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Richard Clarke
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 Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 12:52 am Post subject: Clarke: More Reasons to Invade Iran Than Iraq |
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Clarke: More Reasons to Invade Iran Than Iraq
Tue Jun 8,12:36 PM ET
VIENNA (Reuters) - It would have made more sense to invade Iran than Iraq (news - web sites), says a former U.S. counterterrorism adviser who has already accused the Bush administration of being soft on terrorism and wasting resources by attacking Iraq.
Richard Clarke, a former adviser to three U.S. presidents and four administrations, said mere possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) did not justify invading a country. This was the U.S. government's stated grounds for the Iraq war.
"If you take the case of Iran, its nuclear program is far more advanced than Iraq's was," Clarke told the Austrian daily Der Standard in an interview translated into German. "There would have been far more grounds to invade there (Iran)."
The United States believes Iran's nuclear program is a front for developing atomic weapons. Tehran denies this, saying its atomic ambitions are limited to generating electricity.
The U.S. military has found none of the caches of Iraqi WMD that Washington said Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had possessed in abundance.
In his recently published memoirs "Against All Enemies," Clarke charged that the administration of President Bush (news - web sites) did not take the al Qaeda threat seriously enough before the September 11, 2001 attacks and needlessly attacked Iraq.
Clarke's accusations have damaged Bush's reputation for being tough on terrorism -- a key theme in the president's re-election campaign. The Los Angeles Times reported in April that 52 percent of Americans agreed that Bush had been lax on terrorism before September 11 while 40 percent disagreed.
Bush has repeatedly denied Clarke's charges.
In a chapter entitled "That Almost War, 1996," Clarke says former U.S. President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) almost launched a war against Iran for what Washington says its support for terrorism against the United States.
However, Clarke says Clinton chose not to attack Iran but ordered an "intelligence operation" that seemed to have worked.
"Following the intelligence operation, and perhaps because of it and the serious U.S. threats, among other reasons, Iran ceased terrorism against the U.S.," Clarke wrote. "War with Iran was averted."
Source : http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040608/wl_nm/iran_usa_clarke_dc_6 |
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stefania
Joined: 17 Jul 2003
Posts: 4250
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 8:32 am Post subject: |
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I GUESS MR. CLARKE WOULD BE AGAINST A US INVASION OF IRAN...
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Referendum AFTER Regime Change
"I'm ready to die for you to be able to say your own opinions, even if i strongly disagree with you" (Voltaire) |
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Via Ramin Etebar,MD
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:57 am Post subject: Re: Clarke: More Reasons to Invade Iran Than Iraq |
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| Richard Clarke wrote: | Clarke: More Reasons to Invade Iran Than Iraq
Tue Jun 8,12:36 PM ET
VIENNA (Reuters) - It would have made more sense to invade Iran than Iraq (news - web sites), says a former U.S. counterterrorism adviser who has already accused the Bush administration of being soft on terrorism and wasting resources by attacking Iraq.
Richard Clarke, a former adviser to three U.S. presidents and four administrations, said mere possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) did not justify invading a country. This was the U.S. government's stated grounds for the Iraq war.
"If you take the case of Iran, its nuclear program is far more advanced than Iraq's was," Clarke told the Austrian daily Der Standard in an interview translated into German. "There would have been far more grounds to invade there (Iran)."
The United States believes Iran's nuclear program is a front for developing atomic weapons. Tehran denies this, saying its atomic ambitions are limited to generating electricity.
The U.S. military has found none of the caches of Iraqi WMD that Washington said Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had possessed in abundance.
In his recently published memoirs "Against All Enemies," Clarke charged that the administration of President Bush (news - web sites) did not take the al Qaeda threat seriously enough before the September 11, 2001 attacks and needlessly attacked Iraq.
Clarke's accusations have damaged Bush's reputation for being tough on terrorism -- a key theme in the president's re-election campaign. The Los Angeles Times reported in April that 52 percent of Americans agreed that Bush had been lax on terrorism before September 11 while 40 percent disagreed.
Bush has repeatedly denied Clarke's charges.
In a chapter entitled "That Almost War, 1996," Clarke says former U.S. President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) almost launched a war against Iran for what Washington says its support for terrorism against the United States.
However, Clarke says Clinton chose not to attack Iran but ordered an "intelligence operation" that seemed to have worked.
"Following the intelligence operation, and perhaps because of it and the serious U.S. threats, among other reasons, Iran ceased terrorism against the U.S.," Clarke wrote. "War with Iran was averted."
Source : http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040608/wl_nm/iran_usa_clarke_dc_6 |
you may find it interesting:
Richard Clarke says Cheney "very concerned House of Saud could fall"
Former United States counter-terrorism leader Richard Clarke, author of
"Against All Enemies" has claimed that top US politicians, including US
Vice-President Dick Cheney, are "very concerned that the House of Saud
could fall", AP has reported.
Comparing Saudi Arabia to the Iran under the Shah, Clarke said, " Iran was our good American ally, guaranteeing us a source of oil...and suddenly...it was replaced with the first radical, Islamic, fundamentalist, terrorist government. I think that Cheney and others in the United States think that could happen in Saudi Arabia."
While in Madrid promoting the Spanish version of his book, Clarke drew
several parallels with the situation in Iran prior to the fall of the Shah
in 1978, and said the US has failed to give the Saudi situation the
attention it deserves.
"The problem of the Saudi regime is an extremely important problem that we should have paid more attention to, rather than, for example, Iraq," he
said.
He also compared the lack of credible intelligence in Iran before the
Shah's fall to the current situation in Saudi Arabia.
"We didn't have very many of our own sources of information...and I think
that's a problem we face today in Saudi Arabia," Clarke said.
Analysis
The CIA "post-mortem" on the Iranian revolution exonerated itself for its
lack of foresight, claiming the traditional tenents that Iranians were
"inscrutable" as people, and immature as political actors. Much like
Clarke's protests that nobody in America really knew - or wanted to know -
about al-Qaeda; in Iran, American intelligence operatives had little idea
who Ayatollah Khomeni was prior to the revolution. This was despite the
fact that he was the leading Shi'ite cleric in Iran (although in exile in
Iraq most of the time) and broadcast the most popular radio program in Iran
for years. The fact that the rank and file population were perfectly aware
of who Khomeni was, while no one in Washington did, suggests a larger
operational problem in the US gathering of intelligence in Iran.
Those problems are many, but primarily, the US does not, and has never,
seriously funded Arabic and Iranian studies within an American academia
that was Soviet-obsessed in global outlook, and uniformly pro-Israeli in
regional politic. What Clarke fails to mention is that the United States
receives its intelligence in Middle Eastern matters from one primary
source: Israel's intelligence group Mossad. That intelligence is harshly
slanted for Israeli political objectives, and has almost no home-grown
American content. American officials also regularly lament that the few
Americans who do work in the Middle Eastern field tend to "go native" and
fail to support broad US policy objectives in the long-run. Further
examination of this tendancy is dismissed out of hand.
Lack of language training also contributes to the paralytic state American
intelligence in the Middle East finds itself in. While Russian studies
bloomed in American academia during the Soviet Union, the subject of Arabic
and Farsi studies has never been considered worthy of support. Again, a
primary blockage in the development of these subjects is the influence of
Israeli-slanted academia. Israeli civilian and military personnel play a
large and influential role in American academia. Mostly these people try
and steer policy away from a Middle Eastern paradigm that promotes an
objective study of the Arab world. Daniel Pipes, one of the leading
ideologues of the current Bush administration has even founded his own
institution "Campus Watch" in an attempt to stifle serious academic debate
on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and shore up an increasingly
challenged, pro- Israeli, picture of the Middle East. Pipes, who taught at
Harvard and University of Chicago is, along with Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearle the guiding ideological light of American policy in the region. All
three are characterized by their overwhelming support for Ariel Sharon, and his policies.
Until such changes are made within the intellectual structures of American
Foreign policy, it looks increasingly likely that Dick Cheney's fears over
the House of Saud may be borne out, and Richard Clarke's assessment that
Saudi Arabia looks prepared to go the way of Iran an ever increasing
possibility. |
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stefania
Joined: 17 Jul 2003
Posts: 4250
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 10:32 am Post subject: |
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The House of Saud is not pro-US.
Al Qaeda was born within the Royal Family..
I don't think that one is right comparing the Shah with the Saudi Royal Family.
_________________
Referendum AFTER Regime Change
"I'm ready to die for you to be able to say your own opinions, even if i strongly disagree with you" (Voltaire) |
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