NY Times: Israel conducts drill simulating IAF strike on Iran
Israel has conducted a drill simulating an attack on facilities in Iran, The New York Times reported Friday.
Senior American officials, who preferred to remain unnamed, told the paper that the exercise included 100 F-15 and F-16 warplanes which have undertaken maneuvers in the eastern Mediterranean and near the coasts of Greece.
Helicopters also joined in the maneuvers, simulating forays into enemy territory to rescue downed pilots.
The aircraft used in the drill flew a distance of about 1,500 kilometers - similar to the distance between Israel and uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, the officials said.
IDF officials reportedly refused to comment on the exercise and its purpose.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......
http://english.aljazeera.net
Two former hedge fund managers from the Bear Stearns investment bank have been charged with of fraud over two funds which collapsed last year causing losses of about $1.8bn.
Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi, who were taken into police custody on Thursday, are accused of misleading investors over the state of the funds.
Tannin and Cioffi are the first executives to face criminal in the wake of the market instability following the subprime mortgage crisis.
The disintegration of the two Bear Stearns funds they oversaw helped fuel the crisis by stoking investment fears over the high-risk loans to people with poor credit histories.
According to the indictment by a New York federal grand jury, the two lied about the funds' prospects prior to collapse, one of the managers is also alleged to have carried out insider trading.
The indictment said that Cioffi transferred $2m of his $6m investment in one of the funds to another Bear Stearns fund with a higher return and failed to inform investors he had done so, despite being asked.
Prohibitions
"Hedge fund managers remain subject to the same prohibitions against fraud as other market participants," Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement division, said.
When they choose to make public statements, they must not speak falsely or omit material information."
However, Susan Brune, Tannin's attorney, said that her client was being made a "scapegoat" for the market crisis and that "he looks forward to his acquittal".
Edward Little, Cioffi's attorney, in a statement said: "The subprime crisis took everyone by surprise, including the [US Federal Reserve] and Treasury, and dozens of the largest financial institutions have lost over $300bn to date on the same investments.
"Because [Cioffi's] funds were the first to lose might make him an easy target but doesn't mean he did anything wrong."
Wahid Farij, an expert on financial markets, told Al Jazeera the moves were significant as it showed there was accountability.
"What's critical when the economy is bad is the restoration of public trust, especially when Bear Stearns executives are charged with withholding information from the public."
Mortgage fraud
Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Investigation also announced on Thursday that more than 400 people have been charged since March in a crackdown on mortgage fraud contributing to a US housing crisis.
"Operation Malicious Mortgage and the Bear Stearns case demonstrate that the Department of Justice is determined to detect and to punish mortgage fraud and to help restore stability and confidence in our housing and credit markets," Mark Filip, deputy attorney general, said.
The Operation Malicious Mortgage task force is investigating a variety of tactics including lending fraud, foreclosure rescue scams and mortgage-related bankruptcy schemes.
Déjà-vu
To further strengthen its position against Iran, Winep - which used similar strategies to justify a pre-emptive war against Iraq - just published a new policy paper by two of its senior researchers, Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt.
In a nutshell, "The Last Resort, Consequence of Military Action against Iran" weighs the pros and cons of both deterrence and prevention strategies towards the Gulf nation.
The document is filled with academic constructs, sophisticated policy considerations, verbal acrobatics, and qualifying statements carefully brought together to justify the conclusion that going to war against Iran is in America's best interests.
The two 'strategic experts' that championed the cause of the war against Iraq, are now trying to re-focus the nation's energies on the so-called dangers of Iran's weapons of mass destruction.
They do not argue in favour of a pre-emptive war because such a move would require congressional approval.
Rather they opt for "prevention action" even though such a conflict could result in the deaths of thousands of Iranians and Americans.
At the same time, they offer damning analysis of deterrence saying it is impractical, unwise and even a dangerous strategy towards a regime that "could not be deterred".
The authors question the findings (and the motivation) of last year's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which indicated Iran had halted all secret nuclear weapon programmes in 2003.
Clawson and Eisenstadt contradict the NIE's conclusions that Tehran formulates policies on a 'cost-and-benefit' basis - the precondition for the success of any deterrence.
They warn that the US should not wait for a smoking gun to materialise before taking action and say waiting for clear-cut evidence "may amount to de facto acquiescence in a nuclear-armed Iran".
