AIPAC Briefs Hill Staffers on NIE
U.S. Capitol Building

AIPAC Policy and Government Affairs Directors Brad Gordon and Marvin Feuer recently briefed congressional staff about the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and its potential impact on continuing efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. They highlighted the report’s findings that Iran has made significant progress in its ability to enrich uranium and that Tehran is susceptible to international pressure, suggesting that a strong international effort to sanction Iran could have an impact on the regime’s nuclear calculations. As part of the discussion, congressional staffers asked questions about the state of Iran’s missile capabilities and the status of U.S. and Israeli missile defense capabilities against the Iranian threat.
Jerusalem Post Editor Addresses AIPAC Audiences

Award-winning journalist and author David Horovitz recently traveled across the United States to discuss recent Middle East news with AIPAC audiences. Horovitz, The Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief, gave AIPAC Club members an inside analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian meeting in Annapolis, Maryland. As one of the few journalists to witness closed-door sessions in Annapolis, Horovitz shared his eyewitness account of the gathering and answered questions on a wide range of topics. While in Washington, Horovitz briefed an audience of 40 Congressional staffers and headlined a bipartisan dinner welcoming 22 top-level political consultants. In addition to sharing his impressions of the Annapolis meeting, he also highlighted the urgency of the Iran threat, stressing that the Islamic Republic is continuing to enrich uranium and could eventually develop a nuclear weapon at will.

Hell over the past four years half of Aipac’s website is focused on more aggression towards Iran
http://www.aipac.org/

Can anyone explain the sanctions to me? Why do we have sanctions against Iran?

Able to get on the Diane Rehm show yesterday to ask that question about the lack of evidence and Strobe Talbott went on and on about what a threat Iran continues to be. I was also able to get in a question about Senator Clintons yes vote on the Kyl Lieberman amendment. Strobe was really pushing the Iran continues to be a very serious threat card.

http://wamu.org/programs/dr/08/01/16.php#19101

11:00Strobe Talbott: “The Great Experiment” (Simon & Schuster)

Guest host: Susan Page

Former Deputy Secretary of State discusses America’s role on the world stage, how presidents conduct foreign policy and their impact on the global community. He also looks at challenges facing President Bush as he enters his final year in office and what might be in store for his successor.
Guests

Strobe Talbott, author and former deputy Secretary of State

Let’s also keep in mind that Scott Ritter and others also question whether there ever was a Nuclear weapons program in Iran before 2003

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20080115_scott_ritters_iran_101_primer/

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/945731.html

The issue that dare not speak it’s name in the debates in the MSM and in the progressive blogosphere.

http://www.muzzlewatch.com/?p=309

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2006/0124middleeast_leverett.aspx

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/opinion/22precede.html

http://www.newamerica.net/pressroom/2007/pbs_interviews_flynt_leverett_on_iran_and_iraq

AJAMI: “If you liked Boutros Boutros-Ghali of the United Nations before and Kofi Annan, you’ll love Mohamed El-Baradei. This is a congenital anti-American man. And he was — he still has his job because, at the end, at the crucial moment, the Bush administration blinked. They want him out of there.”

Ajami clearly has a very serious agenda that aligns with the radical neo-cons that lied this nation into Iraq based on a pack of lies.

We cannot rest on this issue. The cakewalk ‘zealots” have not backed down for one second. They have been filling the airwaves with unsubstantiated claims about Iran for a solid four years. They started hammering hard immediately after the invasion of Iraq. Reuel Marc Gerecht, Woolsey, Bolton, Micheal Ledeen, Cheney , Ari Fleisher were everywhere in the MSM repeating these unsubstantiated claims. During this time the Iaea director Elbaradei kept asking for the inflammatory rhetoric to stop. The radicals took the words of Iranian President Ahmadinejad about Israel and misinterpreted them and then continuously repeated them and continued and continue to attempt to turn up the heat on Iran.

Check out what Aipac is up to. For the last four years half of their website has consistently been devoted to turning up the heat on Iran. The zealots have not backed off their full court press

AIPAC Briefs Hill Staffers on NIE
U.S. Capitol Building

AIPAC Policy and Government Affairs Directors Brad Gordon and Marvin Feuer recently briefed congressional staff about the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and its potential impact on continuing efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. They highlighted the report’s findings that Iran has made significant progress in its ability to enrich uranium and that Tehran is susceptible to international pressure, suggesting that a strong international effort to sanction Iran could have an impact on the regime’s nuclear calculations. As part of the discussion, congressional staffers asked questions about the state of Iran’s missile capabilities and the status of U.S. and Israeli missile defense capabilities against the Iranian threat.

http://www.aipac.org/index.asp

“I think they are a substitute for war. I think the Bush administration doesn’t have the political cover. It doesn’t have the time. It doesn’t have the consensus at home and the consensus abroad for a war against Iran.”

This is a guy who hasn’t learned that Bush and Cheney DO NOT CARE about any of that. They really did not have any of that for Iraq and it did not stop them. Cheney has explicitly said that even if Congress denies him authority to attack Iran, “That will not stop us.”

This is a sucker’s bet that Bush and Cheney will not attack Iran.

People simply refuse to admit that Bush and Cheney are power seekers and war profiteers who will start wars purely for the purpose of seizing the oil and for hegemony in the ME. Nothing Iran actually does or does not do is relevant to that motivation.

It’s that simple.

The only reason we are not at war with Iran NOW appears to be the push back from the Pentagon, and the flimsiness and lack of evidence of the excuses for the war. But those things can be gotten around. Cheney is pushing for Israel to start the war if nothing else. The massive $30 billion arms bribe to Israel is entirely about that, as is the $20 billion bribe to Saudi Arabia to lie down under it.

Cheney said a few months ago that he wanted at least 40% of the public to support the Iran war. Well, the recent poll indicates that 52% of the public support it - at least when the false question is asked about invading Iran to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon - which isn’t the actual situation at all. The majority of the public oppose war with Iran under the current circumstances. But if you ask them about nukes, of course they support it. This is yet another attempt to gin up support for war.

The notion that all this is just to “scare Iran” into diplomacy is nonsense. It’s no more that than Bush’s attempts to do “diplomacy” with Iraq in 2002 and 2003.

There is a very serious intention to start a war with Iran and people need to take that dead seriously. as well.

I am truly disappointed to hear this kind of ignorant, bigoted speech from you.

And by the way, my objection to Fu’ad `Ajami is not that he is a “western apologist”. My objection to him is that he is one of the worst possible combinations for a scholar - an intellectual lightweight driven by ideology and an overwhelming need to deny who he is. He has never produced an original insight on anything Middle Eastern or Islamic, and in any case his completely outmoded and widely discredited orientalist ideology puts him very far from reality virtually all the time. Most western-born-and-educated Middle East and Islamic scholars have far better and more intuitive insight than he does.

Fu’ad `Ajami is almost universally poorly regarded in the field of Middle East scholarship. Perhaps only his mentor, Bernard Lewis, exceeds him in that regard, but at least Bernard Lewis was a pretty respectable historian once upon a time.

Susan says `Ajami is an expert, and I suppose technically she is correct, but how can someone be consistently so very wrong and still legitimately be considered an expert?