Crime boss brokered nuclear-delivery missile sale to Iran

The Sunday Times

Robert Winnett, Whitehall Correspondent

THE British government was warned more than two years ago that Iran had illegally acquired a missile system capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

It has emerged that a foreign government delivered the warning to Britain in early 2004.

Separately, it has been disclosed that the system was sold to Iran by a former senior member of the Ukrainian security service. The deal was brokered by an organised crime boss and, it is feared, contributed to the Iranian nuclear programme that is now the subject of an international confrontation.

Iran had also been using large cash payments to lure technical and scientific staff from Ukraine to work on its nuclear programme. Other targets of the bribes included one former head of Ukrainian intelligence, who was offered $5m (£2.6m) to help the rogue state, but he rejected it.

It has also emerged that in 2004 the Ukrainian government was investigating the transport of weapons from Iraq to Syria and Iran before the war to topple Saddam Hussein. Now that the row over Saddam’s weapons has died down, however, it is Iran’s nuclear programme that is the more controversial issue.

Britain’s policy of trying to use quiet diplomacy to curb the Iranian plans has been in stark contrast to the more bellicose rhetoric coming from America.

British ministers have never disclosed, however, that they were given warnings as long ago as 2004 that Iran had gone to the extent of covertly acquiring missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The latest escalation of the nuclear crisis came last week, when Iran missed a United Nations deadline to stop enrichment of uranium, after which President George Bush said, “There must be consequences”, adding that the world faced “a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran”.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, responded by calling the claim that his country aimed to develop nuclear weapons “a sheer lie”. Iran insists its nuclear programme is for electricity generation.

Britain is playing a central role in the standoff between the UN and Iran over its nuclear programme, both as a permanent member of the security council and as one of the three European Union negotiators.

The prospect of Iran developing nuclear weapons has alarmed the international community partly because of extreme statements by Ahmadinejad — such as his call for the destruction of the state of Israel — and partly because of the country’s funding of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. Iranian-made bombs and weapons have also been used against British troops in Iraq.

The International Atomic Energy Authority has been repeatedly thwarted in its attempts to establish the scope and purpose of the Iranian nuclear programme. An authority source said the extent of its investigations into Iranian attempts to acquire hardware for nuclear weapons was a “moot point”. He did confirm the agency was aware that Ukraine had been a “key player in the process”.

Last year, Ukrainian prosecutors announced they were investigating the illegal sale of at least 18 cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2001.

The Ukrainians were supposed to have destroyed or transferred to Russia their share of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal. The Americans funded a massive disarmament project, but considerable amounts of weaponry are thought to have disappeared in the interim period.

Ukraine also inherited hundreds of thousands of tons of conventional weapons from the Soviet Union, some of which have been decommissioned and some sold abroad, either legally or illegally.
Iran

UK SCHOOL FOR SUICIDE BOMBERS...

The Sunday Telegraph reports that UK Anti-terrorist police were last night searching a Muslim "faith" school at the centre of an investigation into terrorist training camps being run in Britain.
Officers were scouring the Jameah Islamiyah faith school, set in 54 acres of woodland near Tunbridge Wells, East Sussex, after arresting 14 men in London who are suspected of organising "suicide bomber" training camps. Security sources say that the investigation was linked to concerns that young, radicalised Muslim men were being trained to launch suicide attacks in "crowded areas" of the capital and possibly Manchester. Shopping centres and main-line railway stations are believed to have been possible targets.
THIS is what we are up against! Muslim "Faith" Schools, so beloved of NuLabour and the CONservatives, appear to be superbreeders for intolerance and Jihad and as such should be closed down. Instead, our gutless brainless politicians are queueing up to invest taxpayers money in increasing their number. How can we win the war against militant Islam when we actually fund it?
Posted by DV on September 03, 2006 at 10:09 AM from A Tangled Web
Terror

A usefull Idiot from California

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- A new videotape has surfaced featuring Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and an American member of al Qaeda wanted by the FBI, according to a counterterrorism expert.
The tape, called "Invitation to Islam," runs 48 minutes, expert Laura Mansfield said. Al-Zawahiri speaks for about 4 minutes on the tape, and the American narrates the rest.
Californian Adam Gadahn, wearing a white robe and turban, introduces the message by calling on Westerners to convert. (Watch Gadahn accuse President Bush of not caring about U.S. troops -- 5:42)
Gadahn says that even Americans working with President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are invited to embrace Islam, but they should hurry.

"We invite all Americans and believers to Islam, whatever their role and status in Bush and Blair's world order," Gadahn says. "Decide today, because today could be your last day."
CNN Story

Qaeda urges non-Muslims to convert to Islam: video
Sat Sep 2, 2006 1:49pm ET
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda called on non-Muslims especially in the United States to convert to Islam and abandon their 'misguided' ways or else suffer, according to a video tape posted on a Web site on Saturday.
The speaker was identified as Azzam the American, also known as Adam Yahiye Gadahn -- an Islamic convert from California wanted for questioning by the FBI and who U.S. authorities believe to be involved in an information campaign for al Qaeda.

"To Americans and the rest of Christendom we say, either repent (your) misguided ways and enter into the light of truth or keep your poison to yourself and suffer the consequences in this world and the next," Gadahn said in English.

He appeared in the video dressed in a white turban and seated in front of a computer and books.
Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawhari made a brief statement at the beginning of the tape -- dated September 2006 -- urging viewers to listen carefully to the message, entitled: "An Invitation to Islam".
Reuters
Al-Qaeda

What a Joke...

EU gives Iran two more weeks in nuclear standoff
Sat. 02 Sep 2006
Reuters: The European Union agreed on Saturday to try to clarify Iran's stance on halting uranium enrichment within two weeks and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan held talks in Tehran to try and settle the standoff.

I guess 3 years of talk by the EU3 and a voted on deadline already exceded in the UN hasn't been log enough
Iran

Question for any and all

Last Night news came out of England that 14 people were arrested on terrorist charges NOT part of the airline plot, something new. Has anyone found any info on it yet please leave a link in the comment section...

Tell me again why we are part of the UN

Annan: Sanctions will not solve Iran nuclear issue

By News Agencies and Haaretz Service

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan met on Saturday with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Tehran. Annan is expected to press Iran to help shore up the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, but diplomats say the talks will also cover Iran's nuclear standoff with the West.

Annan said in a newspaper interview before arriving that he hoped for a diplomatic solution that would "avoid another conflict in a region already subjected to a great stress at this moment."

Asked about indications that the United States wants to move to sanctions, he told the French daily Le Monde, "I do not believe that sanctions are the solution to all problems."


"There are moments when a bit of patience produces lots of effects. I think that is a quality we must exercise more often," he said in the interview, published Saturday.

So in Coffees mind we should just sit back and give the Iranians time!!!!!!!!! I wonder which Iranian Firm hired his son, oh wait that was the other terrorist supporting nation that sanctions were on. Oil for Food who was that the French, the Russians and the Chinese paying kickbacks and siphoning money off the top.

Look even if we put the harshest sanctions that we could think of it will not stop the Mad Mullahs from going Nuclear.

If the Democrats had not run a 3 year campaign of lies undermining the War and are still continuing with those lies just so they can regain power (which they will never have again) We would already be bombing the Nuclear sites in Iran. But what does a mushroom cloud over Manhatten or Tel Aviv mean as long as the Dems regain the house....

Required Reading...

