Venture Capitalists Vote for Solar Thermal Electricity

Sciam.com:

"The issue of the linear Fresnel concept is proof of performance of a large system, not just a prototype system in the field," says Mark Mehos, concentrating solar power program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo. Ausra and other companies that employ the same technology, such as New York City–based SkyFuel and Solar Power Group in Munich, Germany, "are making large claims," he says, "without testing in the field."

September 19, 2007

Sunny Outlook: Can Sunshine Provide All U.S. Electricity?

Large amounts of solar-thermal electric supply may become a reality if steam storage technology works—and new transmission infrastructure is built

In the often cloudless American Southwest, the sun pours more than eight kilowatt-hours* per square meter of its energy onto the landscape. Vast parabolic mirrors in the heart of California's Mojave Desert concentrate this solar energy to heat special oil to around 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius). This hot oil transfers its heat to water, vaporizing it, and then that steam turns a turbine to produce electricity. All told, nine such mirror fields, known as concentrating solar power plants, supply 350 megawatts of electricity yearly.

In the face of mounting concern about climate change, alternatives to coal and natural gas combustion such as these never seemed more attractive. And with the bounty of the sun waiting to be captured near fast-growing major centers of electricity consumption—Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Phoenix, among others—interest in such solar thermal technology is on the rise. The first such plant to be built in decades started providing 64 megawatts of electricity to the neon lights of Vegas this summer.

But physicist David Mills, chief scientific officer and founder of Palo Alto, Calif.–based solar-thermal company Ausra, has bigger ideas: concentrating the sun's power to provide all of the electricity needs of the U.S., including a switch to electric cars feeding off the grid. "Within 18 months, with storage, we will not only reduce [the] cost of [solar-thermal] electricity but also satisfy the requirements for a modern society," Mills claims. "Supplying [electricity] 24 hours a day and effectively replacing the function of coal or gas."

The company insists it can do this at a cost of just 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, analogous to the price of electricity from burning natural gas in California if a cost was imposed for the emission of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas (as the state's Public Utilities Commission is considering).

Ausra will rely on a different type of concentrating solar power plant to deliver on this promise. French physicist Augustin Fresnel showed in the 19th century that a large lens, like the parabolic troughs of the existing solar-thermal plants, can be broken down into smaller sections that deliver the same focus. Applying this, Mills's design—a compact linear Fresnel reflector—allows for greater ground coverage, lower weight and greater durability than precision-shaped parabolic mirrors. "You can drop stones on it and they bounce off," Mills says. "We would be able to build these in Florida in the hurricane zone."

This Fresnel solar thermal plant also eliminates oil, directly heating water to a lower temperature of roughly 535 degrees F (280 degrees C) at a higher pressure, about 50 bars, or 50 times atmospheric pressure. Then, it uses the resultant steam to turn the same low-temperature turbines as those employed in nuclear reactors.

The amount of electricity produced is simply a function of the sun's bounty and the number of mirrors. "We're moving from 80- to 100-megawatt designs to 700 megawatts and above," says John O'Donnell, Ausra's executive vice president.

The key will be proving performance. Thus far, the company has exactly one solar array, hooked to a coal-fired power plant in Australia to provide extra steam that improves its efficiency at burning the dirty rock. At present, the Ausra mirrors produce just an additional 12 megawatts of extra heat, but there are plans to boost that as high as 38 megawatts thermal.

If those claims stand up, however, solar-thermal plants could provide a significant chunk of the Southwest's—and potentially the nation's—electricity. "The maximum you can get into the grid is about 25 percent from solar," including photovoltaics, Mills says. But "once you have storage, it changes from this niche thing to something that could be the big gorilla on the grid equivalent to coal."

Ausra claims to have solved the storage problem without using molten salts or other expensive means of conserving heat. In fact, the company estimates that the price of its electricity will drop to roughly 8¢ per kilowatt hour if it can store heat for 16 hours. "Thermal storage is generally considered to be quite a bit cheaper than electrical storage," says Nate Blair, a senior analyst at NREL. "There isn't a lot of power generation combined with storage systems that can take advantage of that. [Concentrated solar power] has a leg up on storage in the grid or flow batteries or even ultracapacitors."

The system will employ pressure and a steam accumulator to accomplish the trick. "You allow some of the steam to recondense," O'Donnell explains. "It flashes back to steam when you reduce the pressure just by opening the valve to the turbine."

Such long-term steam storage, however, is unproved. "Steam storage is currently feasible at small levels, for example, one hour or so," NREL's Mehos notes. "Due to large volumes and high pressures involved with steam storage, scaling up steam storage to baseload applications is very high risk."

Assuming that their storage system works, Mills and his colleagues calculated in a paper presented today at the Solar Energy Society World Congress in Beijing that such solar-thermal power plants could match the electricity needs of both California and Texas. And, by combining a system that would meet the needs of California and Texas, solar-thermal plants could supply 96 percent of the national electricity demand. "The entire energy use of 2006, the current technology including storage would use a patch of land 92 miles by 92 miles," O'Donnell says. "Ten percent of the [Bureau of Land Management] land in Nevada is enough."

Even adding a transition to electric-powered vehicles did not alter the sunny picture. "You have to generate more electricity," Mills says. But "it doesn't destroy the correlation" between solar output and electricity demand for things like air conditioning.

Such a solar-dominated grid could also tolerate intermittent resources like wind energy, as long as storage systems worked. "A lot of the [winter] heating load correlates with wind [resources]," Mills adds, and the fickle supply of wind generation can be smoothed with hydropower and solar, he argues.

Such a solar solution to the nation's energy needs would require a host of other investments, including high-energy, long-distance, direct current transmission lines from areas like the Southwest or Southeast with fewer clouds to areas like the Northwest and Northeast with too many. "To do it in the East would drive up the cost because the solar resource isn't as good," NREL's Blair says. "Or you could build some kind of massive transmission system to try and get that power up to the East."

But that technology already exists. "There's no new technology on the transmission side, there are megavolt transmission lines around the world today," O'Donnell says. "It is the cost of building electricity transmission compared to the cost and liability of nuclear waste disposal or cost and liability of long-term carbon sequestration."

Ausra hopes to announce several partnerships this fall and has already acquired the land to build one such solar-thermal plant at an undisclosed location in southern California. If its storage system works and proves cost-effective, Ausra might just help usher in a solar revolution. "We have the ability to transition to a zero-carbon electricity future without moving the electricity price around," O'Donnell says. "That hasn't been part of anybody's conventional wisdom."

Britain to Switch Off Energy-Guzzling Lightbulbs

Physorg.com: Britain unveiled plans on Thursday to phase out energy-wasting traditional light bulbs by 2012 to cut the equivalent of a coal-fired power station's carbon dioxide emissions. The voluntary initiative foresees removing energy-wasting incandescent light bulbs from shops and replacing them with low-energy compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. It aims to save up to five million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year by 2012, or the equivalent to the carbon emissions of a typical 1 Giga Watt coal-fired power station.

Record Setting Toyota Fuel Cell Car

Physorg.com:

Toyota Motor Corp. said Friday that its new hydrogen powered fuel-cell car had successfully completed a long-distance road test and was shown to be 25 percent more fuel efficient than earlier versions.

The FCHV vehicle was driven about 560 kilometers (350 miles) on a single fueling and finished with 30 percent of the hydrogen still in the tank, said Yoshihiko Masuda, who heads Toyota's fuel-cell car development.

The vehicle should be able to travel 880 kilometers on a full tank of hydrogen, which is "the longest-distance journey for fuel-cell cars (on a single fueling) as far as I know," said Masuda.

Earlier versions of the FCHV could run 330 kilometers (206 miles) without refueling. They have been leased to public offices as well as energy-related companies.

The new model is one quarter more fuel efficient due to improvements in the performance of the fuel cell, Toyota said. The fuel tank capacity has also been increased.

This is Very Strange

Physorg.com:

When water in two beakers is exposed to a high voltage,
a floating water bridge forms between the beakers.
Credit: Elmar Fuchs, et al.

While it's one of the most important and abundant chemical compounds on Earth, water is still a puzzle to scientists. Much research has been done to uncover the structure of water beyond the H₂O scale, which is thought to be responsible for many of water’s unique properties. However, the nature of this structure, governed by hydrogen bonds, is currently unknown.

“Water undoubtedly is the most important chemical substance in the world,” explained Elmar Fuchs and colleagues from the Graz University of Technology in Austria in a recent study. “The interaction of water with electric fields has been intensely explored over the last years. We report another unusual effect of liquid water exposed to a dc electric field: the floating water bridge.”

When exposed to a high-voltage electric field, water in two beakers climbs out of the beakers and crosses empty space to meet, forming the water bridge. The liquid bridge, hovering in space, appears to the human eye to defy gravity.

Upon investigating the phenomenon, the scientists found that water was being transported from one beaker to another, usually from the anode beaker to the cathode beaker. The cylindrical water bridge, with a diameter of 1-3 mm, could remain intact when the beakers were pulled apart at a distance of up to 25 mm.

September 15 Anti-War Rally in Washington DC note

Brian Becker (from ANSWER email):

Tens of thousands of people, led by Iraq war veterans, Gold Star families whose loved ones were killed and other veterans, marched shoulder to shoulder across eight lanes of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Before the action the government undertook significant efforts to try to suppress and repress the organizing efforts. The ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) was slapped with $38,000 in fines for putting up 194 posters that were legally wheat pasted announcing the Sept. 15 action. ANSWER was told they had to be taken down immediately, and refused. Instead, we filed a suit with the Partnership for Civil Justice challenging the constitutionality of the government’s actions.

When ANSWER held a press conference in front of the White House to protest the fines, the police from the National Park Service arrested the speakers and organizers—and horse-mounted police charged into the assembled media.

Ironically, this police attack in front of the White House came hours after Laura Bush gathered the media together inside the White House to condemn the police crackdown of “pro-democracy activists” in Myanmar.

If anything, the government’s attempts to suppress these efforts not only failed but also drew additional thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of angry people to the streets.

"The big effects are likely to come next year,"

Marketwatch.com:

Home prices falling faster, Case-Shiller says

Prices down 3.9% in 20 major cities in past year

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch

Last Update: 5:17 PM ET Sep 25, 2007

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. home prices in major cities are falling at the fastest rate in 16 years, Standard & Poor's reported Tuesday.

For 10 major cities, home prices fell 0.6% in July and are down 4.5% in the past year, the fastest decline since 1991, according to the Case-Shiller home price index released by S&P. For 20 major cities, prices fell 0.4% in July and are down 3.9% in the past year, the largest decline in the seven-year history of the index.
[. . .]
The last time prices fell so much, it took more than eight years for home prices to return to their peak level.
[. . .]

Here are the 20 cities covered by the Case-Shiller index, ranked from worst to best:

Detroit, down 9.7%: Tampa, Fla., down 8.8%; San Diego, down 7.8%; Phoenix, down 7.3%; Washington, down 7.2%; Miami, down 6.4%; Las Vegas, Nev., down 6.1%; Los Angeles, down 4.8%; San Francisco, down 4.1%; New York, down 3.8%; Cleveland, down 3.6%; Minneapolis, down 3.4%; Boston, down 3.4%; Denver, down 0.7%; Chicago, down 0.9%; Dallas, up 0.7%; Atlanta, up 1.2%; Portland, Ore., up 3.8%; Charlotte, N.C., up 6%; and Seattle, up 6.9%

Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch.

HUD Demolitions Draw Noose Tighter Around New Orleans

Information Clearing House:

By Bill Quigley.

09/26/07 "ICH" -- -- Odessa Lewis is 62 years old. When I saw her last week, she was crying because she is being evicted. A long-time resident of the Lafitte public housing apartments, since Katrina she has been locked out of her apartment and forced to live in a 240 square foot FEMA trailer. Ms. Lewis has asked repeatedly to be allowed to return to her apartment to clean and fix it up so she can move back in. She even offered to do all the work herself and with friends at no cost. The government continually refused to allow her to return. Now she is being evicted from her trailer and fears she will become homeless because there is no place for working people, especially African American working and poor people, to live in New Orleans. Ms. Lewis is a strong woman who has worked her whole life. But the stress of being locked out of her apartment, living in a FEMA trailer and the possibility of being homeless brought out the tears. Thousands of other mothers and
grandmothers are in the same situation.

Renting is so hard in part because there is a noose closing around the housing opportunities of New Orleans African American renters displaced by Katrina. They have been openly and directly targeted by public and private actions designed to keep them away. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) just added their weight to the attack by approving the demolition of 2966 apartments in New Orleans.

Despite telling a federal judge for the last year and a half that approvals of public housing demolition applications take about 100 working days to evaluate, HUD approved the plan to demolish nearly 3000 apartments one day after the complete application was filed. HUD says the 3000 apartments are scheduled to be replaced in a few years with up to 744 public housing eligible apartments and a few hundred subsidized apartments.

Unfortunately, HUD’s actions are consistent with other governmental attacks on African American renters.

After Katrina, St. Bernard Parish, a 93% white adjoining suburb, enacted a law prohibiting home owners from renting their property to anyone who is not a blood relative. Jefferson Parish, another majority white adjoining suburb, unanimously passed an ordinance prohibiting the construction of any subsidized housing. The sponsoring legislator condemned poor people as “lazy,” “ignorant” and “leeches on society” – specifically hoping to guard against former residents of New Orleans public housing. Across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans, the chief law enforcement officer of St. Tammany Parish, Sheriff Jack Strain, complained openly about the post-Katrina presence of “thugs and trash from New Orleans” and announced that people with dreadlocks or “chee wee hairstyles” could “expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff’s deputy.”

HUD’s actions are also bolstered by pervasive racial discrimination in the private market as well. The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center has documented widespread racial discrimination in the metro New Orleans rental market and in the states surrounding the gulf coast.

HUD told a federal judge a few days “the average time [for the process of reviewing applications for demolition] is 100 days.” They did suggest that the process could be expedited in the case of New Orleans. So it was. Instead of reviewing the details of demolishing 3000 apartments and considering the law and facts and the administrative record for 100 days, HUD expedited the process to one day.

HUD and the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO, which HUD has been running for years) argued passionately that residents displaced from public housing (referred to once in their argument as ‘refugees’) are financially “better off” than they were before. This echoes the Barbara Bush comment of September 5, 2005 when she said, viewing the overwhelmingly African American crowd of thousands of people living on cots in the Astrodome, “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - (she chuckles slightly) this is working very well for them.”

HUD announced approval of demolition of 2966 units of public housing in New Orleans - 896 apartments at Lafitte, 521 at C.J. Peete, 1158 at B.W. Cooper, and 1391 at St. Bernard. A few buildings on each site will be retained for historical preservation purposes.

New Orleans had a severe affordable housing crisis before Katrina when HANO housed over 5000 families. There was a waiting list of 8000 families trying to get in. HUD and HANO together did such a poor job of administering the agency that there were about 2000 more empty apartments that had been scheduled for major repairs for years.

The continuing deceptions by HUD and HANO have been shameless. Since Katrina, HUD has continued to act out both sides of a charade that the local housing authority is making decisions and HUD is waiting on local actions. Yet, the decision to demolish was announced by the Secretary of HUD in DC over a year ago. But in the year since then, HUD has continued to tell a federal judge that any legal challenge to demolitions was premature because HANO had not even submitted an application to HUD for their careful 100 day evaluation. This is while a HUD employee runs the agency, commuting back and forth to DC each week. HANO even announced they would have 2000 apartments ready for people in August of 2006 – a deadline not met even in September 2007. HANO later announced to the public that they had a list of 250 apartments ready for people to return only to admit in writing weeks later that no such list existed – nor were the phantom apartments ready.
The list of untruths goes on.

HUD would not agree to delay the demolition of the 3000 apartments until Congress finished reviewing legislation that would give residents the right to return and participate in the process of determining what kind of affordable housing should be in place in New Orleans.

And so HUD’s actions help further restrict the opportunities for African American renters in New Orleans. Adjoining white suburbs do not want African American renters back. HUD does not want them back. The local federal judge has refused to stop the demolitions.

But the mothers and grandmothers and their families and friends are still determined to return and resist demolition. One sign at a recent public housing rally summed it up. “We will not allow the community we built to be rebuilt without us.”

Odessa Lewis, despite her tears, said she is not giving up. She and other public housing residents promise “we did not come this far to be turned back now. We will do whatever is necessary to protect our homes.” Thousands of African American mothers and grandmothers are the ones directly targeted by HUD’s actions.

Forty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., said “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society…When profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” We can add sexism to the list, particularly in the fight for the right of public housing residents to return.

The fight of Ms. Lewis and others on the gulf coast shows how much we need a radical revolution of values.

Bill is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Quigley@loyno.edu

Imagine how this chart will look if the US invades Iran

We have is a confluence of two potentially synergistic and mutually disastrous events.

Here's one:

Energy Bulletin, October 30, 2004:

Demographic Trends

It's a purely connect-the-dots exercise, though demographic trends here in Asia could have a bigger influence on oil than investors may appreciate. With the exception of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, Asians import just about all of their oil. Populations here are surging, incomes are rising and oil consumption has nowhere to go but up.

In China, Faber thinks, ``we have a per capita consumption of oil of 1.7 barrels. In America it's 28 barrels, in South Korea 17 barrels, Japan 17 barrels, in India 0.7 barrels. In Vietnam it's probably also less than one barrel. So in Asia on the population of 3.6 billion people we consume less oil than the U.S. on a population of 295 million.''

Looking ahead, Faber adds, ``I would imagine that in Asia the demand will certainly double by comparison. Say Mexico has a per capita consumption of 7 barrels, Latin America 4.4 barrels. Asia, as I said, it's anywhere around 1.5 barrels.''

Consumption of oil in Asia may double to 40 million barrels a day from 20 million barrels, Faber says. ``The question is, is it six years or 12 years, but the doubling is easy to project,'' he says.

Monetary Stimulus

Add to that equation the amount of monetary stimulus currently making its way around the global economy. As Ray Dalio, who manages $38 billion as chief investment officer at Bridgewater Associates Inc. in Westport, Connecticut, puts it: ``An abundance of dollars and a shortage of oil is a dangerous combination.''

It's not just the U.S. Federal Reserve holding short-term interest rates near record lows. There's no end in sight to the Bank of Japan's zero-interest-rate policy amid few signs its seven- year bout with deflation is over. It means the central banks of the world's two biggest economies continue to print lots of money.

Didn't the US Fed lower interest rates last week? This was written three years ago. That's three years of even more piles of dollars and even lower interest rates.

That monetary stimulus, along with rising demand, concerns about supply and geopolitical uncertainties, helped fuel a 76 percent surge in oil prices over the last 12 months. Now, those who worried about the economic effects of crude oil at $40 a barrel are wondering about what $60 or $70 a barrel will do to global interest rates and markets.

And as you can see from the chart above, those $60 and $70 a barrel levels may now be only a memory. Maybe.

Here's the other item of interest:

Huffington Post, August 3, 2006:

Global oil prices could hit $200 per barrel if the United States pursues sanctions against
Iran for its nuclear development program, an Iranian official told Venezuelan state TV on Thursday.

Iran's Foreign Relations Vice Minister Manuchehr Mohammadi said, "The first consequence of these sanctions would be an increase in the price of oil to around $200 per barrel."

Didn't the Kyle-Lieberman amendment authorize sanctions against Iran?

Now reread that article about the possibility of an attack on Iran causing the Straits of Hormuz to be closed and the effect that would have on the price of oil.

Cindy's voting guide

excerpt from a Cindy Sheehan email Sept.27, 2007— "Pro-Democracy means Anti-Fascism":

Only vote for candidates that promise the following things…for president, or any other federal elective offices:

* Repeal the Patriot Act
* Repeal No Child Left Behind
* Scale down the Department of Homeland Security and rename it so it loses its Nazi
tone and is brought under civilian control.
* Restore habeas corpus and close all torture camps by repealing the Military Commissions’ Act.
* Repeal all contracts with paid mercenary killer companies.
* Restore the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
* Repeal all BushCo-Presidential directives (especially Directive 51) and review all laws that contain signing statements.
* Restore the 4th Amendment by enforcing warrants for spying on Americans.
* Impeach Bush and Cheney-post presidency so they can’t receive federal benefits.
* Bring all troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and review military needs for other bases around the world.
* Repeal all free trade agreements.
* Kick AIPAC and other lobbyists out of the halls of Congress where they have no business.

Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater

Wayne Madsen (in truthseeker.co.uk):

Sept. 24, 2007 (updated Sept. 27, 2007)

WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community. Yesterday, the Washington Post attempted to explain away the fact that America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an unprecedented manner by reporting that it was the result of "security failures at multiple levels." It is now apparent that the command and control breakdown, reported as a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense and White House, was not the result of a command and control chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a revolt and push back by various echelons within the Air Force and intelligence agencies against a planned U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional weapons.

The Washington Post story on BENT SPEAR may have actually been an effort in damage control by the Bush administration. WMR has been informed by a knowledgeable source that one of the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles was, and may still be, unaccounted for. In that case, the nuclear reporting incident would have gone far beyond BENT SPEAR to a National Command Authority alert known as EMPTY QUIVER, with the special classification of PINNACLE.

Just as this report was being prepared, Newsweek reported that Vice President Dick Cheney's recently-departed Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, told a small group of advisers some months ago that Cheney had considered asking Israel to launch a missile attack on the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. Cheney reasoned that after an Iranian retaliatory strike, the United States would have ample reasons to launch its own massive attack on Iran. However, plans for Israel to attack Iran directly were altered to an Israeli attack on a supposed Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in northern Syria.

