Iranian Alert -- January 7, 2004 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD --Americans for Regime Change in Iran

I just received this from a student in Iran about the story above...

"Regarding the renaming of a street in city of Tehran to restore ties with Egypt, I would like to mention that here in Tehran most streets have names of famous terrorists.

Like Boby Sands ( IRA member died due to hunger strike ), Ahmad Qasir ( Palestinian, who was responsible for bombings), Navab Safavi ( Iranian mullah, trained by Gamal Abdul-Naser thugs in Egypt, killed Iran's Premier in early 60's ).

Before 1979, All streets of Tehran had well-known and nice names, like Eisenhower Ave, Churchil St, Elizabeth Blvd, Persepolis St ( US embassy is located there ), Cyrus the great Ave, Roosevelt St, Shah Ave, Edward Brown St, Los Angeles St and so on....

So should they change all these terrorists names in favor of Iranian people? Or will these mad men let us change them forever? "

I also just received this from inside of Iran...

"The Iranian govt announced that, Islamic Republic government will grant money to workers and governmental staff and increase salaries of retired staff, labors, teachers, armed forces personnel and so on.

This is to buy the people's vote in the upcoming election."

Beware the Soft-line Ideologues

January 07, 2004
Wall Street Journal
Richard Perle

Under the leadership of President George W. Bush, two approaches to American foreign and security policy have emerged. One approach is founded on vigorous, decisive action, including a readiness to use military power, against the terrorist enemy. Its exponents are the hard-liners. You know the names: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, and so on.

The other approach holds that diplomacy and international organizations like the U.N. are the key to defeating terrorism. Supporting this camp of soft-liners are: the professionals at the State Department championed by Secretary Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage; some veterans of the first Bush administration, like former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft; and some current and former intelligence and military officials.

There is nothing unusual about divisions of this sort among the president's advisers. And President Bush has made shrewd and discriminating use of the advice he has received. What is unusual is that while the hard-liners have won most policy battles since 9/11, the soft-liners have won nearly complete control of the way those battles are reported. Pick up almost any newspaper account of the war on terror -- such as the worshipful profile of State Department adviser retired Gen. Anthony Zinni in the Dec. 22 Washington Post -- and you'll learn that the hard-liners are "ideologues," bent on democratizing the Middle East through war, heedless of the dangers in their way. The soft-liners are "moderates," "pragmatists," "realists," whose hesitations, fears, and resentments are represented as subtle, nuanced foreign-policy wisdom.

* * *

Yet the truth is the opposite. It is the soft-liners who are driven by ideology, who ignore or deny inconvenient facts and advocate unworkable solutions. It is the hard-liners who are the realists, the pragmatists.

The soft-liners place their trust in institutions and tactics that have consistently failed in the past; it is the hard-liners who have learned from experience. In their devotion to the U.N., their belief in the efficacy of international law, and their nostalgia for the alliances of the Cold War (and Gulf War I), the soft-liners cling to exploded illusions about the way the world should work. They protect themselves from facts with pretenses, insisting for example that negotiated successes -- such as the apparent willingness of Libya to come to terms with the U.S. -- are achieved by coaxing and cajoling, not toughness and credibility.

Three recent examples prove the point.

- Mr. Powell's New Year's call for "dialogue" with Iran. Suppose you were a landlord with a tenant who repeatedly broke his promises to pay his overdue rent. After being stiffed again and again, you show up at his door with an eviction notice. He swears he will pay in full next Tuesday. Would it be "realistic" to believe him?

Soft-liners tend to think that so long as we are talking with other countries, we are accomplishing something -- even if everything they say to us is an obvious lie. In 2003, dissidents smuggled out proof that Iran had systematically deceived the International Atomic Energy Agency about its nuclear program. The Iranians replied with more lies -- until those too were exposed by later inspection missions.