Exonerating Bush, Point-By-Point
By: MICHAEL P. TREMOGLIE, Special To The Evening Bulletin
09/01/2006

Another smear campaign/conspiracy theory/myth about the Bush administration has been pretty much debunked. For three years now, Joe Wilson, Democrats, communists and the liberal media have been saying that Karl Rove should be indicted and imprisoned for revealing the name of a CIA operative in order to discredit Wilson.
Chris Mathews, one of the leading proponents of this conspiracy theory, acted as Rove's judge, jury and executioner. He insisted that Rove was the source. We now know this was not the case - and never was. It was a former State Department official who inadvertently disclosed the information
One by one, the conspiracy theories and allegations of lying, made by a coalition of liberals, communists, Democrats and Buchananites, have been discredited. The investigations, so desired by them, have exonerated President Bush.

Listed here are some of the more notable false accusations made against the Bush administration along with the names of notable proponents - in parentheses - and the facts.
These are:
False accusation #1: The 2000 election was stolen with the help of the Supreme Court. A corollary to this was that blacks were disenfranchised. (Congressional Black Caucus, Michael Moore, the World Socialist Web Site).
Truth: Independent audits by newspapers, antipathetic to Bush being president, revealed that he would have won the election if the recount continued. An investigation by the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights reported, "(The Commission) does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters." [1]

False accusation #2: Bush knew about 9-11 in advance and did nothing to prevent it because he wanted to invade Iraq (Howard Dean, Georgia Congresswomen Cynthia McKinney).
Truth: This one is so bizarre that - to quote Orwell, "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool."
This is merely a recycled conspiracy theory from World War II. Then, people claimed FDR knew about Pearl Harbor and did nothing because he wanted an excuse to enter World War II.

False accusation #3: The war was meant to distract from a bad economy (Democratic National Committee).
Truth: The economic boom - during which more blacks own houses than ever before, and there is less child poverty among blacks than ever before - is more a function of the Bush tax cuts and the housing market.

False accusation #4: Bush secretly conspired to whisk Saudis out of the country by authorizing them to fly in the days following 9-11 when no one else, "not even the FBI," could fly (Michael Moore, Vanity Fair).
Truth: The 9-11 commission and my own independent investigation have invalidated this. The day the Saudis flew was the day all commercial flights resumed.

False accusation #5: Bush and Cheney encouraged the CIA to exaggerate the intelligence about Iraq to win favor of war (Chris Matthews).
Truth: The Senate Select Intelligence Committee - and other sources - said that this was not the case. Only Senator Carl Levin, ironically, a hawk about Iraq during the Clinton years, is still trying to insist this is true.

False accusation #6: Bush lied when he claimed during his 2003 State of the Union address, " The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (Joe Wilson, Tom Daschle)
Truth: In 2004, the Financial Times reported that European intelligence units stated that Iraq was seeking uranium. An independent inquiry about this by a British commission confirmed that there was an attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger. The Senate Select Intelligence Committee confirmed that this was true as well.

False accusation #7: The Bush administration is in league with Enron and Halliburton and invaded Iraq to annex their oil reserves (Senator Ted Kennedy, Workers World Party, Revolutionary Communist Party).
Truth: It was well known that the former Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration, Paul Rubin, made the call to Paul O'Neill, the Bush administration Treasury Secretary, to do a favor for Enron when Enron was going bankrupt. It is the Bush administration that has been prosecuting Enron executives for crimes committed during the Clinton years.
The only people profiting from Iraqi oil were those who opposed the war. Hussein was paying the French, the Russians and others who opposed the war, bribes by funds from the U.N. Oil-for-Food program instead of paying for food and medicine for sick and starving Iraqi kids.

False accusation #8: The Iraq war was a personal vendetta by George W. Bush because of Saddam Hussein's attempt to assassinate his father in 1993 (LA Times Robert Scheer).
Truth: Considering all the other reasons proffered, this is rather a non sequitur. However, even if true, would not another state's plot to assassinate the President of the United States be considered an act of war?

