WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Iran could be interested in cooperating with the United States to combat al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, a leading U.S. expert on Afghanistan said on Thursday.

Barnett Rubin, one-time adviser to former U.N. special representative to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi, said Iranian officials have told him privately that al Qaeda poses a new threat to Afghanistan that could have implications for Iran’s national security.

“They believe that al Qaeda is the number one threat to Iran, maybe after the United States,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Iran’s ruling Muslim clerics are Shi’ite, an Islamic sect opposed by the Sunni-dominated al Qaeda and Taliban.

“They told me they had some information about it, and they would like to cooperate with the United States. But neither their government in Tehran, nor our government in Washington, had authorized the sharing of that information, which they found frustrating,” Rubin added.

The committee’s top Democratic and Republican senators said they would urge the State Department to consider Rubin’s remarks ahead of two conferences with Iran and Syria set to begin next week in Baghdad.

“That’s pretty important information,” said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, the panel’s Democratic chairman. “That directly relates to even the limited purpose that’s been stated for meetings with Iran and Syria.”

Rubin did not identify the Iranian officials he met in Kabul last November. But he said they also expressed interest in cooperating with the United States against the Taliban.

“Every time I meet with Iranians, they warn me that I should tell the U.S. government not to make a deal with the Taliban, because they’re concerned that the U.S. is too soft on the Taliban,” said Rubin, who is now at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
news.yahoo.com

The U.S. is supporting al Qaeda incursions into Iran, so this is a pretty crazy story. But of course there is more going on here than meets the eye. Check this interview with Chalabi, who’s obviously being positioned to take over Iraq. Not America’s darling anymore? I hardly doubt it. There are obviously elements in the Iranian government who are in the U.S. ‘regime change’ plan, maybe even Ahmedinajad, who is going to Saudi Arabia today for a chat.

Chalabi Interview

Ibrahim Polat (code name is ‘Haci’), former chauffeur of Osman Ocalan in Northern Iraq, claimed that the US officials in Iraq regularly meet with the PKK militants. Mr. Polat was a PKK militant in Iraq for 12 years before he escaped from the PKK camps and joined the Osman Ocalan group. Osman Ocalan is Abdullah Ocalan’s brother but formed another group apart from the PKK in Iraq. Ibrahim Polat was captured by Turkish security forces three months ago in Habur Border Gate.

Ibrahim Polat also argued that the Americans gave Osman Ocalan a suitcase full of US dollars. According to Mr. Polat the US officials in Iraq met every month with Murat Karayilan, the head of the active armed PKK militants,

Former PKK militant Polat also said that the Barzani and Talabani groups in Iraq provided arme and explosives to the PKK organization. He added ‘The PKK’s satellite and wireless equipments were provided by the Korek and Asya companies in Iraq. Korek is a KDP company, and the Asya is KPU company.’

Mr. Polat also claimed that the Talabani Group gives 7.000 US dollars to Osman Ocalan every month. And Polat says the KDP’s aid to Osman Ocalan is about 10.000 US dollars every month.

Iran accused the US of meeting with the PKK terrorists in Iraq last year, yet the American officals had denied the allegations.
turkish weekly

KARACHI – The Pakistani establishment has made a deal with the Taliban through a leading Taliban commander that will extend Islamabad’s influence into southwestern Afghanistan and significantly strengthen the resistance in its push to capture Kabul.

One-legged Mullah Dadullah will be Pakistan’s strongman in a corridor running from the Afghan provinces of Zabul, Urzgan, Kandahar and Helmand across the border into Pakistan’s Balochistan province, according to both Taliban and al-Qaeda contacts Asia Times Online spoke to. Using Pakistani territory and with Islamabad’s support, the Taliban will be able safely to move men, weapons and supplies into southwestern Afghanistan.

The deal with Mullah Dadullah will serve Pakistan’s interests in re-establishing a strong foothold in Afghanistan (the government in Kabul leans much more toward India), and it has resulted in a cooling of the Taliban’s relations with al-Qaeda.

Despite their most successful spring offensive last year since being ousted in 2001, the Taliban realize they need the assistance of a state actor if they are to achieve “total victory”. Al-Qaeda will have nothing to do with the Islamabad government, though, so the Taliban had to go it alone.

The move also comes as the US is putting growing pressure on Pakistan to do more about the Taliban and al-Qaeda ahead of a much-anticipated spring offensive in Afghanistan. US Vice President Dick Cheney paid an unexpected visit to Pakistan on Monday to meet with President General Pervez Musharraf.