WMR has learned that a U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional weapons was scheduled to coincide with Israel's September 6 air attack on a reputed Syrian nuclear facility in Dayr az-Zwar, near the village of Tal Abyad, in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. Israel's attack, code named OPERATION ORCHARD, was to provide a reason for the U.S. to strike Iran. The neo-conservative propaganda onslaught was to cite the cooperation of the George Bush's three remaining "Axis of Evil" states—Syria, Iran, and North Korea—to justify a sustained Israeli attack on Syria and a massive U.S. military attack on Iran.

WMR has learned from military sources on both sides of the Atlantic that there was a definite connection between Israel's OPERATION ORCHARD and BENT SPEAR involving the B-52 that flew the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale. There is also a connection between these two events as the Pentagon's highly-classified PROJECT CHECKMATE, a compartmented U.S. Air Force program that has been working on an attack plan for Iran since June 2007, around the same time that Cheney was working on the joint Israeli-U.S. attack scenario on Iran.

PROJECT CHECKMATE was leaked in an article by military analyst Eric Margolis in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, the Times of London, is a program that involves over two dozen Air Force officers and is headed by Brig. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem and his chief civilian adviser, Dr. Lani Kass, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who, astoundingly, is now involved in planning a joint U.S.-Israeli massive military attack on Iran that involves a "decapitating" blow on Iran by hitting between three to four thousand targets in the country. Stutzriem and Kass report directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Moseley, who has also been charged with preparing a report on the B-52/nuclear weapons incident.

Kass' area of speciality is cyber-warfare, which includes ensuring "information blockades," such as that imposed by the Israeli government on the Israeli media regarding the air attack on the alleged Syrian "nuclear installation." British intelligence sources have reported that the Israeli attack on Syria was a "true flag" attack originally designed to foreshadow a U.S. attack on Iran. After the U.S. Air Force push back against transporting the six cruise nuclear-armed AGM-129s to the Middle East, Israel went ahead with its attack on Syria in order to help ratchet up tensions between Washington on one side and Damascus, Tehran, and Pyongyang on the other.

The other part of CHECKMATE's brief is to ensure that a media "perception management" is waged against Syria, Iran, and North Korea. This involves articles such as that which appeared with Joby Warrick's and Walter Pincus' bylines in yesterdays Washington Post. The article, titled "The Saga of a Bent Spear," quotes a number of seasoned Air Force nuclear weapons experts as saying that such an incident is unprecedented in the history of the Air Force. For example, Retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, the former chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, said he has been in the "nuclear business" since 1966 and has never been aware of an incident "more disturbing."

Command and control breakdowns involving U.S. nuclear weapons are unprecedented, except for that fact that the U.S. military is now waging an internal war against neo-cons who are embedded in the U.S. government and military chain of command who are intent on using nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive war with Iran.

CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD would have provided the cover for a pre-emptive U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran had it not been for BENT SPEAR involving the B-52. In on the plan to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran involving nuclear weapons were, according to our sources, Cheney, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley; members of the CHECKMATE team at the Pentagon, who have close connections to Israeli intelligence and pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington, including the Hudson Institute; British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, a political adviser to Tony Blair prior to becoming a Member of Parliament; Israeli political leaders like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu; and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who did his part last week to ratchet up tensions with Iran by suggesting that war with Iran was a probability. Kouchner retracted his statement after the U.S. plans for Iran were delayed.

Although the Air Force tried to keep the B-52 nuclear incident from the media, anonymous Air Force personnel leaked the story to Military Times on September 5, the day before the Israelis attacked the alleged nuclear installation in Syria and the day planned for the simultaneous U.S. attack on Iran. The leaking of classified information on U.S. nuclear weapons disposition or movement to the media, is, itself, unprecedented. Air Force regulations require the sending of classified BEELINE reports to higher Air Force authorities on the disclosure of classified Air Force information to the media.

In another highly unusual move, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked an outside inquiry board to look into BENT SPEAR, even before the Air Force has completed its own investigation, a virtual vote of no confidence in the official investigation being conducted by Major General Douglas Raaberg, chief of air and space operations at the Air Combat Command.

Gates asked former Air Force Chief of Staff, retired General Larry Welch, to lead a Defense Science Board task force that will also look into the BENT SPEAR incident. The official Air Force investigation has reportedly been delayed for unknown reasons. Welch is President and CEO of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), a federally-funded research contractor that operates three research centers, including one for Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and another for the National Security Agency. One of the board members of IDA is Dr. Suzanne H. Woolsey of the Paladin Capital Group and wife of former CIA director and arch-neocon James Woolsey. WMR has learned that neither the upper echelons of the State Department nor the British Foreign Office were privy to OPERATION ORCHARD, although Hadley briefed President Bush on Israeli spy satellite intelligence that showed the Syrian installation was a joint nuclear facility built with North Korean and Iranian assistance. However, it is puzzling why Hadley would rely on Israeli imagery intelligence (IMINT) from its OFEK (Horizon) 7 satellite when considering that U.S. IMINT satellites have greater capabilities.

The Air Force's "information warfare" campaign against media reports on CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD also affected international reporting of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under IAEA controls, similar to those that the United States wants imposed on Iran and North Korea. The resolution also called for a nuclear-free zone throughout the Middle East. The IAEA's resolution, titled "Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East," was passed by the 144-member IAEA General Meeting on September 20 by a vote of 53 to 2, with 47 abstentions. The only two countries to vote against were Israel and the United States. However, the story carried from the IAEA meeting in Vienna by Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France Press, was that it was Arab and Islamic nations that voted for the resolution.

This was yet more perception management carried out by CHECKMATE, the White House, and their allies in Europe and Israel with the connivance of the media. In fact, among the 53 nations that voted for the resolution were China, Russia, India, Ireland, and Japan. The 47 abstentions were described as votes "against" the resolution even though an abstention is neither a vote for nor against a measure. America's close allies, including Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and Georgia, all abstained.

Suspiciously, the IAEA carried only a brief item on the resolution concerning Israel's nuclear program and a roll call vote was not available either at the IAEA's web site— www.iaea.org —or in the media.

The perception management campaign by the neocon operational cells in the Bush administration, Israel and Europe was designed to keep a focus on Iran's nuclear program, not on Israel's. Any international examination of Israel's nuclear weapons program would likely bring up Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, a convert from Judaism to Christianity, who was kidnapped in Rome by a Mossad "honey trap" named Cheryl Bentov (aka, Cindy) and a Mossad team in 1986 and held against his will in Israel ever since. Vanunu's knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons program would focus on the country's own role in nuclear proliferation, including its program to share nuclear weapons technology with apartheid South Africa and Taiwan in the late 1970s and 1980s. The role of Ronald Reagan's Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Ken Adelman in Israeli's nuclear proliferation during the time frame 1983-1987 would also come under scrutiny. Adelman, a member of the Reagan-Bush transition State Department team from November 1980 to January 1981, voiced his understanding for the nuclear weapons programs of Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan in a June 28, 1981 New York Times article titled, "3 Nations Widening Nuclear Contacts." The journalist who wrote the article was Judith Miller. Adelman felt that the three countries wanted nuclear weapons because of their ostracism from the West, the third world, and the hostility from the Communist countries. Of course, today, the same argument can be used by Iran, North Korea, and other "Axis of Evil" nations so designated by the neocons in the Bush administration and other governments.

There are also news reports that suggest an intelligence relationship between Israel and North Korea. On July 21, 2004, New Zealand's Dominion Post reported that three Mossad agents were involved in espionage in New Zealand. Two of the Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and Elisha Cara (aka Kra), were arrested and imprisoned by New Zealand police (an Israeli diplomat in Canberra, Amir Lati, was expelled by Australia and New Zealand intelligence identified a fourth Mossad agent involved in the New Zealand espionage operation in Singapore). The third Mossad agent in New Zealand, Zev William Barkan (aka Lev Bruckenstein), fled New Zealand -- for North Korea.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff revealed that Barkan, a former Israeli Navy diver, had previously worked at the Israeli embassy in Vienna, which is also the headquarters of the IAEA. He was cited by the Sydney Morning Herald as trafficking in passports stolen from foreign tourists in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. New Zealand's One News reported that Barkan was in North Korea to help the nation build a wall to keep its citizens from leaving.

The nuclear brinkmanship involving the United States and Israel and the breakdown in America's command and control systems have every major capital around the world wondering about the Bush administration's true intentions.

NOTE: WMR understands the risks to informed individuals in reporting the events of August 29/30, to the present time, that concern the discord within the U.S. Air Force, U.S. intelligence agencies, and other military services. Any source with relevant information and who wishes to contact us anonymously may drop off sealed correspondence at or send mail via the Postal Service to: Wayne Madsen, c/o The Front Desk, National Press Club, 13th Floor, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC, 20045."

from Robert Parry's Consortium Blog

from Consortiumnews.com:

"A Coup Has Occurred"

By Daniel Ellsberg
September 26, 2007 (Text of a speech delivered September 20, 2007)

Editor’s Note: Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War, offered insights into the looming war with Iran and the loss of liberty in the United States at an American University symposium on Sept. 20.

Below is an edited transcript of Ellsberg’s remarkable speech:

I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state.

If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? … They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.

And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran – an escalation – which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps.

It’s a little hard for me to distinguish the two contingencies; they could come together. Another 9/11 or an Iranian attack in which Iran’s reaction against Israel, against our shipping, against our troops in Iraq above all, possibly in this country, will justify the full panoply of measures that have been prepared now, legitimized, and to some extent written into law. …

This is an unusual gang, even for Republicans. [But] I think that the successors to this regime are not likely to roll back the assault on the Constitution. They will take advantage of it, they will exploit it.

Will Hillary Clinton as president decide to turn off NSA after the last five years of illegal surveillance? Will she deprive her administration her ability to protect United States citizens from possible terrorism by blinding herself and deafening herself to all that NSA can provide? I don’t think so.

Unless this somehow, by a change in our political climate, of a radical change, unless this gets rolled back in the next year or two before a new administration comes in – and there’s no move to do this at this point – unless that happens I don’t see it happening under the next administration, whether Republican or Democratic.

The Next Coup

Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9/11. That’s the next coup, that completes the first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution, … what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world – in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

There have been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.

I could go through a list going back before this century to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in the Civil War, and before that the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 18th century. I think that none of those presidents were in fact what I would call quite precisely the current administration: domestic enemies of the Constitution.

I think that none of these presidents with all their violations, which were impeachable had they been found out at the time and in nearly every case their violations were not found out until they were out of office so we didn’t have the exact challenge that we have today.

That was true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson, Kennedy and others. They were impeachable, they weren’t found out in time, but I think it was not their intention to in the crisis situations that they felt justified their actions, to change our form of government.

It is increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that comes out, that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David Addington have had precisely that in mind since at least the early 70s. Not just since 1992, not since 2001, but have believed in Executive government, single-branch government under an Executive president – elected or not – with unrestrained powers. They did not believe in restraint.

When I say this I’m not saying they are traitors. I don’t think they have in mind allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire to help a foreign power. I believe they have in their own minds a love of this country and what they think is best for this country – but what they think is best is directly and consciously at odds with what the Founders of this country and Constitution thought.

They believe we need a different kind of government now, an Executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we’re getting with signing statements. Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the president says “I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.”

It’s [the same] with the military commissions, courts that are under the entire control of the Executive Branch, essentially of the president. A concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one branch, which is precisely what the Founders meant to avert, and tried to avert and did avert to the best of their ability in the Constitution.

Founders Had It Right

Now I’m appealing to that as a crisis right now not just because it is a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from my experience that on this point the Founders had it right.

It’s not just “our way of doing things” – it was a crucial perception on the corruption of power to anybody including Americans. On procedures and institutions that might possibly keep that power under control because the alternative was what we have just seen, wars like Vietnam, wars like Iraq, wars like the one coming.

That brings me to the second point. This Executive Branch, under specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran which even by imperialist standards, standards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly everyone in the Executive Branch but most of the leaders in Congress. The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many other places. That is consensual in our establishment. …

But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms of the consequences.

Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t, it doesn’t even make it unlikely.

That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for various reasons of the Congress – Democrats and Republicans – and the public and the media, we have freed the White House – the president and the vice president – from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.

And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.

And the question is what then, what can we do about this? We are heading towards an insane operation. It is not certain. It is likely. … I want to try to be realistic myself here, to encourage us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full recognition of the reality. Nothing is impossible.

What I’m talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on Iran is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually. However, I think it is probable, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of this administration we will see an attack on Iran. Probably. Whatever we do.

And … we will not succeed in moving Congress probably, and Congress probably will not stop the president from doing this. And that’s where we’re heading. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.

However, I think it’s up to us to work to increase that small perhaps – anyway not large – possibility and probability to avert this within the next 15 months, aside from the effort that we have to make for the rest of our lives.

Restoring the Republic

Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will take a long time. And I think if we don’t get started now, it won’t be started under the next administration.

Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and averting a further coup in the face of a 9/11, another attack, is for right now, it can’t be put off. It will take a kind of political and moral courage of which we have seen very little…

We have a really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of people who have in fact changed their lives, changed their position, lost their friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being called terrible names, “traitor,” “weak on terrorism” – names that politicians will do anything to avoid being called.

How do we get more people in the government and in the public at large to change their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for example? What kinds of pressures, what kinds of influences can be brought to bear to get Congress to do their jobs? It isn’t just doing their jobs. Getting them to obey their oaths of office.

I took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant, as an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I took an oath of office which is the same oath office taken by every member of Congress and every official in the United States and every officer in the United States armed services.

And that oath is not to a Commander in Chief, which is not mentioned. It is not to a fuehrer. It is not even to superior officers. The oath is precisely to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Now that is an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense Department without realizing it when I kept my mouth shut when I knew the public was being lied into a war as they were lied into Iraq, as they are being lied into war in Iran.

I knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it out then. I was not obeying my oath which I eventually came to do.

I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada – who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war – is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously in upholding his oath.

The president is clearly violating that oath, of course. Everybody under him who understands what is going on and there are myriad, are violating their oaths. And that’s the standard that I think we should be asking of people.

