"Meet the 'Whack Iran' Lobby ". Names & Groups (Mother Jones)

[chill_wind]

Meet the "Whack Iran" Lobby
by Daniel Schulman (source: Mother Jones )
Friday, October 6, 2006

Exiles peddling back-channel intelligence, upstart advocacy groups pressing for regime change, administration hawks intent on remaking the Middle East—the scene in Washington is looking eerily familiar as the Iran standoff grows more tense. Instead of Ahmad Chalabi, we have the likes of Iran-Contra arms-dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. A new Iran directorate inside the Pentagon features some of the same people who brought you the Iraq intel-cherrypicking operation at the Office of Special Plans. Whether calling for outright regime change or pushing “democracy promotion” initiatives to undermine the Iranian government, an expanding cast of characters has emerged to promote confrontation between the U.S. and Iran. What follows is an abridged list of the individuals and organizations agitating to bring down the mullahs.

(....)

more on

Names, affiliations and activities:

Abram Shulsky

Elizabeth Cheney

David Wurmser

Elliott Abrams

Michael Ledeen

Manucher Ghorbanifar

Committee on the Present Danger

Iran Policy Committee

Foundation for Democracy in Iran


http://www.campaigiran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/137
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2006/09/iran.html

[peacebird]

1. Afghanistan and Iraq are going sooo well. Let's move on to Iran!

:sarcasm:

one thing is sure - freeDUMB is on the march....

:eyes:

[whistle]

2. It is the Bush Crime family and their lieutenants

[chill_wind]

3. Two more names: *Jerome Corsi & Rick Santorum*. Check THIS out.

Corsi and the IFF ("Iran Freedom Foundation"), one of those DC front groups that materialized only just last year (2005)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jerome_Corsi

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Iran_Freedom_Foundation

this was the IFF website
http://www.iranliberation.com/pages/1/index.htm
(domain name just expired Sept 19 2006)

Now they appear to be "under development" at a new site (http://www.iffmrt.org/about.htm)


Corsi reportedly helped Santorum draft IFSA! The April version gave 10 Million for 'regime change' front groups - "both inside and outside Iran". I haven't looked at the version that just passed both bodies a few days ago for an update on this-- if someone else gets a chance before I do, I hope they will please post.

ON CAPITOL HILL
Bill supporting freedom for Iran introduced
Santorum legislation gives $10 million to groups opposing regime
February 11, 2005
(http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42803)

I would ordinarily never cite WND (eshhh) but this seems to be born up
here:
Santorum was ATTEMPTING to get $100 million!

http://www.niacouncil.org/pressreleases/press391.asp

[redacted]

4. Is this the new "Iran Working Group" we've heard about?

It's supposed to be the Iraq Working Group with a new name: same sleazy, disgusting cast of characters. But it's so secret it's difficult to find out anything about them on Google.

[chill_wind]

6. Old package. New fishwrap. " Pentagon confirms Iran Directorate."

Created in March 2006..... "Directorate". ...rather imperious ring to it, huh?

Pentagon confirms Iran Directorate


(...)

Military and non-military intelligence sources have also raised worries over what some describe to as “the Iran group” and others as “the Iran working group” and still others as a “cabal” operating out of the Pentagon.

A recent article by Laura Rozen for the Los Angeles Times revealed the Pentagon has created yet another Office of Special Plans-type body called the Directorate for Iran, or the Iranian Directorate.

“The Pentagon's directorate began with six full-time staff members," Rozen reported. "But they can draw on expertise throughout the government, providing access to potentially hundreds of specialists."

The notorious Office of Special Plans – which focused on Iraq -- is now believed by most experts to have provided a secondary conduit of cherry-picked intelligence on Iraq to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the White House. (More here)

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Pentagon_confirms_Iranian_directorate_as_intelligence_0615.html


aka "Iran Steering Group"?
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Pentagon’s Iran Directorate: ‘US broadcasts into Iran aren’t tough enough’

(...)

The Pentagon’s Iran Directorate, created in March 2006, “has drafted a report charging that US international broadcasts into Iran aren't tough enough on the Islamic regime,” further indication that some in the Bush administration are pushing for a more confrontational policy toward Iran. According to McClatchy Newspapers, which obtained a copy of the report this week, “the report appears to be a gambit by some officials in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office and elsewhere to gain sway over television and radio broadcasts into Iran, one of the few direct tools the United States has to reach the Iranian people.”

The report was written by Ladan Archin, a regime change proponent who formerly studied with Paul Wolfowitz when he was dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Archin now serves as the Country Director in the Near East and South Asia Department of the Department of Defense responsible for Iran. The report was prepared for an inter-agency committee on policy toward Iran called the Iran Steering Group, which is co-chaired by the National Security Council and the State Department.


(bold emphasis mine)
more: http://irannuclearwatch.blogspot.com/2006/09/pentagons-iran-directorate-us.html

about:
Iran Nuclear Watch

"Iran Nuclear Watch (INW) is a project of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. INW provides news, analysis and resources relating to Iran's nuclear weapons program and US-Iranian relations."

*Thank you RD.* You got me curious and I saw what you meant in terms of google. Now we might have some new working search terms.

[chill_wind]

8. "Cooking Intelligence Again".

Thursday, September 14, 2006
Cooking Intelligence Again

UN inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program sent a letter to the Bush administration and to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan) on September 13 regarding a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities. The letter called parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offered evidence to refute its central claims. The report, Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States, was written by Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA officer and John Bolton’s former Chief of Staff and henchman at the State Department.


(...)http://irannuclearwatch.blogspot.com/2006/09/cooking-intelligence-again.html


And once again, Congress goes completely unfazed and passes Bush's IFSA.

[redacted]

5. More on Abram Shulsky

An acolyte of political philosopher Leo Strauss, one of the intellectual forbears of the neoconservative movement and an advocate of the “noble lie,”—the notion that deception is morally acceptable when used by a wise, but misunderstood elite--Shulsky headed the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which trafficked in faulty intelligence on Iraq (including information from Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress) and circumvented the CIA to “stovepipe” WMD intelligence directly to the White House.

* * *

In a 1999 paper called “Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence,” co-authored with the American Enterprise Institute’s Gary Schmitt, Shulsky writes that “Strauss's view certainly alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception.”

[chill_wind]

7. So who's the "Official X" in charge of the Pentagon rump agency now?

The new improved (supposedly DEFUNCT) OSP.

(This is from the May 06 LATimes write-up I'd cited above)

U.S. Moves to Weaken Iran

A campaign to promote democracy and fund dissidents prompts speculation that the administration's goal is to change the regime.

By Laura Rozen
Special to The Times


(...) The State Department also is planning to send 15 foreign service officers to countries neighboring Iran and to capitals with large Iranian exile populations to serve as "Iran watchers."

At the Pentagon, the new Iranian directorate has been set up inside its policy shop, which previously housed the Office of Special Plans. (snip)

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable declined to name the acting director of the new Iran office and would say only that the appointee was a "career civil servant." Among those staffing or advising the Iranian directorate are three veterans of the Office of Special Plans: Abram N. Shulsky, its former director; John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst; and Ladan Archin, an Iran specialist.

full story: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13111.htm

[EFerrari]

9. "Foundation for Democracy in Iran" =

"Group for No Bid Contracts in Iran"

:shrug:

[redacted]

10. LOL!

That's what it's all about.

[EVDebs]

11. Ahmed Chalabi would be proud. Col. Pat Lang's comments please

Re Iraq: The Iranians did "good work"

May 22, 2004

"Iran used Chalabi to dupe U.S., report says"
by Knut Royce

Newsday

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=iranchalabi22&date=20040522

"""They (the Iranians) knew exactly what we were up to," he said.

He described it as "one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history."

"I'm a spook. I appreciate good work. This was good work," he said. ""

Looks like Congress' Democrats should do some preemptive investigating before another treasonous act is perpetrated by the DOD and the Executive branch of incompetents.

[chill_wind]

12. I'm worried that ship could have already sailed

Looks like Congress' Democrats should do some preemptive investigating before another treasonous act is perpetrated by the DOD and the Executive branch of incompetents.

(whole Strike Fleets of them actually...)

?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2300091

PS-- edit to add-- interesting "salutory" spook quote. I hadn't ever seen that.

[EVDebs]

15. We've heard of Nixon's Treason

In article of same name re the original October Surprise in '68 (scuttling a possible peace deal with No. Vietnam that could have ended the war that much earlier, so that Humphrey wouldn't be elected) and in similar fashion (Dr K looms again in background now per Woodward's book) we see Bush's Treason with this episode in Iraq that benefits Iran. US intelligence (VIPs etc.) need to protest IN HOUSE. If they all risked jail and the other career punishments this cabal will deal out it may just force the issue.

[Tom Joad]

13. AIPAC has been harping on this for years.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/27566
Bolton and others get thunderous applause whenever they speak of confronting Iran. Never would it enter their mind to actually do something constructive in regard to nuclear proliferation. Like call for a nuclear-free Middle East (Israel included). we need to www.StopAIPAC.org

[mom cat]

14. The Crusades march on.

:grr::cry::grr: