johnny
18-01-2005, 12:29 PM
US commandos have been operating inside Iran since mid-2004, selecting suspected weapons sites for possible air strikes, claims award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh.
The claims - made in The New Yorker magazine - have been attacked by the Pentagon blasted as being "riddled with errors". Hersh, who exposed prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004, wrote that he was repeatedly told by US intelligence and military sources that "the next strategic target was Iran". "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign," a former high-level government intelligence official told the magazine.
"The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy," the official said. Oh, so we've worked out exactly who the bad guys are huh? What is this a fucking John Wayne movie? So much Hollywood mentality.....
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said in a statement that Iran's "apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organisations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment" than Hersh gives it.
The article "is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed," DiRita wrote. Kinda like the credibilty of the penatgon and the CIA after 1) no WMD were found in Iraq and 2) that the insurgency still continues to grow into an insipid civil war. remember George Tenet, the head of the CIA that told both George.W and the UN security council that it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq had WMD? Well he's no longer head of the CIA.........
Hersh's sources "feed him with rumour, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made," the statement added. The Pentagon however said nothing about Hersh's claim that President George W Bush has authorised US commandos to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia, including Iran.
According to The New Yorker, secret spying missions have been going on inside Iran for at least six months on declared and suspected nuclear, chemical and missile sites. The goal is to "identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids," Hersh wrote. A top government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told the magazine that Pentagon civilians, especially Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, "want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible".
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed Iran's clerical regime could not withstand a military blow and would collapse, the magazine reported. Hah! yeah, just like all the Iaqis would greet US forces with "flowers and song" when Saddam fell. And just like how the fight would end once Saddam was caught, huh?
US planners were getting foreign help: Israeli consultants are helping develop potential weapons targets inside Iran Oh good, at least the Arabs won't spin this into some kind of Zionist conspiracy...... :rolleyes: , and US commandos are using Pakistan as a springboard for operations inside eastern Iran, according to the magazine.
In return, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had received guarantees that he would not have to hand over disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to international authorities for questioning.In February last year, Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, took responsibility for transfers of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
In Islamabad, foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said there was no such collaboration."Pakistan does not have much information about Iran's nuclear program, so I think this report is far-fetched and it exaggerates facts, which do not exist in the first place," Khan said.
AFP
This thread may put the whole pakistan issue in context.
http://forums.farkin.net/showthread.php?t=16457&highlight=pakistan
Oh by the way, some of you may have noticed that Pervez Musharraf has refused to relinquish his role of Military Commander whilst the country's president. This was a stipulation made by America in order to recognise him as a legitimate leader. So, we have a country that supported (well, made really) the Taliban, supported Al Qaeda and the Kashmiri insurgents, sells nuclear weapon capabilities to rogue states and is a military dictatorship..............................Cool, let's go bomb Iran instead ;)
"......I don't want to sail with ship of fools, no oh ohoh......." World Party.
The claims - made in The New Yorker magazine - have been attacked by the Pentagon blasted as being "riddled with errors". Hersh, who exposed prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004, wrote that he was repeatedly told by US intelligence and military sources that "the next strategic target was Iran". "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign," a former high-level government intelligence official told the magazine.
"The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy," the official said. Oh, so we've worked out exactly who the bad guys are huh? What is this a fucking John Wayne movie? So much Hollywood mentality.....
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said in a statement that Iran's "apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organisations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment" than Hersh gives it.
The article "is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed," DiRita wrote. Kinda like the credibilty of the penatgon and the CIA after 1) no WMD were found in Iraq and 2) that the insurgency still continues to grow into an insipid civil war. remember George Tenet, the head of the CIA that told both George.W and the UN security council that it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq had WMD? Well he's no longer head of the CIA.........
Hersh's sources "feed him with rumour, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made," the statement added. The Pentagon however said nothing about Hersh's claim that President George W Bush has authorised US commandos to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia, including Iran.
According to The New Yorker, secret spying missions have been going on inside Iran for at least six months on declared and suspected nuclear, chemical and missile sites. The goal is to "identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids," Hersh wrote. A top government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told the magazine that Pentagon civilians, especially Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, "want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible".
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed Iran's clerical regime could not withstand a military blow and would collapse, the magazine reported. Hah! yeah, just like all the Iaqis would greet US forces with "flowers and song" when Saddam fell. And just like how the fight would end once Saddam was caught, huh?
US planners were getting foreign help: Israeli consultants are helping develop potential weapons targets inside Iran Oh good, at least the Arabs won't spin this into some kind of Zionist conspiracy...... :rolleyes: , and US commandos are using Pakistan as a springboard for operations inside eastern Iran, according to the magazine.
In return, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had received guarantees that he would not have to hand over disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to international authorities for questioning.In February last year, Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, took responsibility for transfers of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
In Islamabad, foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said there was no such collaboration."Pakistan does not have much information about Iran's nuclear program, so I think this report is far-fetched and it exaggerates facts, which do not exist in the first place," Khan said.
AFP
This thread may put the whole pakistan issue in context.
http://forums.farkin.net/showthread.php?t=16457&highlight=pakistan
Oh by the way, some of you may have noticed that Pervez Musharraf has refused to relinquish his role of Military Commander whilst the country's president. This was a stipulation made by America in order to recognise him as a legitimate leader. So, we have a country that supported (well, made really) the Taliban, supported Al Qaeda and the Kashmiri insurgents, sells nuclear weapon capabilities to rogue states and is a military dictatorship..............................Cool, let's go bomb Iran instead ;)
"......I don't want to sail with ship of fools, no oh ohoh......." World Party.