Congressional Courage

On the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate – and frankly of the Republicans – that it is not their highest single absolute priority to be reelected or to maintain a Democratic majority so that Pelosi can still be Speaker of the House and Reid can be in the Senate, or to increase that majority.

I’m not going to say that for politicians they should ignore that, or that they should do something else entirely, or that they should not worry about that.

Of course that will be and should be a major concern of theirs, but they’re acting like it’s their sole concern. Which is business as usual. “We have a majority, let’s not lose it, let’s keep it. Let’s keep those chairmanships.” Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to save the Constitution in the last couple of years?

I am shocked by the Republicans today that I read in the Washington Post who yesterday threatened a filibuster if we … get back habeas corpus. The ruling out of habeas corpus with the help of the Democrats did not get us back to George the First it got us back to before King John 700 years ago in terms of counter-revolution.

We need some way, and Ann Wright has one way, of sitting in, in Conyers office and getting arrested. Ray McGovern has been getting arrested, pushed out the other day for saying the simple words “swear him in” when it came to testimony.

I think we’ve got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this is the time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the Constitution, which is worth struggling for in part because it’s only with the power that the Constitution gives Congress responding to the public, only with that can we protect the world from mad men in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran.

And the current generation of American generals and others who realize that this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves – they might be people who in their past lives risked their bodies and their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, and would not risk their career or their relation with the president to the slightest degree.

That has to change. And it’s the example of people like those up here who somehow brought home to our representatives that they as humans and as citizens have the power to do likewise and find in themselves the courage to protect this country and protect the world. Thank you.

Daniel Ellsberg is author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.

The demon we need

Jeff Wells in Rigorous Intuition:

Ahmadinejad's rise and role in Target: Iran reminds me of the drive to privatize water in a city like Detroit. Seemingly oddly so, but not actually, as both have been directed by much the same interests.

Would there be such fatalist expectation of a strike on Iran if Mohammad Khatami were still president? Try as Fox might, the reformist advocate of a "Dialogue Among Civilizations" could not be made to put on the Hitler mustache. If the United States wanted a diplomatic solution and a rapprochement with Tehran, he was their man. But it didn't, and he wasn't. In 2003 the Swiss ambassador to the US carried a proposal from Khatami to negotiate a resolution to all outstanding issues, including Iran's nuclear program and a two-state solution to Israel and Palestine. Washington's reaction was to censure the Swiss ambassador.

In Detroit, as in many cities and nations ruled by kleptocrats who are aliens to their own citizens, infrastructure has been starved of public funds, and tens of thousands have found themselves without water. Why? To make circumstances so dire that any solution offered will be taken as an escape from institutionalized misery. And the only solution the rulers offer is privatization.

Spurning Khatami's overtures and the season of conciliation from Iran toughened its hardliners, but it wasn't a missed opportunity for Washington. It was the last thing they wanted, while Ahmadinejad is just the devil they needed. ("US Focus on Ahmadinejad Puzzles Iranians," reads a New York Times headline today. “The United States pays too much attention to Ahmadinejad," an Iranian political scientist is quoted. “He is not that consequential.”) Why? To sharpen the tensions to such a point that opinion makers determine the situation cannot be allowed to continue. And the only solution the rulers offer is violence.

Lee Bollinger: fearless denouncer of US-designated dictators

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The Distant Ocean:

Columbia University president Lee Bollinger blasted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday, accusing him of exhibiting "all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." I have to wonder if Bollinger is actually familiar with the definition of the word or with Iranian politics in general, since 1) Ahmadinejad was in fact democratically elected in 2005 and 2) he's largely a figurehead, since ultimate authority for domestic and foreign policy rests with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (hint, Lee: that's what "Supreme Leader" means).

As I was watching Bollinger's grandstanding recitation of valid criticisms freely intermingled with Bush administration talking points--a veritable blueprint for the demonization script that's being used to set the stage for war with Iran--I started to wonder if Bollinger reserved his dudgeon only for US-designated enemies. An article today in the Nation pointed me to the (unsurprising) answer, in the form of Bollinger's handling of a similar event with General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan in September 2005. Here are some excerpts I've transcribed from Bollinger's introductory encomium for Musharraf:

Rarely do we have an opportunity such as this to greet a figure of such central and global importance. It is with great gratitude and excitement that I welcome President Musharraf and his wife, Sehbah Musharraf, to Columbia University. ...

We at Columbia are eager to listen. As a community of scholars and as students and faculty who come from everywhere in the world, we take a great scholarly and personal interest in what the President has to say. The development in Pakistan over the past several years, from its economic growth to its fight against extremism and terrorism, are vital issues for all of us. Mr. President, as you share your thoughts and insights you will give our students, the leaders of tomorrow, first-hand knowledge of the world their generation will inherit.

And here's yet more of Bollinger's fawning during that event, from Pakistan's presidential web site itself (via Angry Arab):

"President Musharraf is a leader of global importance and his contribution to Pakistan’s economic turnaround and the international fight against terror remain remarkable - it is rare that we have a leader of his stature at campus," said Lee C Bollinger, the President of Columbia University.

After delivering his introductory speech, Bollinger rushed home to transfer the print of Musharraf's boot from his tongue onto a piece of paper, so he could frame it, hang it above his desk, and admire it lovingly every day.

Bollinger's unwillingness to distinguish an elected president from an actual, flesh and blood dictator, and his eagerness to point out the crimes of official enemies while whitewashing those of official allies, extends to Columbia's World Leaders Forum itself. If you look at their bio link for Musharraf, you'll see this creative rendition of history:

General Pervez Musharraf assumed the office of chief executive of Pakistan in October 1999, having been appointed chief of staff of the army a year earlier. After calling general elections in 2002 and then restoring the constitution, he became president and commander of the armed services of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in October of that year.

They source their biographical text completely to a BBC article about Musharraf. So what does that BBC article actually say?

General Pervez Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 which was widely condemned and which led to Pakistan's suspension from the Commonwealth until 2004. ...

In 2002 General Musharraf awarded himself another five years as president, together with the power to dismiss an elected parliament. The handover from military to civilian rule came with parliamentary elections in November 2002, and the appointment of a civilian prime minister.

General Musharraf has retained his military role, reneging on a promise to give up his army post and to become a civilian president.

"Seized power in a bloodless coup"? "Awarded himself another five years as president"? No, no, no, that will never do. Let's see...how about "assumed the office of chief executive of Pakistan" and "became president"? Yeah, that's much better.

It's rare that you get such a crystal clear demonstration of the willingness of intellectuals and institutions to restrict their criticisms to officially-designated enemies. It would be nice if Bollinger's rank hypocrisy were only laughable, but unfortunately it's also very dangerous; his eagerness to embrace the Bush administration's Iran propaganda, and to do so in a high-profile forum, has helped move us one step closer to war.

(To clarify one thing: I'm all for bozos like Ahmadinejad being confronted and dressed down. But I'll take it seriously the day I see someone like Bollinger do it to Henry Kissinger, or Bill Clinton, or Ehud Olmert, or George Bush, or....)

John Edwards talks to the American Jewish Committee

Also speaking were Rudolf Giuliani, John McCain, Benjamin Netanyahu, Charles Murray (the Bell Curve guy), Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres, Richared Perle, Thomas Pickering, Mitt Romney, US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, James Woolsey, Newt Gingrich, and every captain of US or Israel Industry or or Finance I'vc ever heard of, a and whole lot I've never heard of.

The boldfacing is mine. The statements attributed to Edwards are Edwards'.

Shula Bahat, Associate Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, introducing Edwards: The AJC is a global, international American Jewish organization working all over the world. We are a nonpartisan NGO and we do not endorse any candidate. It is important for you to know that. Earlier today there were some questions about the erosion of Jewish support. My viewpoint is that America is different. This does not mean that it will remain this way. Israel enjoys bipartisan support, and the Jewish organizations are here to ensure that this support continues.

The issue at hand today is the Islamic totalitarianism as reflected by Iran. I do believe that there is a grassroots affinity toward Israel based on a shared sense of the threats articulated after 9/11. Getting involved in the body politic of the United States is common activity of all Americans, not just Jews. Jews are not different in that regard, but are respected for their representation in all parties in the US.

I am proud to present to you Senator John Edwards.

Senator John Edwards:

It’s a great privilege for me to be able to participate in this conference which has played an important role in bringing people together from all walks of life. The Herzliya Conference is a great forum for what is happening in Israel.

I am aware that it was at this conference that PM Ariel Sharon gave his courageous speech outlining his disengagement. He helped Israel face some of its major challenges.

Throughout his career and public service Sharon has shown courage, including his historic decision to evacuate Gaza. More than anyone else, Sharon has, in my judgment, believed that a strong Israel is a safe Israel and that Israel needs to defend itself against security threats.

We also need to remember the three soldiers and their families for whom it is well past time for their return home. They are a symbol of the extraordinary challenges facing Israel and Middle East. One source of strength is the bond between Israel and the United States, which is a bond that will never be broken. For more than half a century both countries have benefited from this alliance. We share common values such as freedom and democracy. I was in Israel in 2001 and I’ll never forget just as I was ending my visit, a Hamas suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt blew up the Sbarro pizzeria. It made an impact on me to see the extraordinary sacrifice made by the Israeli people everyday. They continue to make sacrifices to ensure your security and achieve peace. I saw firsthand the threats you face every day. I feel that I understand on a very personal level those threats. The challenges in your own backyard – rise of Islamic radicalism, use of terrorism, and the spread of nuclear technology and weapons of mass destruction – represent an unprecedented threat to the world and Israel.

At the top of these threats is Iran. Iran threatens the security of Israel and the entire world. Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons. For years, the US hasn’t done enough to deal with what I have seen as a threat from Iran. As my country stayed on the sidelines, these problems got worse. To a large extent, the US abdicated its responsibility to the Europeans. This was a mistake. The Iranian president’s statements such as his description of the Holocaust as a myth and his goals to wipe Israel off the map indicate that Iran is serious about its threats.

Once Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the Middle East will go nuclear, making Israel’s neighborhood much more volatile.

Iran must know that the world won’t back down. The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions. We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table.

The war in Lebanon had Iranian fingerprints all over it. I was in Israel in June, and I took a helicopter trip over the Lebanese border. I saw the Hezbollah rockets, and the havoc wreaked by the extremism on Israel’s border. Hezbollah is an instrument of the Iranian government, and Iranian rockets allowed Hezbollah to attack and wage war against Israel.

I cannot talk about the war last summer without referring to the Syrian role in destabilizing area. Syria needs to be held accountable. Syria has recently called for peace talks with Israel. Talk is cheap. Syria needs to go long way to prove it is ready for peace. It can start by not harboring terrorists and ending its nefarious relationship with Iran.

While Iran is the greatest threat now, but just as alarming is the one on your doorstep. Hamas, with Iranian support, doesn’t make any mistake of its intentions to wipe out Israel, and repeatedly makes calls to raise the banner of Allah over all of Israel. Israel made many concessions. Many settlers gave up there land in order to advance peace.

Israel can take more steps to advance peace like bolstering Abbas against Hamas. While Israel is willing to go back to negotiating table, little has been seen on the Palestinian side. We instead have seen chaos and violence on the street, and no revocation of violence against Israel.

Outside assistance to Palestinian governance is not an entitlement. The US and Europe need to ensure that money going to the Palestinians does not go to lining the pockets of terrorists. For peace, Israel needs a partner.

Absent this partnership, Israel not only has the right to defend itself, it has an obligation to defend itself. This means continuing to ensure Israel’s military strength, diplomatically and economically. The hurdles are clear.

For too long, the current US administration’s commitment to this issue has been halfhearted. Now, on the backdrop of Iraq, they have tried to bring the two sides together. This is especially significant since they have squandered America’s moral authority in the Middle East and around the world.

We should be finding ways to upgrade Israel’s relationship with NATO. This could even some day mean membership. NATO’s mission now goes far beyond just Europe. Therefore, it is only natural that NATO seeks to include Israel.

Your challenges are our challenges. Your future is our future. The US will continue to stand by you. God bless you.

Question and Answer:

Cheryl Fishbein from NY: When you do learning of Jewish texts, you give credit to ideas of scholars who have helped you ask questions, I would like to give credit to my friends and colleagues who have had this same overriding question of shared a existential threat: Would you be prepared, if diplomacy failed, to take further action against Iran? I think there is cynicism about the ability of diplomacy to work in this situation. Secondly, you as grassroots person, who has an understanding of the American people, is there understanding of this threat across US?

A: My analysis of Iran is if you start with the President of Iran coming to the UN in New York denouncing America and his extraordinary and nasty statements about the Holocaust and goal of wiping Israel off map, married with his attempts to obtain nuclear weapons over a long period of time, they are buying time. They are the foremost state sponsors of terrorism. If they have nuclear weapons, other states in the area will want them, and this is unacceptable.

As to what to do, we should not take anything off the table. More serious sanctions need to be undertaken, which cannot happen unless Russia and China are seriously on board, which has not happened up until now. I would not want to say in advance what we would do, and what I would do as president, but there are other steps that need to be taken. Fore example, we need to support direct engagement with Iranians, we need to be tough. But I think it is a mistake strategically to avoid engagement with Iran.

As to the American people, this is a difficult question. The vast majority of people are concerned about what is going on in Iraq. This will make the American people reticent toward going for Iran. But I think the American people are smart if they are told the truth, and if they trust their president. So Americans can be educated to come along with what needs to be done with Iran.

perhaps inspired by passage if the Kyle-Lieberman Amendment...

September 25, 2007

Philip Giraldi:

What World War III May Look Like

Neoconservatives are great observers of war and warriors, though they are sometimes not in complete agreement about the numbering of the conflicts that they send other people's sons and daughters to fight. Norman Podhoretz, the patriarch of the neocons, believes that the Cold War was World War III and that the U.S. is now fighting World War IV against "Islamofascism." He intends to expand World War IV by slating Iran as the next domino to fall to America's military might. Podhoretz undoubtedly sees the current global conflict as something that is good and necessary, both containable and winnable, but as his judgment on Iraq was fallible, his prediction of Iran's rapid destruction is also unreliable. It might be useful to imagine just how war with Iran could play out if the Iranians don't roll over and surrender at the first whiff of grapeshot.

