Neo-Cons To Plot Iran Strategy Amid Caribbean Luxury (May 30)

[babylonsister]

http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=21

Neo-Cons To Plot Iran Strategy Amid Caribbean Luxury

For those of you who may be visiting the Bahamas next week, you may want to check out a private, off-the-record meeting of Gulf and Middle East specialists of a rather narrow ideological bent at Westin’s luxurious Our Lucaya Resort on Grand Bahama Island. The meeting takes place May 30 to June 1.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neo-conservative group created two days after the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, is holding what it calls “a policy workshop” during Congress’ Memorial Day recess, no doubt to plot strategy for moving U.S. policy toward Iran in a direction compatible with its confrontational views.

The workshop, entitled “Confronting The Iranian Threat: The Way Forward,” is to include “30 or so leading experts who will analyze the implications of Iran’s activities, the diplomatic challenges, military and intelligence capabilities, the spread of its ideology within and beyond its borders, and other issues, including the prospects for democratization in the Islamic world, energy security and other related issues that face policymakers in the United States, Europe and the Middle East,” according to the invitation letter from FDD’s president, Clifford May. The purpose will be “exploring policy options …and consider solutions to one of the most significant policy issues of our day.”

Among those experts who have been invited are several serving and former senior administration officials, including one of the diminishing number of neo-cons left in the Bush administration, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Paula Dobriansky; the hard-line Iran country director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and Office of Special Plans (OSP) alumna, Ladan Archin; the recently-departed State Department Coordinator of Counterterrorism, Amb. Henry Crumpton; the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the Treasury Department, Matthew Levitt, who is now with the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). The administration’s new UN Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, has also been invited, although his duties as next month’s Security Council president may make it difficult for him to travel. In any case, his spouse, Cheryl Benard, who directs the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy, is confirmed.

Uri Lubrani, the chief Iran advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, is also expected to participate.

more...

[L. Coyote]

1. IRAN thread here: Next STOP Iran? More BUSH LIES and Surging Toward War With Iran

Been researching this today, in light of yet another wave of hysteria, this time with Cheney's mushroom cloud thrown in.

My impression is that Iran is a good smoke sceen to take attention away from Iraq failures and lies. Here is the thread, so you can judge for yourselves:

Next STOP Iran? More BUSH LIES and Surging Toward War With Iran
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x980363

These readings should provide some background on this party (read neocon GOP). They have been waving this flag for too long. Is it all just smoke?

[USMC_Liberal]

2. Cheney at the Bat

I modified the famous poem:


Things looked extremely rocky for the Neo-Cons that day,
Clinton was in office, common sense ruled the day.

If only, Cheney, mighty Cheney could take a whack at that
they'd put even more money on big Oil with Cheney at the bat!

So Chalabi proceded Cheney and likewise so did Niger cake,
the former was a devil the latter was a fake.

But to the wonder of all, Chalabi didn't fall,
and over Yellowcake - the Press took in it all.

And when the Neo-Cons saw what had occured
US Troops were on the Iraqi border, our allies were the Kurds!

Then from five thousand Neo-con throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
it rumbled through the Wash Post, it rattled in the Jour-nel;

it pounded through on the mountain and recoiled upon the flat;
for Cheney, mighty Cheney, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Cheney's manner as he stepped into his place,
there was pride in Cheney's bearing and a smile lit Cheney's face.

And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
no stranger in the crowd could doubt t'was Cheney at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt.
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.

Then, while the writhing Osama made a tape to ship,
defiance flashed in Cheney's eye, a sneer curled Cheney's lip.

And when the fatal liners had come hurtling through the air,
and Cheney stood a-watching them in haughty grandeur there.

Close by the sturdy batsman the responsibility unheeded sped --
"That ain't my style," said Cheney.

"Three thousand dead!" the umpire said.
From the benches, black with apathy, there went up a muffled roar,
like the beating of the storm waves on a stern and distant shore.

"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted the FOX News faithful on the stand,
and it's likely they'd have killed him had not Cheney raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity, great Cheney's visage shone,
he stilled the rising tumult, he bade the game go on.

He signaled to Osama, and there was a tape anew,
but Cheney still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two!"

"Fraud!" cried the Fox New Faithful, and echo answered "Fraud!"
But one scornful look from Cheney and the Christian Right was awed.

They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
and they knew that Cheney wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer has fled from Cheney's lip, the teeth are clenched in hate.
He pounds, with cruel violence, his bat upon the plate.

And now Osama holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
and now the air is shattered by the force of Cheney's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this formerly favored land the sun is shining bright.
A funeral moves forward somewhere, and somewhere there's a fight.
And, somewhere men are dying, and little children bleed out,

And there is no victory on Main Street USA --
mighty Cheney has snuck out.

[L. Coyote]

3. K&R for the dead poets over there

[L. Coyote]

4. NEOCON IDEALOGUES: Hail to the chief (raise arm here)

Charlie Savage does it again! Here is a taste of how the neocons think.

======================
Hail to the chief
Dick Cheney's mission to expand -- or 'restore' --the powers of the presidency

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | November 26, 2006

ANN ARBOR, MICH. -- In July 1987, then-Representative Dick Cheney, the top Republican on the committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal, turned on his hearing room microphone and delivered, in his characteristically measured tone, a revolutionary claim.

President Reagan and his top aides, he asserted, were free to ignore a 1982 law at the center of the scandal. Known as the Boland Amendment, it banned US assistance to anti-Marxist militants in Nicaragua.

"I personally do not believe the Boland Amendment applied to the president, nor to his immediate staff," Cheney said.

Most of Cheney's colleagues did not share his vision of a presidency empowered to bypass US laws governing foreign policy. The committee issued a scathing, bipartisan report accusing White House officials of "disdain for the law."

Cheney refused to sign it. Instead, he commissioned his own report declaring that the real lawbreakers were his fellow lawmakers, because the Constitution "does not permit Congress to pass a law usurping Presidential power." ..............

[L. Coyote]

5. Bahamas is a great offshore location to evade US laws and Congress.

Perhaps they will see some old spy buddies there!

=================================================
Bahamas Firm Screens Personal Data To Assess Risk
Operation Avoids U.S. Privacy Rules
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 16, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36853-2004Oct15.html

It began as one of the Bush administration's most ambitious homeland security efforts, a passenger screening program designed to use commercial records, terrorist watch lists and computer software to assess millions of travelers and target those who might pose a threat.

The system has cost almost $100 million. .......
Now the choreographer of that program, a former intelligence official named Ben H. Bell III, is taking his ideas to a private company offshore, where he and his colleagues plan to use some of the same concepts, technology and contractors to assess people for risk, outside the reach of U.S. regulators,....

Bell's new employer, the Bahamas-based Global Information Group Ltd., intends to amass large databases of international records and analyze them in the coming years for corporations, government agencies and other information services.