Officials: US Talks To Iran To Legitimize Attack

[Purveyor]

Source: Jerusalem Post

Recent talks the United States held with Iran are aimed at creating legitimacy for a potential attack against Iranian nuclear facilities, defense officials speculated on Sunday as Defense Minister Ehud Barak headed to Washington for talks with senior administration officials.

Barak will travel to Washington and New York and will hold talks with his counterpart Robert Gates, Vice President Dick Cheney, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Officials said it was likely that President George W. Bush would join the meeting between Barak and Hadley. On Wednesday, Barak will fly to New York for a brief meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon.

Barak's departure to the US came as IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi returned to Israel on Sunday from a week-long visit to the US as Mullen's guest. Ashkenazi held talks with Cheney, Hadley and other senior officials with a focus on the Iranian nuclear program.

"There is a lot of strategic thinking concerning Iran going on right now but no one has yet to make a decision what to do," said a top IDF officer, involved in the dialogue between Israel and the US. "We are still far away from the point where military officers are poring over maps together planning an operation."

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"This way they will be able to say they tried everything," one official speculated. "This increases America's chances of gaining more public support domestically as well as the support of European nations which are today opposed to military action."

Read more: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331116435&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[InternalDialogue]

1. U.N. presentations redux.

And the beat goes on...

[jeff30997]

2. K&R

[superconnected]

3. I can't believe people actually think we're not going to get this war the bush junta is forcing on

us.

[crimanimalz]

4. bush is just a puppet; this should be clear by now..

if you were to climb up his strings you'd find more leading back down to Obama..

this whole fake left/right struggle is pathetic and embarrassing.

[readmoreoften]

9. Clearly the problem is systemic.

We've become a one party nation with two factions rather than a pluralist democracy. Although that's the weakness of pluralist democracy under global capital: eventually the rich own the system itself. There's no left/right struggle. Only a working class divided by social issues unable to combat an elite class who politely disagree about what sort of social rules the working class should have to follow. They, of course, don't have to follow any rules. As far as I can tell, the path it set.

Just because two teams are fighting to win, doesn't mean they're going to change the rules of the sport. That's how I look at it.

[daleo]

11. That's a pretty persuasive description

Unfortunately.

[Frisbee]

5. I'll just file this under...

well, duh.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Another Fake-out.

[Psyop Samurai]

7. Same modus operandi...

It's a dog and pony show.

Many who appear to be "against" will be role playing, while doing their part to legitimize it. People will swallow the act hook, line and sinker, including here at DU.

Judging from experience, anyone interested in what's actually going on in the US will get a much better idea from reading the Israeli newspapers.

[Arctic Dave]

8. I see this in a different light.

"This way they will be able to say they tried everything," one official speculated. "This increases America's chances of gaining more public support domestically as well as the support of European nations which are today opposed to military action."

Really, this is their entire plan? It seems to me Iran is playng * for a chump. The have more world support then * and domestically * has a crediblity problem with eveyone except the terminally retarded.

[leveymg]

10. "One official speculated", and this gets spun into the headline and the lead

More screwing with the heads of the Iranians, in the hope they can be provoked into doing something stupid.