy action in the rest of the world would be too little, too late.

Can the Fed head this danger off? In a subsequent piece, Prof Roubini gives eight reasons why it cannot***. (He really loves lists!) These are, in brief: US monetary easing is constrained by risks to the dollar and inflation; aggressive easing deals only with illiquidity, not insolvency; the monoline insurers will lose their credit ratings, with dire consequences; overall losses will be too large for sovereign wealth funds to deal with; public intervention is too small to stabilise housing losses; the Fed cannot address the problems of the shadow financial system; regulators cannot find a good middle way between transparency over losses and regulatory forbearance, both of which are needed; and, finally, the transactions-oriented financial system is itself in deep crisis.

The risks are indeed high and the ability of the authorities to deal with them more limited than most people hope. This is not to suggest that there are no ways out. Unfortunately, they are poisonous ones. In the last resort, governments resolve financial crises. This is an iron law. Rescues can occur via overt government assumption of bad debt, inflation, or both. Japan chose the first, much to the distaste of its ministry of finance. But Japan is a creditor country whose savers have complete confidence in the solvency of their government. The US, however, is a debtor. It must keep the trust of foreigners. Should it fail to do so, the inflationary solution becomes probable. This is quite enough to explain why gold costs $920 an ounce.

The connection between the bursting of the housing bubble and the fragility of the financial system has created huge dangers, for the US and the rest of the world. The US public sector is now coming to the rescue, led by the Fed. In the end, they will succeed. But the journey is likely to be wretchedly uncomfortable.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4d19518c-df0d-11dc-91d4-0000779fd2ac.html

Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder predicted riots in the streets
if the Clinton campaign were to overturn an Obama lead through the
use of superdelegates. Photo: AP

Clinton targets pledged delegates

By: Roger Simon
Feb 19, 2008

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.

This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides.

What? Isn't' that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right?

Wrong.

Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first ballot. This has been an open secret in the party for years, but it has never really mattered because there has almost always been a clear victor by the time the convention convened.

But not this time. This time, one candidate may enter the convention leading by just a few pledged delegates, and those delegates may find themselves being promised the sun, moon and stars to switch sides.

"I swear it is not happening now, but as we get closer to the convention, if it is a stalemate, everybody will be going after everybody's delegates," a senior Clinton official told me Monday afternoon. "All the rules will be going out the window."

Rules of good behavior, maybe. But, in fact, the actual rules of the party allow for such switching. The notion that pledged delegates must vote for a certain candidate is, according to the Democratic National Committee, a "myth."

"Delegates are NOT bound to vote for the candidate they are pledged to at the convention or on the first ballot," a recent DNC memo states. "A delegate goes to the convention with a signed pledge of support for a particular presidential candidate. At the convention, while it is assumed that the delegate will cast their vote for the candidate they are publicly pledged to, it is not required."

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer told me Monday he assumes the Obama campaign is going after delegates pledged to Clinton, though a senior Obama aide told me he knew of no such strategy.

But one neutral Democratic operative said to me: "If you are Hillary Clinton, you know you can't get the nomination just with superdelegates without splitting the party. You have to go after the pledged delegates."

Winning with superdelegates is potentially party-splitting because it could mean throwing out the choice of the elected delegates and substituting the choice of 795 party big shots.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned against it. "I think there is a concern when the public speaks and there is a counter-decision made to that," she said. "It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided."

Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore?s campaign manager in 2000 and is a member of the DNC, said recently: "If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit [the DNC]. I feel very strongly about this."

On Sunday, Doug Wilder, the mayor of Richmond and a former governor of Virginia, went even further, predicting riots in the streets if the Clinton campaign were to overturn an Obama lead through the use of superdelegates.

"There will be chaos at the convention," Wilder told Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation."

"If you think 1968 was bad, you watch: In 2008, it will be worse."

But would getting pledged delegates to switch sides be any less controversial? Perhaps not. They were chosen by voters, but they were chosen to back a particular candidate.

And it is unlikely that many people, including the pledged delegates themselves, know that pledged delegates actually can switch.

Nor would it be easy to get them to switch.

If, however, after the April 22 Pennsylvania primary the pledged delegate count looks very close, the Clinton official said, "[both] sides will start working all delegates."

In other words, Clinton and Obama will have to go after every delegate who is alive and breathing.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8583.html

WAR OVER WORDS: CLINTON TEAM ACCUSES OBAMA OF "PLAGIARISM"

"Senator Obama Lifted Rhetoric": In conference call on Monday, Hillary aide Howard Wolfson hits Obama for using Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick's words 'without attribution'...