Over the last year, the rulers of Iran have confirmed that they are indeed sheltering members of Osama bin Laden's family and the senior leadership of al Qaeda. They continue to sponsor Hezbollah terror. In the summer of 2003, the mullahs unleashed brutal repression against activists calling for democracy.

Since the election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997, Western diplomats have again and again hailed the imminence of "reform" in Iran -- and called for negotiations and Western concessions to hasten those reforms along. Again and again, the Iranian regime has revealed its true character. Mr. Powell's Dec. 30 announcement of a "new attitude" in Iran that opens the way to a dialogue is only the latest episode of this embarrassing story.

Aren't the real "ideologues" the people who refuse to let hard facts and adverse experience alter their thinking or change their behavior?

- Tyranny and democracy. Hard-liners are constantly accused of seeking to impose democracy by force out of blind ideological zeal. Against this, the soft-liners congratulate themselves on their prudent emphasis on continuity and stability. But by now it should be clear that there is no form of government less stable than autocracy. On Christmas Day, two suicide car-bombers crashed into the motorcade of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The blast killed 16 people. Suppose Pakistan's president had been one of those killed? Where would we be then? The U.S.-Pakistani alliance depends on the actuarial chances of one brave man -- how is it prudent to rely on those?

Hard-liners are not bent on imposing democracy on anybody. But it is realistic to notice the connection between Middle Eastern tyranny and Middle Eastern terrorism; and it is realistic too to understand that it is sometimes true that societies that yearn for freedom are denied it by force -- as Iraq was by Saddam's force. The U.S. may not be able to lead countries through the door to democracy; but where that door is locked shut by a totalitarian deadbolt, American power may be the only way to open it up.

- The demise of the "road map." In March 2003, the Bush administration presented Israel and the Palestinian Authority with a "road map" to peace. The idea was that Israel and the Palestinian leadership would each take immediate steps to reduce tensions, with an eye to an agreement in principle on a Palestinian state by December 2003 and a final settlement in 2005.

Not one milestone on the road map has yet been traversed. The very first item listed on the text is this: "Palestinian leadership issues unequivocal statement reiterating Israel's right to exist in peace and security and calling for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere. All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel." Well, that has not happened. Nor have the Arab states cut off funds to anti-Israel terror groups. Nor have there been free elections in areas of Palestinian jurisdiction. Nor have . . . well, you get the idea.

Three successive U.S. administrations have sought to broker a peace. All three have made the same assumption: that the Palestinian leadership had abandoned its hope of destroying Israel and was ready to make peace. The job now was simply to negotiate the terms. It is now clear that this assumption was false. The Palestinian leadership's minimum demands, as articulated most recently in last month's Geneva Accord, include control of the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem and an undefined but ominous "right of return" for the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the refugees of 1948. No Israeli government could accept these terms.

When William James and Charles Pierce coined the term "pragmatism" 150 years ago, they meant something more than mere "practicality." James and Pierce were making a point about the nature of "truth." Truth, they argued, isn't some transcendent thing that exists beyond human experience. Truth is found right here on earth. If belief in an idea leads to positive results, then the idea is true; if belief in an idea leads to negative results, then it is false.

The belief that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian leadership will ever sign an agreement that permits Israel to live in peace and security has been tested over the years. The test has ended in the catastrophe of Arafat's terror war. Yet America's professional diplomats, especially those we hire to be knowledgeable about the Middle East, continue to cling to this belief despite its proven and total and repeated failure. If this is "pragmatism," what do the ideologues believe?

U.S. foreign policy will always be debated from different points of view. That is as it should be. But is it too much to ask for a little truth-in-labeling? We'd recommend that the next time a journalist sits down to report a foreign policy story from Washington, he try it this way: "Washington remains divided between two major factions: the pragmatic, neoconservatives and their opposite numbers, the soft-line ideologues." Of course, this story line too is an over-simplification. But at least it is not an outright rejection of reality.

Messrs. Frum and Perle are resident fellows at the American Enterprise Institute and co-authors of "An End To Evil: How to Win the War on Terror," just published by Random House.