The document's authors try hard to sound like objective analysts by using the think-tank lingo but instead come across as implicitly constructing the case for another disastrous Middle East war - against Iran.
Euphemism of last resort
Iranian nuclear sites
When the facts are too stubborn, complicated and inconvenient, the authors use third-party alibis to make the case for military attack.
"Some policy makers may be tempted to cut through the complexity of the problem by basing their decisions on a fundamental foreign policy principle of the post 9/11 era: the most dangerous nations cannot be allowed to obtain the most dangerous weapons," they write in the report.
Congress, the real law-making organ of US governance, is only mentioned as a 'consultative' power at the very end of the report, after the authors have explained ad infinitum why the White House must coordinate strategies with Israel.
Congress is afforded the same importance as America's allies who are to be consulted in case the nation goes to war against Iran.
Furthermore, Clawson and Eisenstadt argue against the "conventional wisdom" that warns a strike against Iran is too risky and short-sighted. Instead, they offer the conclusion that a preventive war is the least costly option if it is executed intelligently and within the right context
In other contexts such warmongering would be condemned and its authors would be put on trial for inciting violence.
"Perhaps this year "
Nevertheless, they predict that "... some time soon - perhaps later this year, perhaps within a few years - the time for such a [war] decision may come".
The two 'experts' warn that when the time for war comes, the US military must refrain from limited or prolonged air raids.
In fact, they argue in favour of comprehensive military action (shock and awe) not only against presumed covert nuclear installations, but also against its declared nuclear sites that are located close to populated areas.
The comprehensive attack must also target Iran's conventional military installations and Revolutionary Guard bases as well as the vulnerable oil installations, most of which are located in open areas close to the Gulf coast in order to deter Iran from ever rebuilding the flattened nuclear sites.
In such a scenario, the civilian death toll would be catastrophic.
According to the authors, the success of the preventive attack is conditional on how US military strategists "mitigate the effect of Iranian retaliation, and set the conditions for successful post-strike diplomacy or military action".
In other words, how best to negotiate Iran's conditions for complete surrender.
Containing the spillover
The two war advocates mitigate the possible spillover from such an attack. They pretend to examine all 'conventional wisdom' relating to Iranian retaliation - through "terrorist cells" or "special forces" among Shia communities across the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon - and show it to be minimal.
The authors go on to downplay the effects such a war in Iran would have on its neighbour Iraq, saying Tehran's influence and interference in Baghdad would come to an end.
On the global front, Clawson and Eisenstadt address the questions of oil shortages, international public outcry and possible attacks on Israel or Jewish targets across the world and find that to be containable if the war is properly executed.
They even suggest public relations strategies to defend and justify the US position in the wake of the Iraq fiasco.
The report event stipulated that if the strikes are comprehensive and deadly enough, they would deny Moscow and Beijing from exploiting a protracted conflict against Iran to their favour.
But selective security analyses driven by ideology as the ones cited in the Winep report are no alternative to a deeper understanding of the history and geopolitics of the Middle East region.
The question of Iran's nuclear programme cannot be addressed within a vacuum; it is part of the general geopolitical consideration that involves US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington's attempts at regime change in Tehran.
If the US does strike Iran by the end of the year, this will prove to be a far worse strategic blunder than the war against Iraq.
The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.
so it's no big surprise. It's funded entirely by American and Israeli Jews.
Much worse than AIPAC.
Goodbye.....
start heading back to where you came from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, wherever. You've shed enough blood....
What I meant is that WINEP's agenda is no different to AIPAC's. WINEP was founded by Australian Zionist Jew Martin Indyk who came straight from AIPAC, so WINEP started out as AIPAC's unofficial 'thinktank'. But you're right, many of the people on WINEP's advisory board are PNAC members. It's a big incestuous Jewish orgy.
I disagree that WINEP is somehow worse than AIPAC though. They're both far right Zionist organisations, both integral parts of the Israel lobby, and both exist to advance Israel's interests at the expense of American interests. I see very little difference between the respective agendas of AIPAC, WINEP and the PNAC. AIPAC is just quieter about its true objectives, the push for the invasion of Iraq being one such example.
lmao..... isn't sasha jewish ?
lol.
..from Iran, i believe. =)