Next up: Iran

Seymour Hersh is interviewed by Jon Stewart in this excellent clip from The Daily Show. He says the Neocons are determined to take out Iran.

The World Peace Herald reports that the reconnaissance missions Hersh mentioned in his New Yorker article are being staged from Afghanistan and Iraq. Just another reason it was so urgent to get into Iraq. (And also why we won't be pulling out after the elections.)

The U.S. Air Force is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Iran's ayatollahs, flying American combat aircraft into Iranian airspace in an attempt to lure Tehran into turning on air defense radars, thus allowing U.S. pilots to grid the system for use in future targeting data, administration officials said.

"We have to know which targets to attack and how to attack them," said one, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The flights, which have been going on for weeks, are being launched from sites in Afghanistan and Iraq [...]

When Hersh tells you that the Neocons have been and are determined to change the Middle East, you can see more clearly how 9/11 fit into their plans once they established a Patsy Idiot in the oval office. It's all too convenient.

Ellen Laipson, president and CEO of the Henry L. Stimson Center and former CIA Middle East expert, said of the flights, "They are not necessarily an act of war in themselves, unless they are perceived as being so by the country that is being overflown."

Uh...yeah.

She said her concern was that Iran "will not only turn on its air defense radars but use them to fire missiles at U.S. aircraft," an act which would "greatly increase tensions" between the two countries.

[...]

To collect badly needed intelligence on the ground about Iran's alleged nuclear program, the United States is depending heavily on Israeli-trained teams of Kurds in northern Iraq and on U.S.-trained teams of former Iranian exiles in the south to gather the intelligence needed for possible strikes against Iran's 13 or more suspected nuclear sites, according to serving and retired U.S. intelligence officials.

Both groups are doing cross border incursions into Iran, some in conjunction with U.S. Special Forces, these sources said.

I seem to recall some White House stammering and denials when Hersh's New Yorker article came out recently. Suddenly it's okay. I guess the American people didn't rise up in outrage, so...what the hey? Brag about it.

They claimed the Kurds operating from Kurdistan, in areas they control. The second group, working from the south, is the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, listed by the State Department as a terrorist group, operating from southern Iraq, these sources said.

The use of the MEK for U.S.-intelligence-gathering missions strikes some former U.S. intelligence officials as bizarre. The State Department's annual publication, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," lists them as a terrorist organization.

Bizarre? Oh, hell no. Par for the fucking course around here any more. Working with terrorists to bring freedom to countries that harbor terrorists.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, U.S. forces seized and destroyed MEK munitions and weapons, and about 4,000 MEK operatives were "consolidated, detained, disarmed, and screened for any past terrorist acts, the report said.

Shortly afterwards, the Bush administration began to use them in its covert operations against Iran, former senior U.S. intelligence officials said.

"They've been active in the south for some time," said former CIA counterterrorism chief, Vince Cannistraro.

[...]

The United States is also attempting to erect a covert infrastructure in Iran able to support U.S. efforts, this source said. It consists of Israelis and other U.S. assets, using third country passports, who have created a network of front companies that they own and staff. "It's a covert infrastructure for material support," a U.S. administration official said.

The network would be able to move money, weapons and personnel around inside Iran, he said. The covert infrastructure could also provide safe houses and the like, he said.

Cannistraro, who knew of the program, said: "I doubt the quality of these kinds or programs," explaining the United States had set up a similar network just before the hostage-rescue attempt in 1980. "People forget that the Iranians quickly rolled up that entire network after the rescue attempt failed," Cannistraro said.

[...]

"The administration has determined that there is no diplomatic solution," said John Pike, president of the online think-tank globalsecurity.org.

As Hersh points out in his interview, the U.S. isn't even trying diplomacy. Europe is, and the U.S. won't participate, because that might work.

"Like the Israelis, the Bush administration has decided that forces of sweetness and light won't be running Iran any time soon, and that having atomic ayatollahs is simply not acceptable."

Said Cannistraro of the administration's policy: "Its very, very, very dangerous."

And speaking of harboring terrorists...

The FBI knows of "jihadists" who have trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and are now living in Oregon although there is no "imminent threat," the agency's Oregon chief said on Tuesday.

[...]

[Jordan] said the FBI knows "they've trained overseas, taken oaths to kill Americans and engage in jihad," but the challenge is "to prove those things."
  KIRO TV article

Oregon, I guess, rates something we didn't offer the Iraqis - proof of imminent threat.

P.S. And get this: Hersh says that the Neocons are looking for three or four targets to be hit by air perhaps this summer.