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass):...When Sen. Obama uses [those words] and doesn't credit their origin, those same words seem less inspiring'...

Obama: 'I'm sure I should have' given credit to Patrick; 'Sen. Clinton has used words of mine as well'... Developing...

Adviser: Obama and Patrick 'share thoughts on ideas and language'; Clinton's campaign 'grasping at straws'...

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/02/18/clinton_camp_charges_obama_wit_1.html

Qaeda defeated in Baghdad: Iraqi PM 
 
Feb 15 01:25 PM US/Eastern

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki proclaimed on Friday that Al-Qaeda had been routed in Baghdad thanks to a security plan launched a year ago, and would soon be defeated throughout the country.

"Thank God, we destroyed the cells of Al-Qaeda. They have been chased out of Baghdad and this has opened the way for their defeat throughout Iraq," Maliki said at a ceremony marking the launch on February 14 last year of the Baghdad security plan, known as Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (Imposing Law).

"Today our forces are locked in battle against outlaws in Nineveh and we are chasing them," he added, referring to the northern province where Iraqi officials say Al-Qaeda has regrouped after fleeing Baghdad.

Maliki on January 25 announced a "decisive battle" against Al-Qaeda in Nineveh province, and sent troop and police reinforcements to the provincial capital Mosul, which the US military says is the last urban stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The prime minister thanked "all those who helped make the security plan a success and who saved the country from the miserable situation it was in due to Al-Qaeda's violence and terrorism."

To mark the anniversary of the launch of Fardh al-Qanoon, he laid a wreath at the monument to the Unknown Soldier in Baghdad at a ceremony attended by the defence and interior ministers and other Iraqi officials.

The launch of Fardh al-Qanoon coincided with the start of a "surge" of an extra 30,000 US troops in Iraq, which has helped reduce the number of bombings in the capital, while the streets are no longer theatres for violent clashes between insurgents and the security forces.

The decrease in violence is being experienced elsewhere as well, with US and Iraqi officials saying that attacks across the country are down 62 percent since June while the number of Iraqis -- civilians and security force members -- killed in January 2008 was 541 against 2,087 in the same month in 2007.

But recent attacks in Baghdad, including twin blasts in the city centre which targeted a meeting of tribal leaders and killed 19 people, have shown just how fragile the security situation is.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080215182516.1kw853y4&show_article=1


 

Death in Damascus - I

His Untold Iraq Venture Crowned Mughniyeh's Depredations
 
The small bomb which blew away Imad Fayez Mughniyeh in the upscale Damascus Kafar Soussa neighborhood Tuesday night, Feb. 12, blasted a hole in the clandestine exploits of the longest-running and most secretive of Islamist master-terrorists.

Suddenly, his most spectacular bombings, hijackings, kidnappings and murders over a quarter of century, were brought to popular attention.

As a Shiite extremist in the service of Khomeinist Iran, the master terrorist singled out America and Israel as the targets of his most savage works, but 42 governments all told hold confidential dossiers on his crimes against their nationals.

During his 46 years, Imad Mughniyeh evolved from a lowly recruit in Yasser Arafat's Force 17 to master of Hizballah's world-wide intelligence-cum-terror network, a powerful and dangerous Iranian tool with a clandestine presence as far afield as the United States backyard, Latin America.

As such, he ran more terror fronts against America than Osama bin Laden. Before 9/11, Mughniyeh topped the Washington's most wanted terrorist list.

Throughout his career, he kept Israel within his sights. He died in the midst of preparing the Lebanese Shiite militia for its next war against Israel. After the 2006 conflict, Tehran made him Hizballah's military chief in place of Hassan Nasrallah, whose performance was found wanting.

An adept at his destructive trade, Imad Mughniyeh found open doors in the highest reaches of the nether world he inhabited, including Iran's supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahri and every Palestinian terrorist chief.

Close friend of Moqtada Sadr

Their absolute trust and high regard only reached the public domain in the eulogies they delivered after he was dead. None, however, touched on Mughniyeh's most ambitious covert venture: Laying the first logistical and organizational foundations for the Iraqi insurgency which later erupted against the US Army.

His early mission therefore embodied the early date of Iran's steps to counter the US invasion and turn the Iraq War against the invaders.

A small keyhole opened up when Iraq's Shiite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday condemned the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus and declared three days of mourning in all Sadrist offices.

