A day after many pundits followed Bill Roggio freaking out about Pakistan's status as a "failed state" because the Taliban were - gasp - only 60 miles from Islamabad, comes this from Reuters.

"Our leader has ordered that Taliban should immediately be called back from Buner," Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan told Reuters. He said there were only around 100 fighters in Buner.


Government and Taliban representatives went to Buner, along with Maulana Sufi Mohammad, a radical Muslim cleric who brokered the Swat deal, to tell the fighters to vacate the district.

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Spencer Ackerman* has the details of Clinton's comments on Iran at her confirmation hearing yesterday. She repeated the line that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, just as Obama has done. The 2007 NIE saying exactly the opposite seems to have passed from the villagers' memory without a whimper, so "all options" are still on the table. And she very definitely didn't, even given multiple opportunities, say that the Obama administration will despatch and envoy to Iran in its first year. Although since the frontrunner for that job is rumored to be neocon-enabler Dennis Ross, I'm not sure whether to be thankful about that.

Hugely disappointing, as was Kerry's agreement talk of "big sticks". No wonder the Iranians call her "Madame AIPAC". With Obama seemingly giving more than just lip service to the anti-Iran pro-AIPAC lobby, the next Israeli leader won't even have to worry about calling up the American president to give his SecState her marching orders.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

[media=7096 showimage] (H/t David E) The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, when finally released after months of the Bush administration trying to get it changed without success, said that "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Since then every major Western media outlet and political leader, especially including Barack Obama, has done their level best to ignore that finding - well, after the wingnuts got over crowing about how it proved Bush's invasion of Iraq was a good thing, at least - yet there's not a shred of real evidence for doing so.

Much of the narrative which allows the consensus view of the entire US intelligence community to be ignorable centers around the infamous "laptop of death" and around statements last year at a private briefing by the IAEA's Oli Heinonen. However, the documents contained upon the laptop are of questionable provenance, probably at least in part forged by their provider - the MeK terrorist group - and in any case refer to programs from before 2003. Heinonen’s briefing likewise referred to programs from before 2003 - as it would, since it was based on those laptop documents, given to the IAEA by George Schulte so that Hoinonen would brief members and Schulte could then leak his notes of that briefing to the media establishing a stage of plausiblity between him and the information. However, the information given at that briefing was public knowledge even in 2005, something not even mentioned by David "Judy in Drag" Sanger at the NYT when he recycled his 2005 report on the laptop's information for his widely cited 2008 report on the briefing. By this weekend, Sanger had entirely dismissed the NIE and was willing to bend the IAEA's findings and briefings all out of shape in service of the narrative. David Sanger may be the finest stenographer for his "unofficially official" sources at the White House in the history of journalism.

The IAEA's assessment to date is in full agreement with the NIE: that there "is no evidence that the weapons program continued after 2004" but you'd be forgiven if you hadn't realized that, as much reporting on the subject has deliberately played games with tense. Given that's there's no evidence that Iran has a current nuclear weapons program, warmongers have been reduced to arguing that there's no proof positive that it doesn't. The inability to prove a negative, to prove "evidence of absence" was what got us into Iraq too, so they hope it serves again.

Unfortunately, Obama's recent statements would indicate that it will serve again. On Sunday he told George Stephanoupolis that "they are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race".

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There's a rather worrisome meme going around progressive bloggers nowadays - "if we all ignore John Bolton, his cabal will go away". Bolton hated the second Dubya term because it pretended diplomacy - demanding as preconditions everything that was supposedly to be negotiated and forcing Europe to push that pretense as America's proxies - rather than just invading. Now, his prescription is only changed from 2003 in that he realises that a US ensnared in two wars he and his neocon buddies pushed makes it unlikley that America can do the attacking on its own: he writes "Options on Iran are more limited, but meaningful efforts at regime change and assisting Israel should it decide to strike Iran's nuclear facilities would be good first steps."

Steve Benen is the latest in a line of progressives I've seen suggesting that Bolton should just be ignored:

Bolton, of course, doesn't need an excuse. He called for a war against Iran over and over and over again. It doesn't matter that his idea is crazy, Bolton has access to conservative media outlets and he knows how to use them.

One of the more ridiculous personnel decisions Bush has ever made was nominating Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, fighting for his confirmation, and then giving Bolton a recess appointment when senators balked. One of the more accurate personnel assessments Bush has ever made came a year later when the president said, "Let me just say from the outset that I don't consider Bolton credible."

I'm not sure why anyone would.

While I sympathize with Steve's sentiment, Bolton isn't just some rogue loose cannon who can be ignored onto the sidelines. He's still a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and receives funding from the very deep ($30 million a year) pockets of that neocon mothership and its corporate support system.

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A few days ago, all the experts were saying there was no chance of a war between India and pakistan as a consequence of escalating tensions following accusations of Pakistani involvement in attacks on Mumbai last month. Now, with reports that both nations are moving some troops to their mutual border, everyone is talking about the chance of conflict. But if that conflict happens, it will be inadvertent - an accidental exchange of fire arising from both sides' readiness to repel the other which then runs out of control - rather than a deliberate act.

Pakistan has reportedly moved some 20,000 soldiers from its border with Afghanistan, a move that will suit Pakistan's ruling elite's short term political purposes very nicely. It has also been flying 24 hour patrols on its side of the India-Pakistan border to guard against Indian probes as the Indians try to find out for themselves what the Pakistanis are up to and has cancelled officer leave. But there hasn't as yet been a major mobilization of troops towards the Indian border. India has moved some troops and heightened its military's readiness too, but there's been no general mobilization of reserves as yet. India has twice the standing armed forces of Pakistan and a vastly higher reserve manpower (there are respectively the 4th and 6th largest armed forces in the world) - in a general war between the two, 20,000 troops are a drop in the ocean and both sides know it. Indeed, that's arguably why Pakistan developed its nuclear weapons in the first place.

So there aren't widespread signs of war preperations yet and in any case both nations have to be aware that, both economically and in terms of internal stability, they cannot afford war. It's more likely that both sides are simultaneously playing to their own publics and seeking to enlist international support for their own agendas. Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution told McClatchy:

"There is nothing (the Singh government) can do except make threatening noises toward Pakistan," he said. "Both countries are rattling their sabers. These are two weak governments that are clearly trying to get the Americans nervous so they put pressure on the other country (to back down)."

He called the current atmosphere "a precursor to a crisis" that could erupt because of the high possibility of a misstep on either side.

"We are in a period of touch-and-go," he said.

It's not just America - the Chinese, who are even more Pakistan's military ally than ever the US could hope to be and cannot be happy about even the smallest prospect of an inadvertent nuclear war on their borders, are now involved in trying to get both countries to scale back their posturing too.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Anti-neocon conservative analyst Stephen P. Cohen tells Indian TV that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to control terror groups on its territory.

An AP report quotes Pakistani unofficial officials as saying that Pakistan is moving thousands of troops to its border with India, snubbing Bush administration offcials who had pleaded with the Pakistanis not to.

The troops headed to the Indian border were being diverted away from tribal areas near Afghanistan, officials said, and the move was expected to frustrate the United States, which has been pushing Pakistan to step up its fight against al-Qaida and Taliban militants near the Afghan border.

Two intelligence officials said the army's 14th Division was being redeployed to the towns of Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border. They said some 20,000 troops were on the move. Earlier Friday, a security official said all troop leave had been canceled.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Both countries have said they want to avoid military conflict over the attacks. But India has not ruled out the use of force as it presses its neighbor to crack down on the Pakistani-based terrorist group it blames for the attack.

Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has promised to respond aggressively if attacked but reassured India Friday that Pakistan would not strike first.

The Pakistani military has denied the AP's report and its anonymous Pakistani military sources. They claim that the military is undergoing regular, scheduled rotations, and that if an AP reporter saw trucks moving out of a tribal area, those troops were on a scheduled rotation, and not acting under new orders.

Of course, the Pakistani military has proven that its official pronouncements are entirely trustable...

Just days ago all the analysts were saying that there was almost no chance of war between the two nuclear-armed nations but now one retired Pakistani general has told the AP it's to deter US-style missile strikes on suspected militant targets:

"It is a message to India that if you think you can get away with strikes, you are sadly mistaken," said Talat Masood, a retired general and military analyst based in Islamabad.

I don't think the analysts are wrong - war is still highly unlikely although tensions have just ratcheted a little higher. The Pakistani military has always defined itself exclusively by its opposition to India and large swathes of both the military and the Pakistani general populace have become more and more hostile to fighting what they see as "America's War" along their Western border with Afghanistan. Using the current situation as a convenient excuse to walk away from that war and back towards facing off India was always on the cards, will be popular on Pakistan's streets and will strengthen the military's political position as the new civilian government attempts to be less than its puppet in many areas of domestic and foreign policy.

However, as my colleague Fester noted in an email, this redeployment means that supply lines for US and allied forces in Afghanistan will become more vulnerable and that militants along the Afghan/Pakistan border will become more active. That's a feature rather than a bug as far as much of the Pakistani military and the ISI intelligence agency are concerned. That the Bush administrations diplomats and generals have been unable to prevent this redeployemnt, despite their constant claims that Pakistan is a staunch ally in the War On Some Terror and recent assertions that Pakistan is committed to helping India investigate then root out the extremists responsible for the Mumbai attacks is indicative of just how badly they've been had by Pakistani spin and doubletalk over the last eight years.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Un-fricking-believable. Bush, talking to ABC's Martha Raddatz, does a Cheney on the lies leading up to the Iraq invasion and the messy misadventure of the occupation:

BUSH: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take–

RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded.

BUSH: Yeah, that’s right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.

Dubya and his whole administration are determined to spin the whole of the last eight years as "ancient history". Raddatz should have thrown out her script at that point and eaten him alive, but she didn't. Yet another failure of the tame media, who are too afraid of losing their precious access to ask the obvious questions even now. Ian Williams of The Guardian laments the paucity of journalistic backbone on display:

With a few notable exceptions like Helen Thomas, Bush's press conferences have not generated the indignation he so richly deserves from a largely quiescent White House press corps that needs government inspectors and Congressmen to tell it when it can be surprised and even occasionally indignant.

In a parochial way, one can understand why the press corps lacks indignation over Iraq's 100,000 civilian dead and over two million external refugees, plus untold more internally displaced.

But it is still surprising that so many reporters can be polite and deferential with someone who has turned the US Federal Reserve into a giant Ponzi scheme and broken the world's strongest economy. They defer humbly to someone who has contrived the deaths of 4,200 US servicemen and women in Iraq. It even failed to follow through on questions about the president's murky military record with the Texas Air National Guard while his peers were dying in Vietnam. This intrepid press
corps showed no compunction in following in minute detail Clinton's screwing
around, but kept silent as Bush screwed entire nations.

Last week, a Senate report pointed the finger directly at Bush and his senior officials for authorising - indeed, ordering - torture and abuse of detainees. But no one threw any shoes.

It is that fawning quiescence that allowed Bush to tell Bob Woodward: "I'm the commander – see, I don't need to explain – I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

I'll give the Newshogger's Journalist of the Year Award to the first reporter to say to Dubya "You're the President, so what? You work for us, you're not the king."

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Did anyone think that the people who managed to slant US analysis so badly that it was sure there were WMDs in Iraq would give up easily on agitating for their next war of choice, Iran? In their last months with free run of the corridors of power, the necons and Cheneyites are doing their best to torpedo Obama's diplomatic route for Iran, something Democratic hawks and AIPACers are only too happy to aid them in.

For over a year now, their aim has been to create "strategic ambiguity" - deliberately muddying the waters about Israeli and American intentions so as to pressure Iran in its negotiations with the West by ensuring it fears an attack if it doesn't play ball. D.C. hawks have gotten on board to such an extent that it is already an accepted fact among the Very Serious Person set that Obama's idea of negotiation without preconditions will get exactly one shot, will fail, and then the bombs will begin to fall.

There's more of the same in Haaretz this Thursday, reporting a planted story that Obama will extend the U.S. nuclear umbrella to Israel, which has plenty of nukes itself. The story is sourced to a single someone "close to the new administration". Whether that source is someone like Dennis Ross, Susan Rice or Tony Lake - all of whom have been cozy with the "real men go to Tehran" faction recently - or actually outside Obama's nascent administration looking in, even perhaps a part of the Bush team's transition liason, is unclear. Haaretz might even be the target of deliberate disinformation or making the story up out of whole cloth in a way that can't be proven. But one of those Real Men, Jim Geraghty, is beside himself with glee that the idea was first put out there by another Manly Man, Charles Krauthammer, back in April.

When he proposed it, liberals declared this idea was evidence that Krauthammer is insane. When Hillary Clinton echoed the proposal, Keith Olbermann said it was "far further to the right than John McCain. This may be far further to the right than the Bush administration policy about the Middle East, which you didn't think was physically possible." Rachel Maddow said it was "hard to imagine a conception of American interests broad enough to make this a prudent promise to make to the world, particularly to this volatile part of the world."

Hear that, netroots? From Krauthammer's column to Obama administration policy. Glad you put all that effort into beating McCain, huh?

The proposal is, of course, insane and idiotic, as Haaretz notes even some in the Bush administration admit.

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Rupert Murdoch's Jerusalem Post has to keep finding its daily quota of Iranian fearmongering and war hype. No other Israeli newspaper keeps, as a permanent and prominent section right after Headlines and before those for other Missle East or international news, one entitled "The Threat From Iran". Today, it reported anonymously sourced claims that Israel is ready to go it alone in attacking Iran, after the US has repeatedly refused to co-operate in airstrikes.

It is, of course, an insane notion -- one designed to keep up the pressure of bellicose rhetoric aimed at Iran in the mistaken idea that the Iranian regime will thus become less entrenched and enjoy less domestic support. Even some conservative commentators know this (Ed Morrissey for one):

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Dittoheads on CNN's Late Edition, Sunday. Sajjan Gohel agrees the Mumbai culprits are the Lek, even though he told the WaPo the day before it was definitely Al Qaeda, and former CIA DDI John McLaughlin, with a straight face and without challenge, says Pakistan's ISI is "very responsive" to civilian authority.

The international community and media appear to have accepted India's allegations of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai bombings, via an ISI proxy terror group. Yet no-one is mentioning India's atrocious record of widespread torture or the questionable nature of confessions gained by such methods.

The Washington Post's editorial today leads:

WITH EACH passing day, suspicions of a Pakistani link to the slaughter of 174 people, including six Americans, in Mumbai grow stronger -- and more plausible. A captured terrorist has reportedly confessed to Indian officials that he received training in Pakistan from Lashkar-i-Taiba, a guerrilla organization that was nurtured by Pakistani military intelligence to fight India in the disputed Kashmir region.

But really, that confession by one captured terrorist is the only evidence thus far advanced, and (until late Tuesday) everything we know about it has been leaked by unofficial officials rather than with the full backing of the Indian government.

We only have this detainee's alleged word that all the attackers were from Pakistan, that there were only ten of them, that the attacks were funded with Saudi money, that they trained at an LeK camp inside Pakistan, that they hijacked a single Indian vessel to transport then to Mumbai or that they had hoped to kill 5,000 rather than the 200 or so they did murder. All of this relies on the confession of one man, presumably not one of the attacks leaders because that possibility hasn't been mentioned at all and certainly would have been if it were there. The leaked details of his confession have then been amplified and added to by rumor and speculation, particularly by the understandably angry Indian press.

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Yesterday, Paul Sheehan of the conservative Sydney Morning Herald had a piece focussing onIsraeli hardliners in perpetual launch mode -

Last week I met the Boogie Man, the former head of the Israeli Defence Forces, General Moshe "Boogie" Ya'alon, who is preparing the political groundwork for a military attack on Iran's key nuclear facilities. "We have to confront the Iranian revolution immediately," he told me. "There is no way to stabilise the Middle East today without defeating the Iranian regime. The Iranian nuclear program must be stopped."

Defeating the theocratic regime in Tehran could be economic or political or, as a last resort, military, he said. "All tools, all options, should be considered." He was speaking in the tranquility of the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem, where he was, until last Thursday, one of Israel's plethora of warrior-scholars, though more influential than most.

Could "all options" include decapitating the Iranian leadership by military strikes, including on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel's destruction? "We have to consider killing him," Ya'alon replied. "All options must be considered."

Ya'alon is currently running as a Likud MP. Sheehan also spoke to other like-minded Israeli rightwingers, all ready to say that Israel must attack Iran and was preparing to do so.

But then again, yesterday TIME magazine's Tim McGurk wrote that an attack isn't on the cards .

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The IAEA has produced its latest report on Iran and there are few surprises therein, certainly no "smoking gun".

"To date, the results of the environmental samples taken at FEP and PFEP2, and the operating records for FEP3, indicate that the plants have been operating as declared (i.e. less than 5.0% U-235 enrichment). Since March 2007, twenty unannounced inspections have been conducted at FEP"...."The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran."

Most importantly, the IAEA guarantees that all known activities are under Agency seal and surveillance, and cannot be used to produce a weapon without Agency knowledge.

That doesn't stop the New York Times publishing a wonderful bit of hyperventilation involving (as is usual) the fine journalism of David "Judy Miller In Drag" Sanger and Bill Broad.

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

The figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the country’s main nuclear plant at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium

But the really important part, underplayed by that lede and the headline "Iran Said to Have Nuclear Fuel for One Weapon", is that there's no sign of a "breakout"- kicking out the inspectors, breaking seals and switching of cameras - which would be a dead giveaway. It would take months thereafter (about half the time it took to enrich the stuff to LEU) to enrich that LEU to weapons grade, and that's to say nothing of actually building a bomb with it afterwards. A minimum timeframe is in the order of a year and a half, in which the West could decide what to do next.

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Periodically over the last year and a half, the Bush administration and the US military have promised to provide proof of Iranian meddling in Iraq in the form of Iranian-provided weaponry in the hands of terrorists insurgents special groups criminals. Their first effort to do so, the infamous Baghdad Briefing, fell flat on its face when even Bob Gates and then Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Pace admitted that the incredibly weak evidence it presented proved nothing of the sort. Since then, various promised "smoking gun" briefings have been announced, postponed and then cancelled. Even the previously stenographic mainstream press finally noticed there was a lot of smoke and no fire.

That seems to be because, according to a task force of investigators advising the US military in Iraq - known as Task Force Troy - the narrative of Iranian weapons flooding across the border is only hype after all. Gareth Porter writes:

According to the data compiled by the task force, and made available to an academic research project last July, only 70 weapons believed to have been manufactured in Iran had been found in post-invasion weapons caches between mid-February and the second week in April. And those weapons represented only 17 percent of the weapons found in caches that had any Iranian weapons in them during that period.

The actual proportion of Iranian-made weapons to total weapons found, however, was significantly lower than that, because the task force was finding many more weapons caches in Shi'a areas that did not have any Iranian weapons in them.

The task force database identified 98 caches over the five-month period with at least one Iranian weapon, excluding caches believed to have been hidden prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion.

But according to an e-mail from the MNFI press desk this week, the task force found and analysed a total of roughly 4,600 weapons caches during that same period.

The caches that included Iranian weapons thus represented just 2 percent of all caches found. That means Iranian-made weapons were a fraction of one percent of the total weapons found in Shi'a militia caches during that period.

The extremely small proportion of Iranian arms in Shi'a militia weapons caches further suggests that Shi'a militia fighters in Iraq had been getting weapons from local and international arms markets rather than from an official Iranian-sponsored smuggling network.

Left out of the list of Iranian-made weaponry were 350 armour-piercing explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) found in Iraqi weapons caches. Despite the lurid claims of US officials, the task group couldn't ascribe an Iranian origin to a single one. Which along with press reports about finding EFP manufactories inside Iraq explains why, since mid-Summer, we've heard nothing about Iranian-made EFPs whereas before official reports and statements were full of them.

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On Wednesday, Iran announced it had tested what it said was a new missile. But Iran has a history of exaggerating its accomplishments in weapons development, variously claiming stealth aircraft that aren't and missiles that don't exist. Western experts reckon there was actually nothing new this time either - and in fact there may not even have been a "this time":

Andrew Brookes of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said: "I think the Iranians just keeping on rejigging the same missile and putting a new logo on it. It's basically the Shahab 3 with a different name, and the purpose of the test firing is to tell the world, 'don't forget us', we have missiles that can reach 2,000 kilometres."

"However, the launching of these missiles is not that meaningful because the Iranians have not developed an advanced minituarised warhead to fit into the front end, unless they are getting help from North Korea or Russia, and Moscow says it is not supporting Iran's missile programme.

... Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane's Strategic Weapons, said:.. "What is not clear is whether the test firing took place today or whether it's a photograph taken out of the archives but from the pictures it looks like a two-stage missile with a range of 1,900-2,000 kilometres."

And Dr. Jeffrey Lewis also notes that there's even scepticism over whether this rebranded missile, by either name, is actually solid fuelled - which makes a vast difference to its military usefulness as liquid fuelled missiles need a long time sitting on their launchers while they're filled with fuel (which can easily explode anyway) during which time they are sitting ducks for airstrikes.

Even such a missile is capable of hitting Tel Aviv, however - and the Israelis are supremely confident they could shoot it down before it did. It cannot reach Rome, Athens or Prague from Iran, and as such doesn't constitute any kind of threat to Europe. (Although it could reach Tbilisi, Georgia - but then again, so could earlier, far less sophisticated Iranian missiles, it's only 500 or so miles.) Even if Iran had missiles that could target Europe - and ever has warheads worth doing that with - as Dr. Lewis has previously noted, the Aegis cruiser platform would be a better alternative to the multi-billion boondoggle the Bush administration has proposed in Eastern Europe, both more effective and more sensitive to Russian concerns.

So what's going on? Well, Spencer Ackerman recently spoke to a bunch of Pentagon officials and military experts for a piece in the Washington Independent about Obama's relationship with the military and its supporters. Their unanimous advice was: "Consult, don’t steamroll — and don’t capitulate." and to make it clear there's only one Commander in Chief. In an adjunct piece at his FDL home, Spencer directly tackles the military budget and attitudes to "big ticket" procurement:

One of my sources for the piece is a Pentagon official who requested anonymity. He made a really interesting point that, alas, had to fall out of the piece. Despite the unsustainability of half-trillion-dollar military budgets during this period of dire financial hardship, the services will cling to their favorite big-ticket programs with an icy death-grip. If Obama's really going to make painful cuts to unnecessary defense programs, he's got to go all-out, making it clear that he's in charge and the cuts are happening no matter what. If he doesn't do that, he's going to get rolled throughout his presidency.

And he specifically links that to missile defense and Gen. Oberling, who told the AP:

The Air Force general who runs the Pentagon's missile defense projects said Wednesday that American interests would be "severely hurt" if President-elect Obama decided to halt plans developed by the Bush administration to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe.