False accusation #9: Bush lied about a relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq (MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, Revolutionary Communist Party, Workers World Party, The New York Times, Democratic National Committee).
Truth: There have been reports of cooperation between the two in the media and by government for years. Knight-Ridder, ABC, Newsweek all previously reported this during the 1990's. Clinton's CIA Directors James Woolsey, John Deustch and George Tenet also said so. The 9-11 Commission also said there were contacts - stipulating they were not operational ones. Recently, in March of this year, former Democrat Senator and 9-11 Commissioner, Bob Kerry said recent captured documents indicate a much more collaborative relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq.
The DemocratVice Chair of the 9-11 Commission said that there was no discrepancy between what Cheney said and the Commission's preliminary report. There were reports that Iraq sent instructors to Afghanistan to teach al-Qaida terrorists. It is intrinsically a fallacy to claim Bush lied when years of evidence by various sources told him al-Qaida and Iraq were linked.

False accusation #10: The war is a plot by a cabal of Neocon imperialists to develop an American empire and protect Israel (Columnists Pat Buchanan and Georgie Anne Geyer, Atlanta Journal and Constitution).
Truth: This theory is another redux of a World War II conspiracy theory - the Jewish cabal-FDR theory.

False accusation #11: Bush's tax cuts and the war in Iraq caused funding to be cut for levee construction, and this caused the levees to break and the flooding of New Orleans (Clinton adviser Sydney Blumenthal, Will Bunch, Phila. Daily News).
The truth is, during a Sept. 1, 2005 interview with Lt General Strock, the Chief of Engineers, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Strock said, "Let me also address the issue of the general impact of the war in Iraq on civil works funding. We've seen some suggestions that our budget has been affected by the war. I can also say that I do not see that to be the case. If you look at the historical levels of funding for the Corps of Engineers from the pre-war levels back to 1992, '91, before we actually got into this, you'll see that the level of funding has been fairly stable throughout that period. So I think we would see that our funding levels would have dropped off if that were the case; so I do not see that as an issue that is relevant to the discussion of the flood protection of the City of New Orleans." During that same interview, Al Naomi, Senior Project Manager for the New Orleans District Corps of Engineers, said, " we would have had to start work on Category 5 protection 20 or 25 years ago to have had in place to effectuate any differences in what happened with this storm."

The propaganda machine of this coalition of liberals, communists, Democrats and Buchananite conservatives began manufacturing lies about the president since the 2000 election. They are every bit as sophisticated at disinformation as the KGB was during the Cold War.
All the investigations discredited these absurd allegations. Unfortunately, the debunking of the lies never got the media prominence the allegation did - with the exception of the Dan Rather episode.
It is rather sad that Democrats have chosen to use all the worse political tactics of their party has used throughout its long history rather than their best.
It was some Democrats, who later came to be known as "Copperheads," referring to the snake that strikes without warning, who tried to subvert President Lincoln's policies during the Civil War. These Northerners, who were sympathetic to the Southern slaveholders, were so egregious in their opposition to the Civil War that many actively gave support to the Confederacy - much like many of today's so-called " antiwar" protesters actively support the enemy, such as Lynne Stewart, who was convicted of aiding terrorists and Ramsey Clark, who is a counsel for Saddam Hussein.
There was a time in America when politics ended at the water's edge. There was a time in America when an American president could respond to his political opponents' vicious criticism without the media criticizing him for doing so.
Perhaps the greatest irony about the criticism of President Bush is that it implies Bush is committing treason, yet when Bush responds to his critics, they bray at being called unpatriotic by the President, even though he is doing no such thing.
President Bush's political enemies can legitimately criticize his policies for many reasons. The fact that they have to resort to lies, conspiracy theories and distortions leads one to believe that they are totally lacking any constructive and intelligent policies or inititatives.


Michael Tremoglie is the author of A Sense of Duty.
Bush

Krauthammer calls a spade a spade...

Hezbollah's 'Victory'
By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, September 1, 2006; Page A21

"We did not think, even 1 percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 . . . that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not."

-- Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah leader, Aug. 27

So much for the "strategic and historic victory" Nasrallah had claimed less than two weeks earlier. What real victor declares that, had he known, he would not have started the war that ended in triumph?
Nasrallah's admission, vastly underplayed in the West, makes clear what the Lebanese already knew. Hezbollah may have won the propaganda war, but on the ground it lost. Badly.
True, under the inept and indecisive leadership of Ehud Olmert, Israel did miss the opportunity to militarily destroy Hezbollah and make it a non-factor in Israel's security, Lebanon's politics and Iran's foreign policy. Nonetheless, Hezbollah was seriously hurt. It lost hundreds of its best fighters. A deeply entrenched infrastructure on Israel's border is in ruins. The great hero has had to go so deep into hiding that Nasrallah has been called "the underground mullah."
Most important, Hezbollah's political gains within Lebanon during the war have proved illusory. As the dust settles, the Lebanese are furious at Hezbollah for provoking a war that brought them nothing but devastation -- and then crowing about victory amid the ruins.

War
Hezbollah

Not ALL Democrats are Traitors....

What It Means to Protect the Nation
By Ed Koch
Why do so many Americans refuse to face the fact that our country is at war with international terrorism?
The leading terrorist group, al-Qaeda, is fighting us on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Iran and North Korea are threatening nuclear war. And yet many Americans, including some Congressional Democrats, denounce President Bush, and in so doing, weaken our country's ability to resist Islamic fascism. One Congressional Democrat, John Conyers of Michigan, announced his intention to impeach the President when Republicans lose control of both Houses of Congress.
There is something terribly wrong with people seeking to demean and weaken the president in war time, thereby strengthening our country's enemies. As a result of the language and tactics of those opposed to our presence in Iraq, our enemies have been emboldened, believing the American public to be sharply divided on the war, and in fact at war with itself. To other countries, Americans appear pitted against one another not in an election, but in a verbal bloodbath, convincing the world we are impotent -- a paper tiger.
The tyrannical forces in Iran led by its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, make clear that if they can destroy us, they will. Ahmadinejad has said about the U.S., "...Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?...you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved..." Ahmadinejad has also stated his goal of destroying the state of Israel several times, saying, "...Israel must be wiped off the map."
If a sovereign nation makes such threats, do those who are threatened have to wait until the missiles are in the air before taking action? Or may threatened states defend themselves with preemptive action?
The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran stop developing nuclear technology leading to the creation of a nuclear bomb. Iran has refused, notwithstanding threatened sanctions. Iran's conventional missiles can already reach Europe and Israel. Must Israel wait until the world knows exactly when Iran's bomb has been built? Experts estimate that it may take years or as little as six months. No one knows with certainty when the cobra will be able to strike. Iran has lied to the U.N. about its nuclear development efforts before. Is there anyone who believes it is not prepared to lie in the future or is currently lying?
War
Democrats

It's about Time

Benjamin Netanyahu made a strategic decision this week: He wants to be prime minister. On the face of it, there is nothing new to that. Nevertheless, Netanyahu's decision has one meaning: He will not join Olmert, even if the Labor Party withdraws and he is offered a respectable position, as well as respect, to enter the coalition. I, he says, in private conversation, am going to replace Olmert - not save him.

Nor will he join even if Olmert leaves and his place as prime minister is taken by another Kadima minister: Sheetrit, Dichter, Livni or Mofaz, each of whom considers him or herself a candidate, and who intends to contend for the Olmert legacy. Netanyahu rates his chances of becoming prime minister in this Knesset as being good. The scenario that is making the rounds of his inner circle goes something like this: In the course of debates over the 2007 budget, it becomes obvious that the coalition is not equal to the task. The clock starts to count down to early elections, and then a third (the minimum required by law for withdrawal - Y.V.) or more members of the Kadima faction, who do not owe anything to Olmert, or to Kadima, withdraw from the party and join the Likud faction. Only such a move, which is not without logic, would get Netanyahu back into the Prime Minister's office.