Scott Ritter is on AAR, and he's scaring the shit out of me

[CatWoman]

talking about us meddling in Iran, and Iran is the TRUE power among terrorists.

[pstans]

1. Do you feel a draft?

[CatWoman]

3. I don't think the Administration is caring about more manpower

Scott says when we attack, it will be a bombing attack on "suspected" nuclear sites.

He didn't think that we'd actually send people in.

However, when the bombing starts, those soldiers in Iraq will pay dearly.

[BanzaiBonnie]

13. So they hit our soldiers in Iraq with SCUD missiles

and that would mean a declaration of war on the US and then we'd HAVE to retaliate... right?

Another Pearl Harbor type incident.

[jpak]

16. Iran has hundreds of SCUDs and CSS-8 ballistic missiles

Some of these are held by Revolutionary Guard units who have custody of Iran's chemical weapons.

Hopefully our troops in Iraq have retained there chemsuits and gas masks - they're going to need them come June...

[democracyindanger]

14. Of course not

They still believe in the cheering-crowds-in-the-streets pipedream.

[calimary]

31. I saw a story about that here recently.

Down in the middle of it, it did speak, unfortunately, of a GROUND and air invasion...

Yeah, I'm scared, too.

Here's the link:

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2295

. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%.
Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh.
On Jan. 17, the New Yorker posted an article by Hersh entitled The Coming Wars (New Yorker, January 24-31, 2005). In it, the well-known investigative journalist claimed that for the Bush administration, "The next strategic target Iran." Hersh also reported that "The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer." According to Hersh, "Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran. . . . Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military’s war plan, PROVIDING FOR A MAXIUMUM GROUND AND AIR INVASION OF IRAN. . . . The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act."
Scott Ritter said that although the peace movement failed to stop the war in Iraq, it had a chance to stop the expansion of the war to other nations like Iran and Syria. He held up the specter of a day when the Iraq war might be remembered as a relatively minor event that preceded an even greater conflagration.

(Caps, above, are mine)

[LittleClarkie]

18. Nah, we're not down to that "Army of One" yet

Who knew they meant it literally...

[Borgnine]

I've been depressed/scared all day.

There's a bad moon rising. I can feel it, and I can't shake the feeling that Thompson killed himself because he knew something was on the horizon.

[Emboldened Chimp]

9. Thompson's suicide has nothing to do with the world's geopolitical...

...situation. He survived Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate, Iran-contra, Reagan, and a host of other nonsense. I doubt he'd end it all because of the vicious freaks we've got in office now. Thompson, God bless him, was a serious alcoholic and drug addict. That, I'm sure, had much more to do with his suicide.

[nascarblue]

27. I wouldn't be so sure... Read this interview he did....

As the rude pundit put it...Thompson said of the Bush II administration, "This is the darkest hour that I have seen in my long experience as an American. This is evil."

His Rolling Stone article on Bush and Kerry said, directly, that Bush was worse than Nixon, which, for anyone who read Thompson for a long time, was quite a startling belief. So the romantic, fall-upon-one's-sword version of Thompson's suicide is this: all Thompson saw in America was that we were on a never-ending spiral towards madness that even he couldn't envision, that the worst things he could imagine about this country were coming true and more, that the only possible things to do when the monsters are knocking are to stand and fight or cut and run. And he had fought far, far too long already.
If you liked Thompson...this is a must read...
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/investing/20041101a2.asp

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com

[tcfrogs]

2. But wait, * said that Iraq & Al Quada were the real threats

I'm all confused now....

[Media_Lies_Daily]

5. No, wait...Afghanistan was the true threat!! Now, it's just....

...the "forgotten war".

How many years will it take for Iraq to become the next "forgotten war"?

[annabanana]

43. 18 months......................n/t

[Windy]

4. It should scare you. He's speaking the truth

The administration is making the same moves it did against Iraq and is following the PNAC agenda, dotting the i's and crossing the t's They know that most (51%) of americans won't care/won't pay attention. What do we do? We need to do more then post on weblogs, but what? The truly scary thing is a lot of these right wing idiots agree that Iran should be next on the hit list.

(unfortunately, I've got reservations for a trip to Ireland on June 15th... )

[Cyrano]

6. He said that Condi is lying and we will probably attack Iran

(air attacks) by June. He also said that Iran will make Al Queda (sp?) look like children when it comes to retaliation. Iran has embassies around the world that can be used to foment world-wide terrorism.

This is a guy who was right about Iraq. Why shouldn't we believe him now? And how do we stop this maniac administration from doing whatever the hell they want to do?