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/1034

Beware the Soft-line Ideologues

January 07, 2004
Wall Street Journal
Richard Perle

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1053126/posts?page=43#43

The Neocon Cabal and Other Fantasies

January 07, 2004
International Herald Tribune
David Brooks

Do you ever get the sense the whole world is becoming unhinged from reality? I started feeling that way awhile ago, when I was still working for The Weekly Standard and all these articles began appearing about how Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Bill Kristol and a bunch of "neoconservatives" at the magazine had taken over U.S. foreign policy.

Theories about the tightly knit neocon cabal came in waves. One day you read that neocons were pushing plans to finish off Iraq and move into Syria. Web sites appeared detailing neocon conspiracies; my favorite described a neocon outing organized by Dick Cheney to hunt for humans. The Asian press had the most lurid stories; the European press the most thorough. Every day, it seemed, Le Monde or some deep-thinking German paper would have an exposé on the neocon cabal, complete with charts connecting all the conspirators.

The full-mooners fixated on a think tank called the Project for the New American Century, which has a staff of five and issues memos on foreign policy. To hear these people describe it, PNAC is sort of a Yiddish Trilateral Commission, the nexus of the sprawling neocon tentacles.

We'd sit around the magazine guffawing at the ludicrous stories that kept sprouting, but belief in shadowy neocon influence has now hardened into common knowledge. Wesley Clark, among others, cannot go a week without bringing it up.

In truth, the people labeled neocons (con is short for "conservative" and neo is short for "Jewish") travel in widely different circles and don't actually have much contact with one another. The ones outside government have almost no contact with President Bush. There have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office. If he's shaping their decisions, he must be microwaving his ideas into their fillings.

It's true that both Bush and the people labeled neocons agree that Saddam Hussein represented a unique threat to world peace. But correlation does not mean causation. All evidence suggests that Bush formed his conclusions independently. Besides, if he wanted to follow the neocon line, Bush wouldn't know where to turn because while the neocons agree on Saddam, they disagree vituperatively on just about everything else. (If you ever read a sentence that starts with "Neocons believe," there is a 99.44 percent chance everything else in that sentence will be untrue.)

Still, there are apparently millions of people who cling to the notion that the world is controlled by well-organized and malevolent forces. And for a subset of these people, Jews are a handy explanation for everything.

There's something else going on, too. The proliferation of media outlets and the segmentation of society have meant that it's much easier for people to hive themselves off into like-minded cliques. Some people live in towns where nobody likes President Bush. Others listen to radio networks where nobody likes Bill Clinton.

In these communities, half-truths get circulated and exaggerated. Dark accusations are believed because it is delicious to believe them. Vince Foster was murdered. The Saudis warned the Bush administration before Sept. 11.

You get to choose your own reality. You get to believe what makes you feel good. You can ignore inconvenient facts so rigorously that your picture of the world is one big distortion.

And if you can give your foes a collective name — liberals, fundamentalists or neocons — you can rob them of their individual humanity. All inhibitions are removed. You can say anything about them. You get to feed off their villainy and luxuriate in your own contrasting virtue. You will find books, blowhards and candidates playing to your delusions, and you can emigrate to your own version of Planet Chomsky. You can live there unburdened by ambiguity.

Improvements in information technology have not made public debate more realistic. On the contrary, anti-Semitism is resurgent. Conspiracy theories are prevalent. Partisanship has left many people unhinged.

Welcome to election year, 2004.

http://www.iht.com/ihtsearch.php?id=123888&owner=(NYT)&date=20040106184103

The Neocon Cabal and Other Fantasies

January 07, 2004
International Herald Tribune
David Brooks

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1053126/posts?page=45#45

Rafsanjani Says No Hurry for Establishing Ties with U.S.

January 07, 2004
Saudi Press Agency
SPA

Tehran -- Akbar Hashemi Rafsani, the Head of the Expediency Council in Iran, said the proposal of Washington that a high-ranking American delegation would visit Iran had provided a clear evidence for the keenness of Washington on maintaining relations with Iran.

