Now US ponders attack on Iran

[ze_dscherman]

Note to mods: This article by The Guardian contains new info on the involvement of the MEK in clandestine operations.

SNIP
"The Iranian regime's apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organisations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides," Lawrence DiRita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday: "Mr Hersh's article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed."

However, the Guardian has learned the Pentagon was recently contemplating the infiltration of members of the Iranian rebel group, Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) over the Iraq-Iran border, to collect intelligence. The group, based at Camp Ashraf, near Baghdad, was under the protection of Saddam Hussein, and is under US guard while Washington decides on its strategy.

The MEK has been declared a terrorist group by the state department, but a former Farsi-speaking CIA officer said he had been asked by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon to travel to Iraq to oversee "MEK cross-border operations". He refused, and does not know if those operations have begun.

"They are bringing a lot of the old war-horses from the Reagan and Iran-contra days into a sort of kitchen cabinet outside the government to write up policy papers on Iran," the former officer said.

SNIP

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1392750,00.html

[leftchick]

1. "kitchen cabinet"? How about

Office of Special Plans for Iran!

:grr:

[TomClash]

2. Next headline:

NOW US PONDERS ATTACK ON SASKATCHEWAN

[leftofcool]

9. Well shit!

I was hoping for refugee status in Canada.

Left of Cool

[Flammable Materials]

3. Who will be the first European nation to grant "political refugee" status

... to Americans?

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. I hope it's Holland

I hear Holland is a great place to live.

[plasticsundance]

5. I've been to Holland ...

Great place, but unfortunately they're getting more conservative.

I thought the US military made the Mujahedin-e-Khalq give up their weapons, or am I confusing them with another rebel group?

[sarcasmo]

6. Here comes WWIII

China and Russia will team up to crush us. Chimpy just doesn't see beyond the blinders. WWIII doesn't come up in the spell check, but it will one day soon.

[primavera]

7. Well, duh!

You can't expect the tyrant's thirst for blood to be slaked by a paltry 100,000+ innocent Iraqi civilians can you? Why, that's just an appetizer! The shrub's appetite's just been whetted, now he's thirsting for a bloodbath of biblical proportions! Really, people, you can be so insensitive, don't you appreciate that a vampiric mass murderer of the shrub's calibre has extraordinary needs?

[Supersedeas]

8. would you be shocked to find that MEK is on list of known terrorist groups

eeewww...granny George, what strange bedfellows you have?

See:
"http://library.nps.navy.mil/home/tgp/mek.htm"

[genieroze]

10. LOL

Description
The MEK philosophy mixes Marxism and Islam. Formed in the 1960s, the organization was expelled from Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and its primary support came from the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein since the late 1980s. The MEK’s history is filled with anti-Western attacks as well as terrorist attacks on the interests of the clerical regime in Iran and abroad. The MEK now advocates the overthrow of the Iranian regime and its replacement with the group’s own leadership. First designated in October 1997.

http://library.nps.navy.mil/home/tgp/mek.htm

[Supersedeas]

12. the IRONY is thick...but the media coverage is quite thin...odd??

[Redstone]

11. What a brilliant strategy!

"They are bringing a lot of the old war-horses from the Reagan and Iran-contra days..."

Hey, great idea! We all know how these guys' strategy worked out so well regarding Iran-contra, and how their idea of arming the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan solidified our standing in that part of the world, don't we?

Redstone