It might start with a minor incident, possibly involving an American Marine patrol operating out of the new base at Badrah near the Iranian border. The Marines are surrounded by superior Iranian forces claiming that the Americans have strayed inside Iranian territory. The Marines refuse to surrender their weapons and instead open fire. The Iranians respond. Helicopter gunships are called in to support the Marines, and artillery fire is directed against Iranian military targets close to the border. President Bush calls the incident an act of war and, in an emotional speech to the nation, orders U.S. forces to attack. A hastily called meeting of the UN Security Council results in a 17-1 vote urging the United States to exercise restraint, with only Washington voting "no." In the UN General Assembly, only the U.S., Israel, Micronesia, and Costa Rica support the military action. The U.S. is effectively alone.

In the first few days, overwhelming American air and naval superiority destroy Iran's principal air, naval, and army bases. Iranian Revolutionary Guard facilities are particularly targeted and are obliterated, as are the known Iranian nuclear research and development sites. Population centers are avoided, though smart weapons destroy communications centers and command and control facilities. There are nevertheless large numbers of civilian casualties and widespread radioactive contamination as many of the targeted sites are in or near cities. Infrastructure is also hit, particularly bridges, roads, and power generation stations close to known nuclear research centers and military sites. The U.S. media, which had supported the administration's plans to engage Iran, rallies around the flag, praising the surgical attacks designed to cripple Tehran's nuclear weapons program. Congress supports the bombing, with leaders from both parties praising the president and commenting that Iran had it coming.

The Pentagon and White House call the attacks a complete success, but Iran strikes back. With five years to prepare, Iran has successfully hidden and hardened many of its military and nuclear facilities, a large percentage of which are undamaged. The aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower operating in the Persian Gulf is hit by a Chinese Silkworm cruise missile and grounds itself in shallow water to avoid sinking. Three other support vessels are also hit and severely damaged when they are attacked by small craft manned by suicide bombers. Pro-Iranian riots break out in Beirut, where the government is forced to call in soldiers to shoot at the crowds. In the south of Lebanon, Hezbollah fires salvoes of rockets into Israel. Israel responds by bombing Lebanon and Syria, which it blames for the attacks. Iranian Shahab-3 missiles also strike Israel, killing a number of civilians. The Israeli Defense Forces are mobilized, and troops are sent to the northern border. Syria and Lebanon also mobilize their forces. Rioters in Baghdad attack US. .troops and the American embassy and are driven back only after the soldiers open fire and call in helicopter gunships. Snipers attack American soldiers all over Iraq. Shi'ites sympathetic to Iran sabotage Saudi Arabia's eastern oil fields. The Saudi fields suffer some damage, and hundreds of alleged saboteurs are shot dead by Saudi security forces. An oil tanker out of Kuwait is hit by a Silkworm close to the Straits of Hormuz and runs aground. Another hits a mine planted by Iran. Insurers in London refuse to cover any tankers transiting the Persian Gulf. Oil shipments from the region, one quarter of the world supply, stop completely, and oil goes up to $200 a barrel. Wall Street suffers its biggest loss in 20 years, with the Dow Jones index plummeting by more than 800 points.

The U.S. offers Iran a cease-fire, which Tehran rejects. Two days later, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is assassinated under orders from Tehran. Fearing that he will be next, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf flees to Dubai. Order breaks down in both countries. The Pakistani army declares a state of emergency. Several leaders in the Pakistani tribal areas that are sheltering Osama bin Laden declare themselves independent. Fighting increases in Iraq with U.S. soldiers being targeted by both leading Shi'ite militias. U.S. troops evacuate Baghdad, fighting their way out with heavy casualties. There are reports of Iranian soldiers and militiamen massing at the border. Rioters in Basra succeed in cutting the main roads leading to Kuwait that supply U.S. forces.

The U.S. scrambles to contain the damage, pressuring the Pakistani army to put down the riots and secure the country's nuclear arsenal, while at the same time trying to restore order in Kabul through the multinational force. Several NATO allies balk at using their soldiers in what they see as a burgeoning civil war, and the U.S. suffers heavy losses in street fighting before withdrawing to its bases. Taliban-backed militias take over much of Kabul and Kandahar. Afghanistan's Mazar-i-Sharif, which is largely Shi'ite, declares itself part of Iran. Waves of Iranian soldiers and militiamen cross the border into Iraq, where they are welcomed by the Iraqi militias. U.S. troops are under siege countrywide and are forced to withdraw into their bases where they can be supplied by air. The Iraqi government resigns and is replaced by a group of Shi'ite clerics. The government in Lebanon falls and is replaced by a coalition headed by Hezbollah. A salvo of Iranian Silkworm missiles sets the Saudi Arabian eastern oil fields ablaze. Saudi Arabia sends an urgent message to Tehran declaring that it is "neutral" in the fighting and will not assist the U.S. in any way. Kuwait sends the same message, as does Egypt. Kuwait refuses to allow the U.S. to use its men and supplies at Camp Doha against Iran. In Bahrain, rampaging Shi'ite crowds depose Sheik Khalifa al-Khalifa and set up an Islamic Republic which immediately demands that the U.S. Fifth Fleet dismantle its headquarters and go home. The Dow Jones index loses another 1,000 points.

The U.S. attempts to get China and Russia to mediate with Iran to end the fighting, but they refuse to do Washington any favors, noting that they had opposed the attack in the first place. Suicide bombers attack London, Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. The attacks are poorly planned and inflict only a few casualties, but panic sets in and the public demands that the respective governments do something. The U.S. tells the Iranian government that unless resistance ceases, nuclear weapons will be used on select targets. India and Pakistan are alarmed by the U.S. threat and put their own nuclear forces on high alert, as does Israel. Russia and China also increase their readiness levels to respond to the crisis.

Iran refuses to concede defeat, and the Iranian people rally around the government. The U.S. public clamors for action. Oil prices continue to surge, and even the long term viability of petroleum supplies is in question as the Straits of Hormuz continue to be closed. Another U.S. ship is sunk by suicide attackers in the Persian Gulf. U.S. troops are under fire nearly everywhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Anti-American rioting takes place in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Dhaka. The U.S. consulate general in Karachi, Pakistan, is overrun and sacked. Forty Americans are killed, along with hundreds of Pakistanis. The Pakistani army announces that it can no longer protect Americans. There are frequent terrorism scares in a number of American cities, which are under red alert security lockdown, though there are no new attacks. As a preventive measure, Muslim leaders and some antiwar activists are arrested and detained at military prisons, including Guantanamo. Israel continues to be bombarded from inside Lebanon and Syria. Its air attacks on targets in both countries inflict major damage on civilians but are unsuccessful in stopping the rockets. Rioting rocks the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas flees to Cairo. India threatens to attack Pakistan if there is any question about the security of Islamabad's nuclear arsenal.

The United States uses a neutron-type bomb against the main Iranian nuclear research center at Natanz, which it had already bombed conventionally and destroyed. It vows to bomb again if Iran continues to resist. Iran is defiant and fires another wave of Silkworms at U.S. ships, sinking one. Suicide bombers hit U.S. targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia and China place their nuclear forces on high alert. Pakistani militants take over parliament, aided by radical elements in the army and the intelligence service. India launches a preemptive strike against the main Pakistani nuclear centers at Wah and Multan, where the country's arsenal is believed to be concentrated. Pakistan has hidden some of its nukes elsewhere, however, and is able to strike back by bombing New Delhi. World War III has begun.