Oberling is due to retire in a couple of weeks. Does anyone doubt that his next job will be for either one of the contractors who stand to gain big-time from the ABM program or one of the neocon think tanks who have pushed it so hard as part of their "New American Century" plans? Those think tanks - themselves heavily funded by the very same arms manufacturers - have made explicit that missile defense should eventually include space-based weapons and be aimed at Russia too (thus Russia's consternation at the current plans) and intend a January push to sway the Obama administration and public opinion in an attempt to prevent Obama cancelling the program, as he has previously indicated he might.

These vested interests intend trying to steamroller Obama from word one, and Oberling is willing to bend the truth all out of shape in their service. He's pushing, as one ex-military writer puts it, "a ballistic missile defense system that doesn't work to defend it from ballistic missiles that don't work either." And the Cheneyites of the Right are willing to start Cold War II to get it, and the money for their arms-making allies that it represents.

However, Obama has said he'll cancel the program if it doesn't work as advertised - and the interceptors to be used at the European sites haven't even been tested yet. European leaders, too, are beginning to sound sceptical notes:
>

France's U.S.-friendly president sent a clear message Friday to the next American administration: Plans for a U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe are misguided, and won't make the continent a safer place.

... "Deployment of a missile defense system would bring nothing to security ... it would complicate things, and would make them move backward," Sarkozy said at a news conference with Medvedev. Medvedev smiled and pointed his finger at Sarkozy in approval.

...Sarkozy said he was worried about Russia's threat to deploy short-range Iskander missiles near Poland in response to the U.S. move.

"We could continue between Europe and Russia to threaten each other with shields, with missiles, with navies," he said. "It would do Russia no good, Georgia no good and Europe no good."

Sarkozy said he would discuss the missile issue with NATO counterparts at a summit early next year and proposed a pan-European security conference after that, to include Russia. Medvedev welcomed the idea.

All the more remarkable because:

1) Sarko wasn't just speaking for France - he was meeting with Medvedev as part of an EU-Russia summit and France currently holds the EU presidency.

2) His remarks came just days after the US missile defense supremo said that US interests would be "severely hurt" if the program was cancelled. Obviously, Sarkozy doesn't think that French or European interests would be likewise negatively affected.

Previously posted in a different form at Newshoggers

Add Mohammed el-Baradei to the list of those welcoming Obama's statements that he'd talk to Iran.

"If there is a direct dialogue between the United States and Iran, I think Iran will be more forthcoming with the agency," IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said.

"(A) political opening will also convince Iran to work with us to solve remaining technical issues," he told a news conference in Prague after meeting Czech Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

"That political component of the (Iran) issue requires in my view a direct dialogue with Iran and that's why I am very encouraged by President-elect Obama's statement that he is ready to engage Iran in a direct dialogue without preconditions.

El-Baradei, who was one of those that said plainly that Iraq had no extant WMD and was thanked for being right by a Bush administration push to replace him, also underlined that, to date, there is no proof Iran is seeking nuclear weapons either.

We are able to verify all their declared activities, we are able to verify their enrichment programme, which is a good thing. But we are still not able to move forward on clarifying some of the outstanding issues related to alleged studies that could have some linkage to a possible military dimension."

Iran says its nuclear plans are to make electricity so it can export more oil and gas.

"There is a lot of concern about Iran, not today but about Iran in future... whether once they develop the technology, what are they going to use it for, whether they will go for nuclear weapons," said ElBaradei.

"That is the concern shared by the Security Council." [Emphaisis Mine - C]

There's a lot in that snippet to unpack.

First of all, there's the unequivocal statement that everything the IAEA has so far checked has come up clean - a civilian program only and one that cannot now be re-directed to military uses without IAEA foreknowledge...

That warning period would be at least six months and possibly a whole year long, so why is anyone still talking about keeping military options on the table? Saber rattling is counter-productive in such a circumstance - there's plenty of time to put talk of such options back in process if Iran ever makes a move to re-enrich to bomb-grade but for now there is no such program.

Secondly - the "alleged" studies el-Baradei refers to are all from 2003 and earlier, from a time when US intelligence says Iran did have a nuke program, in a very early stage, which has since been shut down. Notice all those conditionals?

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