[BrklynLiberal]

8. Didn't Sy Hersh say this exact thing on Jon Stewart weeks ago??

[Media_Lies_Daily]

12. Yep....and I bet Hersh's sources are better than Ritter's.

[democracyindanger]

7. Have you read this?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/21/MNGHUBERIV1.DTL

Tehran -- Iran has begun publicly preparing for a possible U.S. attack, as tensions mount between the Bush administration and this country's hard-line leaders over Tehran's purported nuclear weapons program.

"Iran would respond within 15 minutes to any attack by the United States or any other country," an Iranian official close to the conservative clerics who run the country's security and military apparatus said on condition of anonymity.

...

Iran's army includes 350,000 active-duty soldiers and 220,000 conscripts. Its elite Revolutionary Guards number 120,000, many of them draftees. Its navy and air force total 70,000 men. The armed forces have about 2,000 tanks, 300 combat aircraft, three submarines, hundreds of helicopters and at least a dozen Russian-made Scud missile launchers of the type Saddam Hussein used against Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. Iran also has an undetermined number of Shahab missiles that have a range of more than 1,500 miles.
...

Within minutes of any attack, Iran's air and sea forces could threaten oil shipments in the Persian Gulf as well as the Gulf of Oman. Iran controls the northern coast of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which oil tankers must navigate, and could sink ships, mine sea routes or bomb oil platforms, according to the CSIS report. Iran could activate Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, whom it supports, to launch attacks on Israel. It could have operatives attack U.S. interests in Azerbaijan, Central Asia or Turkey.
...
"If Iran wanted, it could make Iraq a hell for the United States," Hamid al-Bayati, Iraq's deputy foreign minister, said recently.

[uppityperson]

11. Buy a bicycle if you don't have one, spare tires, etc.

shit

[Ian David]

25. Bush does not want to win this. He thinks he is the Antichrist

The neocon chickenhawks keep chanting, "Go USA! Yee-hah! We're gonna kick ass!"

What they don't understand is we are not going to kick ass.

Bush does not WANT to kick ass.

What Bush wants is to trigger The War of the Apocalypse because he thinks he is the Antichrist.

Bush has always had a plan for the environment, for Israel, for Iraq and Iran. That plan has always been to create what rational people would consider a "catastrophic failure."

Nobody can be so consistently disastrously incompetent all the time without trying.

The problem is, Bush is trying.

He is trying to lose.

[Amaryllis]

26. Is this true? This is the first explanation I've heard that makes sense.

Otherwise his actions make no sense at all.

[Ian David]

28. I belive it is true 100% Google search Bush and Dominionist

[Amaryllis]

29. I don't get the part about him thinking he is the anitchrist? I thought

antichirst was a bad thing to fundies?

[calimary]

33. I'm not sure he thinks he's the Antichrist - I think he's self-deluded

with a Messiah complex. Or an anointed-prophet-of-the-Second-Coming. If he thought he was the Antichrist it would be counterproductive to all the fundies' mentalities (or lack thereof). He doesn't DARE want them to see him as tne Antichrist. They, like the haves and the have mores, are his base.

[calimary]

32. Aw fuck.

And unlike the jackasses in the White House, Scott Ritter has a track record for truth-telling.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. * and his fundies simply do not care if they destroy the entire planet.

You can see this by their environmental policies as well as their aggressive war plans. They simply do not give a crap if the entire planet is blown up or turned in to a black ashen cloud of smog. They figure they will go out in luxury and/or go up in the Rapture.
They don't even care about their children and grandchildren.
Goes to prove that they truly are the personification of evil.

[BillyDoc]

41. Actually, they are actively seeking the end of the world

And if you want to get a real scare, check out the "Left Behind" series of books (I forget who wrote them). These are an Evangelical wet-dream about casting off their own impotence and essentially taking revenge on all the rest of us. There are scenes where Jesus (you know, the Jew guy that promotes turning the other cheek, love, and all that stuff the Evangellicals don't seem to understand) simply lifts his little finger and thousands are swallowed up by the earth, screaming and crying. LOTS of blood and guts.

These people are truly insane. Probably from too much "faith" and not enough of God's gift of "reason." Could it be that swallowing all those contradictions will break your brain? It sure looks like it to me! In fact, these so-called Christians had better hope that there is no God. Because if there is, He will not be stupid and he WILL be pissed at the abject stupidity and poor management exhibited because of their mental laziness.

[illflem]

15. There are a estimated one million Iranians

living in Los Angeles, sure wouldn't take pissing off too much of a percentage with an attack on their homeland for them to turn to terrorism for revenge...

[neweurope]

17. Careful here... *sigh* those "japanese" camps are still there, aren't they

?

-----------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[Swamp Rat]

21. Ja, öffnen Sie sich für Geschäft sehr bald...

We even have our very own Waffen SS to round people up.

"Strategic Support Branch" ... mein Deutsch ist sehr schlecht aber...