Speaking on the occasion of the end of a Holy Quran contest here on Wednesday, Rafsanjani said 'we should not be in hurry for establishing relations with Washington' and added 'it is high time for Washington to declare that it was mistaken in the way it had reacted towards the Islamic revolution in Iran'.

http://www.spa.gov.sa/html/archive_e.asp?srcfile=605939&NDay=07/01/2004&wcatg=0

Flawed Charter for a Land Ruled by Fear

January 07, 2004
International Herald Tribune
John Sifton

KABUL -- Anew Afghan Constitution was finally approved in Kabul on Sunday by delegates at a special constitutional loya jirga, or grand council. United Nations, U.S. and Afghan government officials quickly hailed the agreement as an historic milestone - an inspiring story of Afghans overcoming years of political chaos and war to charter a new government.

There is cause for celebration. That Afghanistan's political dynamics are being settled with words, instead of guns, is a welcome contrast with the country's recent past. The charter's prohibition against sexual discrimination is a victory for Afghan women, so recently oppressed by the Taliban.

Behind these achievements, however, lies a sordid tale about the process itself, involving vote-buying, death threats and naked power politics. A deeper view of the Constitution itself reveals a litany of missed opportunities and poorly crafted compromises. In short, the process was ugly - easily worthy of Bismarck's adage about politics being similar to sausage-making.

The first problem was the matter of representation at the convention. Many Afghans are asking who the delegates were who approved this new Constitution.

Well, let's put it this way: They weren't Afghanistan's finest. In fact, some are alleged war criminals. During the elections for the loya jirga convention, Human Rights Watch documented numerous cases of local military or intelligence commanders intimidating candidates and purchasing votes. In Kabul, guarded by international security forces, intelligence and military officials were openly mingling with candidates at an election site. Many candidates complained of an atmosphere of fear and corruption.

In areas outside of Kabul, many independent candidates were too afraid to even run. In a few cases, factional leaders themselves were elected - despite rules barring government officials from serving as delegates. The majority of the 502 delegates to the loya jirga were members of voting blocs controlled by military faction leaders, or warlords. Some good people were elected, but they were outnumbered - and scared.

The second problem was the convention itself. Despite a strong showing by regional warlords, some of them bent on disrupting the process, the loya jirga that began more than three weeks ago was very much a scripted affair. President Hamid Karzai issued a draft Constitution a few months ago, and as the loya jirga got under way in December many delegates discovered that the meeting seemed to be no more than a ceremony to push though approval for that draft. Many delegates complained that both the warlords and Karzai's allies were sweet-talking, intimidating and even bribing delegates. The situation angered not only the few legitimate representatives, who had come to discuss issues in earnest, but several military factions as well.

In the end, most of the convention was wasted on debates between Karzai's people and the warlord factions, who were demanding various concessions, most of them to benefit their narrow interests. Many important provisions were not effectively debated.

The third and final problem was the Constitution itself. The charter accepted on Sunday contains the fundamentals for a future governmental system, but is a disappointingly tepid document. Despite Afghanistan's recent history of mass atrocities, the charter does not directly address issues of Afghanistan's past. There are several provisions enunciating basic political, civil, economic and social rights, but little strong language creating institutions to uphold them.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, created by the December 2001 agreement, is given a mandate, but lacks many of the powers necessary for it to credibly protect basic rights. The role of Islamic law, and its relationship to human rights protections, is not adequately addressed - a worrying situation given that certain factions in Kabul will try to use their power in coming years to implement conservative interpretations of Islam that may violate human rights standards.

It didn't have to be this way. For much of the last two years, the United States and its coalition allies have allowed Afghanistan's countryside to be dominated by the warlords, originally armed and financed by the United States to fight the Taliban. U.S. officials have attempted to blunt this situation's worst effects by throwing their support behind President Karzai and a small team of competent and Western-educated officials in Kabul, known in Afghanistan as "the technocrats."