The White House refused to say what message Cheney gave Musharraf, but it did not deny reports that it included a tough warning that US aid to Pakistan could be in jeopardy.
asia times

WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday ruled out a direct role in areas of northern Pakistan, which, it said, witnessed rising al-Qaeda activities.

The US says it is working with Islamabad to ensure that the region does not become a safe haven for terrorists. Appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee on War Funding, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Pakistan has a strong interest in not allowing extremism breed in the area.

ÒThe vice-president will come back and report to the president on what he learned. But I do think that we need to remember that the Pakistanis have a very strong interest also in not having extremism breed in that area,Ó Rice said.
thenews.com.pk

WASHINGTON – Sunni Muslim insurgents remain by far the biggest threat to American troops in Iraq, despite recent U.S. claims that Iran is providing Shiite Muslim militia groups with a new type of roadside bomb, a review of American casualty reports shows.

While U.S. military officials have held briefings to publicize their concerns about the potent bombs known as explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) or penetrators, casualty reports suggest that such weapons in the hands of Shiite militias are responsible for a relatively small number of American deaths.

U.S. officials have said that attacks with such weapons increased 150 percent in the past year. But a review of bombings by location shows that less than 10 percent of attacks that killed at least two American service members in the past 14 months were in areas where Shiite militias are dominant.

Those reports show that fewer than half the bomb attacks on heavily armored U.S. vehicles such as Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles were in areas where Shiite militias dominate.

While it’s difficult to know which armed group planted a bomb, analysts say the casualty numbers show that U.S. officials are exaggerating the importance of EFPs, which military officials say have been used only by Shiites.

“There were relatively few American deaths from explosively formed penetrators until recently, but you can say the same thing about attacks on helicopters or chlorine attacks,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a policy research group in Arlington, Va. “The fact of the matter is that the insurgents, both Sunni and Shiite, are becoming a lot more sophisticated in their tactics. Explosively formed penetrators are only one part of that, and they are not a particularly important part.”

Pentagon officials say the issue is important because the Iranian government appears to be involved.

“I think the issue is not whether or not materials and supplies are coming from Iran – they are – but rather how far up the Iranian leadership is involved,” said Bryan Whitman, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman.
realcities.com

Democratic Senator Carl Levin, in a Senate Armed Service committee meeting yesterday (2/27/07):

“These weapons (in Iraq) are coming from a state which doesn’t recognize Israel either, just like Iran doesn’t, we’ve got to try to stop weapons coming into Iraq from any source, they’re killing our troops. I agree with the comments about trying to stop them coming in from Iran. I think we have to stop them going to the Sunni insurgents, as well as to the Shia, and I was just wondering, does the military have a plan, if necessary, to go into Syria, to go the source of any weapons coming from Syria.”
antiwar.com

The Department of Homeland Security is testing a data-mining program that would attempt to spot terrorists by combing vast amounts of information about average Americans, such as flight and hotel reservations. Similar to a Pentagon program killed by Congress in 2003 over concerns about civil liberties, the new program could take effect as soon as next year.

But researchers testing the system are likely to already have violated privacy laws by reviewing real information, instead of fake data, according to a source familiar with a congressional investigation into the $42.5 million program.

Bearing the unwieldy name Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE), the program is on the cutting edge of analytical technology that applies mathematical algorithms to uncover hidden relationships in data. The idea is to troll a vast sea of information, including audio and visual, and extract suspicious people, places and other elements based on their links and behavioral patterns.

The privacy violation, described in a Government Accountability Office report that is due out soon, was one of three by separate government data mining programs, according to the GAO. “Undoubtedly there are likely to be more,” GAO Comptroller David M. Walker said in a recent congressional hearing.
washingtonpost.com

by David Ray Griffin

[This is a crucial essay, meticulously documented. Most of what we all need to know.]

One way to understand the effect of 9/11, in most general terms, is to see that it allowed the agenda developed in the 1990s by neoconservatives-often called simply ‘neocons’—to be implemented. There is agreement on this point across the political spectrum. From the right, for example, Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke say that 9/11 allowed the ‘preexisting ideological agenda’ of the neoconservatives to be ‘taken off the shelf . . . and relabeled as the response to terror.’1 Stephen Sniegoski, writing from the left, says that ‘it was only the traumatic effects of the 9/11 terrorism that enabled the agenda of the neocons to become the policy of the United States of America.’2

What was this agenda? It was, in essence, that the United States should use its military supremacy to establish an empire that includes the whole world–a global Pax Americana. Three major means to this end were suggested. One of these was to make U.S. military supremacy over other nations even greater, so that it would be completely beyond challenge. This goal was to be achieved by increasing the money devoted to military purposes, then using this money to complete the ‘revolution in military affairs’ made possible by the emergence of the information age. The second major way to achieve a global Pax Americana was to announce and implement a doctrine of preventive-preemptive war, usually for the sake of bringing about ‘regime change’ in countries regarded as hostile to U.S. interests and values. The third means toward the goal of universal empire was to use this new doctrine to gain control of the world’s oil, especially in the Middle East, most immediately Iraq.

In discussing these ideas, I will include recognitions by some commentators that without 9/11, the various dimensions of this agenda could not have been implemented. My purpose in publishing this essay is to introduce a perspective, relevant to the debates about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, that thus far has not been part of the public discussion.
informationclearinghouse.info

Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The ‘redirection,’ as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectaria n conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

…’We are not planning for a war with Iran,’ Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of confrontation has deepened. According to current and former American intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran. American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.

…Still, the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.

In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change.

Two carrier strike groups–the Eisenhower and the Stennis–are now in the Arabian Sea. One plan is for them to be relieved early in the spring, but there is worry within the military that they may be ordered to stay in the area after the new carriers arrive, according to several sources. (Among other concerns, war games have shown that the carriers could be vulnerable to swarming tactics involving large numbers of small boats, a technique that the Iranians have practiced in the past; carriers have limited maneuverability in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, off Iran’s southern coast.) The former senior intelligence official said that the current contingency plans allow for an attack order this spring. He added, however, that senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were counting on the White House’s not being ‘foolish enough to do this in the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008.’

new yorker

This is a chilling article, particularly for the mainstream press. Funneling money basically to alQaeda to wreak havoc in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, all under the radar like Iran-Contra and Afghanistan, presumably with money off the pallets in Iraq. A certain airstrike on Iran. A Gulf of Tonkin-type set-up in the Straits of Hormuz. A scenario so insane, even Negroponte wants nothing to do with it. Presuming Cheney is not mentally retarded, what’s the REAL plan? Nuclear holocaust? Why not? That way you get rid of all the bastards at once, including the Israelis, presumably.

Bush to Warn Pakistan’s Leader on Aid
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 President Bush has decided to send an unusually tough message to one of his most important allies, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces became far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda, senior administration officials say.

And I assume this is in response to the Hersh article. How pathetic. Using the Pakistanis to pay al Qaeda operatives to f-around with Iran and then scolding them for not hunting al Qaeda down. Bad cinema. Lying liars.

Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon.

A senior Israeli defence official said negotiations were now underway between the two countries for the US-led coalition in Iraq to provide an “air corridor” in the event of the Israeli government deciding on unilateral military action to prevent Teheran developing nuclear weapons.

“We are planning for every eventuality, and sorting out issues such as these are crucially important,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

“The only way to do this is to fly through US-controlled air space. If we don’t sort these issues out now we could have a situation where American and Israeli war planes start shooting at each other.”

As Iran continues to defy UN demands to stop producing material which could be used to build a nuclear bomb, Israel’s military establishment is moving on to a war footing, with preparations now well under way for the Jewish state to launch air strikes against Teheran if diplomatic efforts fail to resolve the crisis.

The pace of military planning in Israel has accelerated markedly since the start of this year after Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, provided a stark intelligence assessment that Iran, given the current rate of progress being made on its uranium enrichment programme, could have enough fissile material for a nuclear warhead by 2009.

Last week Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, announced that he had persuaded Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad for the past six years and one of Israel’s leading experts on Iran’s nuclear programme, to defer his retirement until at least the end of next year.

Mr Olmert has also given overall control of the military aspects of the Iran issue to Eliezer Shkedi, the head of the Israeli Air Force and a former F-16 fighter pilot.

The international community will increase the pressure on Iran when senior officials from the five permanent of the United Nations Security Council and Germany meet at an emergency summit to be held in London on Monday.

Iran ignored a UN deadline of last Wednesday to halt uranium enrichment. Officials will discuss arms controls and whether to cut back on the $25 billion-worth of export credits which are used by European companies to trade with Iran.

A high-ranking British source said: “There is a debate within the six countries on sanctions and economic measures.”

British officials insist that this “incremental” approach of tightening the pressure on Iran is starting to turn opinion within Iran. One source said: “We are on the right track. There is time for diplomacy to take effect.”
telegraph.co.uk