Sources reveals that the two Shiite radicals were friends. The Lebanese terrorist helped the Iraqi Shiite organize his Mehdi Army militia and make it an effective fighting machine supported by the infrastructure he created. Their ties continued for years. In 2006, US officials discovered 1,000 to 2,000 fighters from the Mehdi Army and other Shiite militias had been trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon, one of the projects arranged by Mughniyeh.

Iran has facilitated the link between Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in Iraq, the official said.

Mughniyeh's counter-terror experts traced the first visit to Iraq by the shadowy servant of Tehran to April 2003. He spent six months crafting the infrastructure of command centers, hideouts, supplies, arms and equipment which were to support the Shiite, Sunni and al Qaeda anti-US campaigns at three levels.

The Baghdad-Ramadi-Falluja-Anbar framework: The al Qaeda and Iraqi Sunni groups of this network did their brutal worst from 2004 to 2006 and came close to bringing the US army to defeat in those dark days of the Iraq War.

The logistics framework: A well-oiled machine used by elements of al Qaeda and the Syrian government to smuggle fighters, arms, equipment and money from Lebanon's Hizballah via Syria with Iranian funding, to nurture the Iraq insurgency.

Hizballah still runs Iraq's insurgency's support system via Syria

This support system was, and still is, run by Hizballah and, according to Middle East sources, made the ruling elite of Damascus rich.

The Assad clique rakes off a commission on every shipment and service Syria supplies this network - which goes far to explain why President Bashar Assad was consistently unmoved by Washington's appeals and threats to seal his border with Iraq.

The Iranian espionage-subversion network: Established in southern Iraq, this network has spread across the country with cells in every Shiite town and village, Tehran's tentacles reaching out to dominate the Iraq state and bring it into Iran's sphere of influence for the long term.

Imad Mughniyeh brought his finest handiwork to bear on the Iraq enterprise as a joint project of Iran, al Qaeda and Hizballah, making it the high point of his career.

The question is: Why did US intelligence and its military fail to go after him in Iraq and nip his depredations in the bud? The answer, quite simply, is that in 2003, the early days of the Iraq war, America's civilian and military war leaders were certain that victory was in the bag and had no ears for alerts about his activities even when they came from Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Least of all, they heeded our sources, the only one's at the time to report that the Lebanese terrorist had arrived in Iraq to set up the machinery for hostile elements in Iraq and the Middle East to fight the American army in Iraq with the fire of terror.

The Iraqi episode is one of the hidden chapters of the epic war on Islamist terror and probably not the only one.

Death in Damascus II

Mughniyeh's Passing Stalls Iran's Expansionist Drive

Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, the Lebanese-Iranian ace terrorist killed by a bomb in Damascus, Tuesday, Feb. 13, was the keystone of Tehran's drive for a military presence on the Mediterranean and an intelligence presence across the world.

His death surgically severed that outreach.

Before then, Iran relished the steady upward curve towards its goals. Tehran saw its goals drawing ever nearer with the inconclusive 2006 Hizballah-Israel War, Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 and its push into northern Sinai in February 2008.

Now, Iran has lost the architect of many of its successes as well as a loyal servant albeit one who by refusing to share his secrets has left his masters and successors with an almost empty cupboard.

Deeply stricken, the Islamic government quickly posted a high-profile military delegation to Damascus to get to the bottom of the disaster which deprived them of a prime asset.

The delegation, which arrived Wednesday night on the same plane which continued to Beirut to carry foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki to the Mughniyeh funeral, is headed by Gen. Ghassem Soleimani, commander of the al Qods Brigades, the Revolutionary Guards foreign terror arm. Its other members are Adm. Mohammad Fadavi, Dep. Commander of the IRGC Navy, who set up the near-clash between Iranian speedboats and US warships in the Strait of Hormuz in January; and Gen. Morteza Rezai, former chief of the IRGC intelligence branch.

Alive, Mughinyeh was more than a trusted military chief; his instincts as a terrorist were useful registers of soft American and Israel targets in the region; his strategic strengths were applied for precisely aimed attacks.

His value to his Iranian masters was such, Middle East sources say, that had there been no Imad Mughniyeh, Revolutionary Iran might never have gone so far as to build the Lebanese Hizballah militia into a military force for challenging the Americans and Israelis.

A rare accident of history brought the future master terrorist in early 1982 to the first training camp Iranian agents set up for Hizballah in the Lebanese Beqaa. Aged 20, he was armed with the combat experience gained in the Palestinian Force 17 which acted as Yasser Arafat?s personal guard.

Arafat himself was expelled from Lebanon that year leaving the ambitious young Shiite unemployed.

He crafted the arcane, never-penetrated Hizballah intelligence network

Within months, he launched the first suicide bombing attacks, wreaking unbelievable carnage to US, Israeli, French and other Western targets in Beirut.

Over the next 26 years, Mughniyeh came to dictate the tempo of Iranian and Hizballah terrorist and military operations in the eastern Mediterranean countries of the Middle East.

Tehran soon discovered his exceptional talents - not only as a terror tactician but as a secret agent and designer of clandestine organizations.

In this capacity, Mughniyeh created a world-wide undercover network, grafting it on the affluent Lebanese Shiite expatriate communities scattered across Africa, Asia, and North and South America. He also enlisted willing hands among anti-American and pro-Nazi groups doing business with the expatriates in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.

These rings were and still are employed mainly as spies for Tehran, in weapons and drug trafficking and most of all in raising money to fund Hizballah?s operations.

Cells of this universal ring were responsible for the 1992 bombing attacks on the Israeli embassy and Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, in which more than a hundred people died. They stand ready now to execute further orders to avenge their master?s death by hitting more Israeli and Jewish targets.

The clandestine Shiite network crafted by the Lebanese secret agent for Tehran parallels al Qaeda's jihadist worldwide spread.

No American, Israel or other Western agency has ever succeeded in penetrating Mughniyeh's clandestine operation. The only Western cloak-and-dagger service with indirect ties and then too through Iran was the German BND intelligence agency. Those ties were not operational, only a conduit for relaying communications between the Iranian network and Western intelligence organizations.

An obsession with secrecy

So obsessed was the dead terrorist with secrecy, that he designed and made his own disguises; even his closest helpers never knew in what character he would turn up at any given moment. He personally arranged for the facial surgery procedures that change his appearance. Middle East intelligence circles insist that he masked his reinvented images by murdering the surgeons who performed the operations and torching their clinics to destroy his medical records.

In 1996, US intelligence received a tip that its most wanted terrorist had been spotted during a stopover at Jeddah international airfield and identified, although he was bald, beardless and stout.

By the time the news was flashed between Washington, the US embassy in Riyadh and the Saudi royal court, Mughniyeh had shown a clean pair of heels. His plane took off hurriedly without first checking with the control tower.

The only clue he left behind was the sense that he had contracted an ailment which caused him to swell up.

So well did he succeed in hiding his true appearance that only two batches of photos ever reached Western intelligence hands; one dates from 1985 when he was 25; the second was shot from a distance by Israeli military intelligence AMAN with telescopic lens in 1998, when he was sighted on a rare tour of the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Mughniyeh handled the security and Intelligence aspects of his networks with the same care as his personal safety. He kept all the data on the composition of his networks, how to contact them, his personal exchanges, his knowledge of their resources, scale and capabilities as close to his chest as his private secrets.

He did not even share the information with his deputies, the most senior of whom are Talal Hamayeh, a kinsman from Taraya village in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley, and Ibrahim Aqal, who served as Hizballah commander in south Lebanon in 2000.

According to intelligence sources, one of these two will most likely be appointed to succeed their dead boss as military and intelligence chief of Hizballah.

However, he will have to start working almost from scratch. The super-secretive Mughniyeh took most of the mysteries of his networks to the grave, leaving very few records for them to recover.

Tehran has discovered that his death has not only deprived the Islamic Republic of an exceptional asset, but also severed vital access to the Iranian foreign intelligence and terrorist networks which he established.

Death in Damascus III

Syria's Regime and Intelligence Are Wide Open

Conscious of the damage caused by the discovery that one of the world's most notorious terrorists was at home in Damascus, official Syrian sources tried planting a story that Imad Mughniyeh was using a false passport in the name of Redwan when he was murdered Tuesday, Feb. 12, in the posh Kafar Soussa neighborhood of the capital.

The story, run in the London-based story in the London-based Arabic media Thursday, Feb. 14, claimed that, not only were the Syrian authorities ignorant of his presence, but they found it hard to identify him.

This tale was designed for the dual purpose of shrugging off knowledge of his presence while insinuating that had Syrian security known he was there, he would have been looked after and alive to this day.

Except that the Iranians spoiled Syria's game.

According to Tehran's version, Mughniyeh arrived in Damascus from the Iranian capital on Jan. 19, 25 days before his death. During that time, he was busy holding meetings with the Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal on their joint operation for setting up the Hamas rampage against Egypt and Israel in the Gaza Strip. No one would believe that Syrian security and intelligence authorities, noted for keeping a close eye on every moving object in Damascus, missed the movements of the Lebanese master terrorist and were unaware of the pair?s schemes.