A better solution would be for the United States and its international partners in Afghanistan to try harder to create real political pluralism and strengthen legitimate representation throughout the country. Such efforts are especially important given that elections are taking place this year. As things currently stand, most independent political organizers are too afraid to organize; the general atmosphere of fear prevents even journalists in most areas from writing openly about Afghanistan's problems.

If the United States really cares about creating democracy in Afghanistan, it should work harder to expand international security forces - not just a few small military teams as has been implemented - and ask the United Nations to expand its human rights monitoring and protection officers, who are usually the best situated to provide protection for vulnerable persons and groups.

It's too early to be sanguine: Afghanistan is not out of the woods yet.

The writer is Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch.

http://www.iht.com/ihtsearch.php?id=123899&owner=(IHT)&date=20040106184103

and ask the United Nations to expand its human rights monitoring and protection officers, who are usually the best situated to provide protection for vulnerable persons and groups.

The UN musn't think the situation is too dire, otherwise wouldn't they willingly have increased their monitoring and protection presence in Afghanistan? Why does the US have to ask the UN to do it's job?

Quake Victims Blame Islamic Regime for Devastation

January 07, 2004
CBN News
Dale Hurd

The international response to the recent devastating earthquake in Iran is winding down. But the political fallout inside Iran continues. The quake is having a small seismic impact on Iran's already volatile political scene.

When Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatholla Khamenei, visited Bam, he was reportedly there for no more than an hour, and surrounded by rings of bodyguards. According to a report in National Review magazine, that did not protect the nation's spiritual leader from being heckled by angry victims, who accused the islamic regime of knowing about the seismic danger and not warning the people.

By contrast, American aid workers were reportedly mobbed by adoring crowds at the airport, who begged them to stay in Iran. It is another piece of evidence to support claims that Iran's people are more supportive of America than their own leaders.

National Review says the Iranian National Seismological Center had provided the regime with data showing that Bam was due for a quake and should have been evacuated. But the Mullahs reportedly believed the 12th Imam, who is "invisible," would protect the city.

Residents are also angry that the nation's hardline leaders will not accept earthquake aid from Israel. Israel offered, even though some Iranian leaders have threatened to nuke the Jewish state.

The Supreme National Security Council is now considering moving the capital from Tehran to the ancient capital of Isfahan. Tehran is on a major seismological fault, and has a population of more than 12 million people. About 100,000 Iranians have been killed in 11 earthquakes during the past 50 years. One seismologist said the only seismologically safe places in Iran are in the uninhabitable central desert.

http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews/News/040107d.asp

"ask the United Nations to expand its human rights monitoring and protection officers, who are usually the best situated to provide protection for vulnerable persons and groups."

Provide protection?? By the UN? That's laughable.

Good One

Mr. Perle has this exactly right............

"It is the hard-liners who are the realists, the pragmatists."

"The soft-liners place their trust in institutions and tactics that have consistently failed in the past; it is the hard-liners who have learned from experience."..the soft-liners cling to exploded illusions about the way the world should work. They protect themselves from facts with pretenses, insisting for example that negotiated successes -- such as the apparent willingness of Libya to come to terms with the U.S. -- are achieved by coaxing and cajoling, not toughness and credibility."

- "Mr. Powell's New Year's call for "dialogue" with Iran. Suppose you were a landlord with a tenant who repeatedly broke his promises to pay his overdue rent. After being stiffed again and again, you show up at his door with an eviction notice. He swears he will pay in full next Tuesday. Would it be "realistic" to believe him?

Soft-liners tend to think that so long as we are talking with other countries, we are accomplishing something -- even if everything they say to us is an obvious lie. In 2003, dissidents smuggled out proof that Iran had systematically deceived the International Atomic Energy Agency about its nuclear program. The Iranians replied with more lies -- until those too were exposed by later inspection missions.

"Over the last year, the rulers of Iran have confirmed that they are indeed sheltering members of Osama bin Laden's family and the senior leadership of al Qaeda. They continue to sponsor Hezbollah terror. In the summer of 2003, the mullahs unleashed brutal repression against activists calling for democracy."

Anouncement: "Forbidden Iran" -- Must Viewing -- DoctorZin

Public Broadcasting Service - Frontline Edition
Jan 8, 2004

3) Links & Resources:

• General Background
•
•
•
• Media Resources } Iranian Alert - Iran Live Thread -- Free Republic.com
• Weblogs

: )

I'm sure they just forgot ..........

Here is a story of one woman's courage in reporting the reign of terror of the maggot mullahs.

This Islamovigilantism is so ChiCom-electric-baton-against-Falun-Gong-women.

Will Canada come out of its opiate stupor over the beating death of its journalist?

[Pipes reports Neo-Nazi feted at Toronto Islamist confab by top Canadian officials.]

Will Powell get out of his tutu and quit doing the diplofairy minuet with these gestapo schmucks?

Regime change required--not "dialogue".

"Dialogue" got NK it's nukes.

Again Powell bows and curtseys to the mullahs, praising their new attitude.

Again the administration puts old wine in new bottles, announcing Road Map--but now with a strong bass note of camel dung.

Rose-colored glasses to the contrary notwithstanding, Iran is ruled by a heartless gestapo--sharing a strong kinship to the Pallies.

No more Chamberlains with chamber pots on their heads--tyrants will be moved by the aggressive use of force--not diplofairy minuets.

Will Powell get out of his tutu and quit doing the diplofairy minuet with these gestapo schmucks?

Question of the day.

Iran Could Emerge as a Training Ground for al Qaeda Terrorists

January 07, 2004
The Associated Press
CBS 2 Chicago

SINGAPORE -- Al Qaeda is expected to launch attacks every three months in 2004, with growing threats from a number of smaller terrorist organizations, an international terrorist expert warned Wednesday.

"As the memory of 9/11 recedes, the West is likely to witness another mass casualty attack on Western soil," Rohan Gunaratna told a Southeast Asian outlook forum in Singapore.

Before Sept. 11, the network launched an attack every two years, but since then, there has been one al Qaeda-linked attack every three months, he said.

Singapore-based Gunaratna, the author of "Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror," said that the bulk of the attacks will come from groups trained and financed by Osama bin Laden and not the network itself.

"The threat of terrorism and its associated groups will persist throughout 2004," he said in his paper.

Gunaratna said that maritime targets were vulnerable to attack but added that "almost all the attacks will be suicide vehicle bombings, an al Qaeda hallmark."

If left unchecked, Gunaratna said Iran, part of President Bush's axis of evil, could emerge as a training ground for al Qaeda terrorists.

He said groups that remained a threat include Al Ansar Al Islami in Iraq, Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia, Al Ansar Mujahidin in Chechnya, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Salafi Group for Call and Combat in Algeria.

"Small, disparate organizations mounting operations are in many ways Osama bin Laden's greatest achievement," said Gunaratna.

In Southeast Asia, Gunaratna claims a fresh batch of Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists, an al Qaeda funded regional group, will graduate Jan. 15, 2004 from a camp in the southern Philippines.

The camp he said, is run by the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF, which is fighting for an independent Muslim homeland in Mindanao.

He did not elaborate on the number of "graduates" or where he gleaned his information from.

Sidney Jones, the Indonesian project director for the International Crisis Group — a Brussels-based international think tank — supported Gunaratna's assessment on the Philippines being a Jemaah Islamiyah training ground.

"There are several MILFs, all using the same name," Jones said, adding that these factions were not the same as the group now in peace negotiations with Manila.

Despite the arrest of Jemaah Islamiyah's alleged operations chief Hambali in Thailand last year, she said there were a number of key group operatives still at large, including Azahari Husin and Nordin Mohamed Top.

The two men are accused of planning the October 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/topstories_story_007094904.html