Strategic Support Branch=SSB=Schutzstaffel Büro

Maybe it can be modified to follow the acronym better: "Schutz-Staffel Branche"

[neweurope]

23. Hi Swamp rat...

:scared:

Let me say how much I appreciate your pictures!

-----------------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[Swamp Rat]

24. danke...

Just trying to warn Earthlings that we are literally frogs in a pot of boiling water.

[Goldmund]

34. What? So 1 in 9 people in LA is Iranian???

No way.

[Igel]

36. No, and no.

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/orr/tehrangeles_iran_capital_expatriates_812.htm

There's a rather large Iranian community near Westwood. Bound to be more scattered about.

"LA" is bigger than 9 million, the city of Los Angeles is 3-4 million, Los Angeles County is about 9 million. But "LA" can mean "Southland", Simi Valley down through Orange County. Sort of depends on who's talking, who they're talking to, and what about.

Understanding what "LA" means in any given context is a fine art.

[Goldmund]

37. Cool, but all of CA has an "estimated 300,000 to 600,000"

according to that very link.

Not a million in LA, even if you define LA as the state of CA.

[Igel]

40. I supplied the link because the 1 million number sounded

fishy.

Definitely not 1 in 9.

[AntiFascist]

19. I've noticed recruiting commercials for the Air Force....

are beginning to air on television.

Also, I recall rumors that funding for the insurgency in Iraq was actually coming from Saudi Arabia and being funneled through Iran. Not only is Saudi Arabia the home of the wealthy house of Saud, it is also the home of the Islamic religious centers.

Here is a recent "fatwa," presumably from the religious hierarchy, which states the incompatibility of democracy with Islam:

http://www.islamweb.net/ver2/Istisharat/ShowFatwa.php?lang=E&Id=4706&Option=FatwaId

The point of this post is not to make a statement about whether changing the government in Iran is ultimately good or bad, but to demonstrate that the neocons in our government may be setting us up for a war against Islam itself.

[Contrary1]

20. I would have the FBI knocking down my door

if I typed what I am actually thinking right now.

[LdyGuique]

22. This isn't just about bombing Iran -- it's about using NUCLEAR bombs

We are facing a far bigger issue: Bombing Iran in the near future

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CRG502A.html>The Centre for Global Research has collected an entire series of thoughtful articles that have been published over the past few years, all of them leading to a One/Two punch in the Middle East: Irag and Iran. To compound the Iran issue, there are plans to not only bomb Iran to remove its purported nuclear capabilities, but to use NUCLEAR weapons to do so as the tunnels are buried deep in the mountains and not even the much touted "bunkerbuster" bombs are capable of doing sufficient damage to guarantee removal of the suspected armaments within the tunnels.

And,they have the article about Scott Ritter posted on their site, too: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/JEN502A.html

If you think rollercoasters and horror movies are acary, take a read on the Global Research site, in particular the Part III. THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR. If this doesn't bring chills up and down your spine and cause your sphincter to clinch up, nothing will.

Forget about the current obsession over who may or may not run -- we need to have a country left to even have a democracy, as if the Administration carries through with their plans, it will be the U.S. against The World.

[steve2470]

30. maybe my cynicism is acting up today, but it just seems that

we are not going to get out of Afghanistan, Iraq and/or possibly Iran unless and until too many body bags come home. How many "too many" is, I have no clue. One was too many for these unjust causes. What do you think ?

[hvn_nbr_2]

38. How many body bags is too many?

Why, I don't think there are any. I haven't seen any on GOPravda for weeks. If it's not on GOPravda, they must not exist. Everything is going just swimmingly. :grr:

[steve2470]

39. yeah, a death-less war, a modern miracle nt

[Mizmoon]

35. I do NOT trust Scott Ritter

I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but I think SCott Ritter is untrustworthy. I think the stories of him being bribed by Iraq or another party could be true. His opinions turned 180 degrees in an instant and it's very fishy. Here is something from the BBC about him:

"Initially, his relationship with Iraq was bad. His unannounced visits were said to have surprised Iraqi officials, who in 1997 accused him of being a US spy.

In early 1998 an inspection by Mr Ritter's team led to the most serious confrontation between Baghdad and the UN since the Gulf War, and eventually to Unscom leaving Iraq.

In August 1998, Mr Ritter resigned from his job, accusing the Security Council and the United States of caving in to the Iraqis.

To compel Iraq into compliance, he told the BBC that year: "Iraq should be subjected to a major campaign that seeks to destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein."

'Mistake'

Soon after his high-profile resignation, Mr Ritter was back in the headlines with further criticism of Washington and the UN.

UN inspectors in Iraq packed their bags in 1998
Only this time he accused Western powers of being too tough, rather than too soft, on the Iraqis."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2247600.stm

[CatWoman]

42. well

please excuse those of us who do......