Whatever the Syrian officials may claim in their defense, the fact that the Tehran's terror tactician was assassinated under their nose has exposed a glaring breach in their intelligence and security services. The breach in this bulwark of the regime endangers Bashar Assad?s hold on power. It is also a blot on his relations with Tehran.

He therefore quickly followed Iran in appointing a military panel to investigate how the assassination was engineered, headed by acting interior minister Gen. Bassam Abdul Majid. It will have to come up with some fast answers for the Iranian delegation, which arrived in Damascus Wednesday for an exhaustive probe into the loss of one of the Islamic Republic's most valuable strategic assets.

Death trap in the most heavily-secured part of Damascus

The Lebanese terror ace believed he was safe staying in the Kafar Soussa neighborhood because it is so well guarded. On the opposite side of the street, 300 meters away, the editorial office of the government-controlled Al Thawra newspaper is located in a protected building on whose roof sharpshooters are perched.

The Rifai Mosque is located further down the street, attached to the Iranian school which is attended by the children of Iranian diplomats and military men serving in the Syrian capital. Both buildings are under heavy guard.

Mughniyeh's own residence had security officers posted around it night and day. His car, a Mitsubishi Pajero, in which the assassin?s bomb was planted, was kept in a garage attached to the house and inspected now and again by the guards.

All the same, someone entered the car and planted the explosive device. It was detonated by remote control after Mughniyeh drove off and had reached a point between the Al Thawra offices and the Rifai mosque. The assassins, or one of them, must have stayed on the street to activate the detonator when he could see the target sitting in the driving seat.

The shape of the plot shows that a hostile group of people was able to move about freely in one of the high-end neighborhoods of Damascus among the palatial homes of Syria's top political, military and business leaders.

Syrian intelligence displayed a similar failing six months ago, when Israeli raiders accessed secret military-nuclear sites undetected and made off undisturbed with a haul of nuclear apparatus, which was transferred to Israel and later the United States.

A few days before Mughniyeh was killed, DEBKAfile exposed another episode which showed up the mess in Syria's intelligence services.

On Feb. 9, Syrian Defense minister Gen. Hassan Turkemani told army officers to beware because, The Mossad has been able to penetrate the officer elite with gifts of satellite tetephones linked to Israeli spy satellites.

Approaching Hariri tribunal strips Assad regime of loyalists

On Feb. 1 Sources dislcosed that Gen. Labid Salame, head of Syria?s eavesdropping agency, Unit 225, had been detained on suspicion of monitoring and collecting material on the top secret exchanges between the head of Syrian military intelligence Gen. Assaf Shawqat and high-ranking Iranian intelligence and army officers and passing it on to anti-Iranian elements buried in the Syrian army.

The slaying of the high-powered Hizballah commander in the heart of the Syrian capital confirms that key sections of its security apparatus are seriously dysfunctional.

Part of their trouble, our intelligence sources report, is the panic that has seized the powers-that-be in Damascus over the approaching opening of the international tribunal for trying the plotters of the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri three years ago in Beirut.

Thursday, thousands turned out in the Lebanese capital to remember Hariri in a show of strength by anti-Syrian Lebanese government factions. Unbridled hate rhetoric for Syria and Hizballah was heard from every speaker at the event. None condemned the killing of Mughniyeh.

This week, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon issued this statement:

"The selection of the judges, the appointment of the prosecutor, the finalization of a headquarters agreement with the government of the Netherlands for the tribunal to be based in that country are decisive landmarks in the process of making the Special Tribunal a reality"

Intelligence sources point out that no Syrian intelligence officer feels he is safe from being thrown to the wolves of the tribunal to take the heat off the Assad clan, who are the chief suspects in the Hariri assassination conspiracy. Furthermore, every Syrian intelligence officer has noted that the Assads have proved powerless to arrest the wheels of justice. Therefore, the members of Syria?s undercover agencies are primarily preoccupied with saving their own skins rather than protecting their shaky rulers and their allies.

There could be no more opportune time for a foreign intelligence agency to get away with a hit in the Syrian capital.

 source: [e-mail]

Hezbollah's Nasrallah: "If Israel wants open war, so be it"

Yeah sure buddy, like it's not already? As rockets rain down on Israel every day. 


Hassan Nasrallah Terrorist CEO