Quds Force II - The Storyline Repeats Itself

[autorank]

Quds ForceII - The Storyline Repeats Itself

By Michael Collins

Did you know that in 2007 General Peter Pace, then head of the Joint Chiefs, and Zbigniew Brzezinski openly challenged President Bush’s claim that the Iranian government was directly responsible for providing weapons to anti-US fighters in Iraq? The challenges in February 2007 pulled the rug out from under Bush’s excuse for military action against Iran.

Today, the Obama administration is revving up for a military action against Iran with recent charges about assassination plots involving Iran and Mexican drug cartel hit men. This time, the response is much more visible and borders on derision. This article describes the remarkable similarities between the 2007 and 2011 storylines.

(Washington, DC) A faction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard called the Quds Force (QF) is center stage in the War on Terror for the second time in five years. In 2007, President George W. Bush hauled out the group of middle and upper level Iranian government officials as a rationale for military action against Iran. The decisive shutdown of the Bush effort marks a critical turning point in recent history and will be discussed later in the article.

QF II began last Tuesday when FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Eric Holder unified the terror storyline between the rabid neoconservatives of the Bush era and the low key loyalists to the national security state in the Obama administration. ...

The current version of Quds Force-as-archvillain was met with challenges from the start. Early on in the Post article, an unnamed White House official offered this qualifier: "There’s a question of how high up did it go." That makes sense. The QF is not the entire Iranian government. The anonymous spokesman said that the Iranian government has a "responsibility to explain that."

Link: http://www.apj.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3808&Itemid=2

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. 'xcept DOD has said we don't do military actions

that said, this was very real and some folks are literally missing heads south of the border.

This was a nice flush the american asset operation, why it was so ... "amateurish. " On and I forgot there are paramillitaries in Mexico, and no, we had nuthing to do with that one... but the cartels have evolved into exactly that. This is a dangerous part of the evolution of that mess, but that's a whole different story

[autorank]

3. One thing scarier than thugs

...the big lie!

:hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Check date on this one

35 Dead 'Zetas' Dumped on Busy Street in Veracruz, Mexico
Written by Geoffrey Ramsey

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The bodies of 35 alleged Zetas members were left beneath an underpass in downtown Veracruz, south Mexico, in the latest sign that the group is taking a hit to its activities on the Gulf coast.

Motorists along the busy avenue of Ruiz Cortine in the Mexican port city of Veracruz encountered a gruesome roadblock on Tuesday afternoon: two abandoned pickup trucks, each carrying more than a dozen dead bodies. According to eyewitness accounts, an number of masked men had stopped traffic along the road around 5:00 p.m., pointing weapons at passersby as they opened up the gates of the truck beds before abandoning the vehicles.

The men also left an ominous “narcomanta,” or drug banner, claiming that the victims had been killed for their allegiance to the Zetas:

http://www.insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/1600-35-dead-zetas-dumped-on-busy-street-in-veracruz

I was down there when this broke... the contorsions from the office of the President to avoid going into details was funny as hell... and knowing a tad about how things work... it was real.

[truedelphi]

12. As a DU'er much wiser than me pointed out earlier today -

Obama doesn't have anyone with the stature of a Colin Powell to go to the UN and demand that our nation be allowed to defend itself. Weapons of Mass Destruction, et al.

And hopefully, should the President call him back to service, Colin is sick of lying through his teeth.

[autorank]

18. Hell, lets get him out of moth balls

Just a little baggage - ya know

Colin Powell's Disgraceful Lies
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/021811a.html

Colin Powell choreographs torture sessions

We found out last week that the vice president and senior Bush appointees "discussed and approved" the highly abusive interrogation techniques applied to U.S. detainees, according to reports by ABC News and the Associated Press. Those techniques include waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and physical assault.

"In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News." ABC News, Apr. 10, 2008

The list of officials includes Vice President Cheney, along with Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft -- who were cabinet members at the time -- and Condoleezza Rice." They "discussed and approved" torture scripts that were followed to the letter:

"The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic." ABC News, Apr. 10, 2008

"certifiable, insane"
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0804/S00239.htm

[truedelphi]

20. I still get chills when I think of these people.

And John Wu (I'm probably not spelling his name right) who spent weeks of his life describing in detail what would constitute torture - break the arm in a certain way, then it's not torture (complete with lengthy description of how to do this) or break it in another way, then it is torture (complete with lengthy description)

Can you imagine the mind set of someone who spent weeks and months recounting these details?

[kentuck]

2. Sometimes I wonder...

Who is really pulling the strings??

[autorank]

4. Their identity is unknown and their originality sorely taxed

I look at how close we came to a war with Iran and it's chilling. If that had happened, the nation would have
been trashed beyond any hope of repair for decades. Double the impact of Iraq.

[stevedeshazer]

5. Wow, +1

[autorank]

6. Brzezinski threw down the gauntlet on Feb 2, 2007 before the Senate For Relations Comm

"If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, \and Pakistan…" Zbigniew Brzezinski, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Feb 2, 2007 (underlining and quotes, Brezinski's emphasis]

[Kurovski]

8. K&R

Boy, I remember how bad BushCo wanted to hit Iran . On new years day I remember cspan had some asshat aggressively pushing it. They wanted it bad, It was as obvious as a perv's boner in a playground.

[autorank]

9. Well said

:evilgrin:

[EFerrari]

10. Kick

[snot]

11. K&R'D!

[truedelphi]

13. Excellent work - as usual.

This is the part that resonates with me -(From yr article) "Commenting on the hearing for accused plotter, Manssor Arbab Arbabsiar, the CS Monitor's Scott Peterson reported widespread skepticism, "Why the plot doesn't add up?" He quoted a Rand Corporation researcher who noted that the case doesn't fit Iran's normal mode of operation. Peterson went on to report that when Iran's government murders individuals overseas, they do it with trusted insiders to kill, not rookies who contract with drug dealers."

Exactly. This nation's justice system, which gets grades of "F" on everything from Family Court to murder cases, allows the offices of countless District Attorney to get some low level drug snitch to testify against the alleged murderer that the person confessed to the crime while with them in jail.

But hopefully things don't work that easily for larger matters that have to come under a bit more scrutiny. And that could, under the right set of provocations, (including China re-assessing certain aspects of its monetary policy,) start WWIII.

Back in the Olden Days, a person actually had to assassinate the Archduke of Serbia to start a world war. (And that always seemed a tad bit over reactive - one Archduke dies, and then all of Europe and the USA is at wart?) Now an administration thinks it can just set up a gossip campaign of an alleged assassination to start war plans?

[truedelphi]

14. I like Greenwald's opening remark, which you had linked to:

"The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it."

With a plot like this one, you'd think our President would WANT California to have its pot clubs - figuring if he keeps us all inebriated, we wouldn't mind the coming war against Iran so much.

[Kurovski]

15. Kick. (nt)

[FogerRox]

17. Good to see you back in action K-

Auto-KnR

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. Erect bogeyman. Wave flag. Send in the bombers/drones/troops. Demand more money for "defense".

Works every time.

[Amonester]

19. You forgot to mention the kickback$ to Congre$$.

OTOH, since OWS started, I bet everybody knows. ;)

[bobthedrummer]

21. autorank-thanks for posting + a link to an active GD thread started 10-12-11

Hmmm...Iran, Central American drug cartels, Saudis, October-it reminds me of some "hidden histories"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2104315

:hi:

RECALL SCOTT WALKER!

[autorank]

22. Recall Scott Walker indeed!

Thanks!!! I'll check out that thread now.

:hi: