Cheney's daughter to lead propaganda war to topple Iran government

[bigtree]

March 05, 2006

Cheney daughter leads ‘cold war’ on mullahs

THE war in Iraq is her father’s business but Elizabeth Cheney, the American vice-president’s daughter, has been given responsibility for bringing about a different type of regime change in Iran.

Cheney, a 39-year-old mother of four, is a senior official in the State Department, which has often been regarded as hostile territory by Dick Cheney’s White House team. Nonetheless father and daughter agree it would be better for the mullahs’ regime to collapse from within than to be ousted by force.

The question is whether democratic reform can be achieved before Iran becomes a nuclear power. That is the younger Cheney’s job. In the State Department she is referred to as the “freedom agenda co-ordinator” and the “democracy czar” for the broader Middle East. “She’s fantastic and dynamic,” said a colleague.

Her official title is deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and she is in charge of spending the $85m (£48m) — up from $10m last year — recently allocated to promote democracy in Iran. Much of it will be spent on broadcasting the views of exiles, dissidents and reformers inside Iran.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2070419,00.html

[FreedomAngel82]

1. So let me get this straight

They want democracy, they give it to them, they elect someone they don't want and now they're against democracy. So it isn't democracy at all they want of course. :mad:

[Erika]

2. This is from the Onion, right? n/t

[bigtree]

4. you know, I keep looking it up and down . . .

I'm stunned

[Emit]

5. I'm shaking my head

WTF? At a loss of words here...

[bigtree]

11. February 14, 2005

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
STATEMENT BY RICHARD BOUCHER, SPOKESMAN

Selection of Elizabeth Cheney as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State For Near Eastern Affairs and Coordinator for Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiatives

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today announced the selection of Elizabeth Cheney as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and Coordinator for Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiatives.

As Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Ms. Cheney's duties will include a focus on U.S. bilateral and multilateral efforts to support freedom, democracy and expanded economic and education opportunities in the Broader Middle East and North Africa.

Ms. Cheney has served previously in government, most recently as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2002 to 2003. Prior to that Ms. Cheney practiced law in the private sector and at the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group. Ms. Cheney has also served as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State for Assistance to the former Soviet Union, and as a USAID officer in US embassies in Budapest and Warsaw. Ms. Cheney received her bachelor's degree from Colorado College and her law degree from the University of Chicago.

[Emit]

12. I wonder

I had read a while back that Ledeen and others were supporting Reza Pahlavi II:

I wonder if this is part of Elizabeth Cheney's and Bush & Co.'s plan?

More:

There is a pact emerging between hawks in the administration, Jewish groups and Iranian supporters of Reza Pahlavi to push for regime change,' says Pooya Dayanim, president of the Iranian-Jewish Public Affairs Committee in Los Angeles and himself a hawk on Iran.

Already, this emerging coalition is reminiscent of the build up to the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan, with Pahlavi possibly assuming the role of Iraqi exile opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi or Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, all favourites of the neo-conservatives.

~snip~

One key Pahlavi supporter is former Reagan administration official Ledeen, now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
''Iran is ready to blow sky-high,'' wrote Ledeen as far back as November 2001. ''The Iranian people need only a bright spark of courage from the United States to ignite the flames of democratic revolution.''

Ledeen has joined with Amitay; ex-CIA head James Woolsey; former Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney; former senator Paul Simon and oil consultant Rob Sobhani to set up a group called the Coalition for Democracy in Iran.

http://www.sundayherald.com/34272


Ledeen on the subject:

...FP: Let us suppose that tomorrow you are brought into Bush's inner circle regarding Iraq and the War on Terror. The President asks you what concrete steps he should take next. What do you say?

Ledeen: Support the democratic revolutionaries in Iran and the Iranian-American broadcasters in California. Now, not tomorrow. That is the key to the entire war, in my opinion. There will never be peace in Iraq so long as the mullahs are in power in Tehran, and their favorite Assad reigns in Damascus.

Then tell the Saudis that they have to shut down the global network of radical schools and mosques, or we will make great trouble for them in the Shi'ite regions of the Kingdom (which happen to be the major oil producing regions as
well).

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:EFJlLGYsXdEJ:www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp%3FID%3D11512+American%2Bbroadcasters%2Bin%2BCalifornia%2BMichael%2BLedeen&hl=en



And then you have the IPC, who wants to take the MEK off the "US government’s hit list..."

Think Elizabeth Cheney will be backing the MEK in an attempt at a regime change from within? Seems the neocons are well connected to the IPC, too.

Iran Policy Committee:
Pentagon Mouthpiece, Israeli Ally, MEK Supporter
by John Stanton
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 19, 2005

The Iran Policy Committee (IPC) has a website up and running at iranpolicycommittee.org. (1) The IPC made the news in February of 2005 when it released a report titled “US Options for Iran.” In that report, the IPC recommended that a terrorist group known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) be removed from the US government’s hit list. The authors of the IPC report equate the terrorist MEK with the African National Congress that fought long and hard against the despicable all-white South African regime and its US supporters so many years ago. Of course, the implication here is that the MEK will somehow produce a Nelson Mandela, or at least is on the same playing field as Mandela’s group was.

Those two wacky thoughts should be enough to dismiss the eleven IPC principals, their mission and their clumsy report as nonsense. But here inside the Washington, DC Beltway, it’s never wise to dismiss ignorance until performing background checks on the individuals and their affiliations. The record shows that the IPC operates in very close proximity to the US intelligence community, has the support of 150 members in the US Congress, and is linked to individuals/groups who successfully lied and led the US into another Vietnam-like war, and whose primary purpose is the creation of a US empire that controls the world’s resources and protects a greater Israel. Crazy is selling these days and the loonies are in charge.

The IPC is supported by the neocon all-stars that we’ve come to know and love such as Doug Feith, Frank Gaffney, Mike Ledeen, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, et al. But these first benchers are running out of political muscle as their war in Iraq continues to drain the resources of the American people on all political, economic and military fronts. What’s worse, perhaps, is their “with us or against us” mentality that has caused new political and economic alliances to form (example: South America-China-Iran) and that has accelerated both conventional and nuclear arms races. Having failed on so many fronts, they recognize that to get the US into Iran, some new faces are needed and that’s where the IPC back benchers are critical to the forthcoming anti-Iranian/Persian propaganda operations.

The IPC is linked through its purpose and people to the Coalition for a Democratic Iran and the MEK, the Washington PAC, JINSA, AIPAC, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the DOD, the Center for Security Policy, and all the major US intelligence agencies. IPC members are primarily defense & security contractors/consultants and would benefit financially from a war with Iran.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Stanton0519.htm

[bananas]

17. Oh no...if they try to put another Pahlavi as dictator it will be disaster

the Iranians were really REALLY pissed off about the last one,
they wouldn't stand for this at all.

[Mistress Quickly]

3. That's just like

joining the military and fighting.

Right?

Right?

** crickets **

[neuvocat]

6. Do they wonder why no one takes them seriously anymore?

Just wondering.

[PVK]

7. What the hell is this about here?

"Cheney is better known to Iranian listeners of Voice of America’s Persian service than she is to Americans, although she publicly backed her sister Mary’s right to privacy when Democrats made an issue of her lesbianism in the 2004 election."

????

Democrats didn't "make an issue of her lesbianism"! SHE made an issue of it.

[Erika]

8. Mary lobbied gays/lesbians in 2000 for Cheney/Bush

and then disappeared in 2004 claiming to be a victim of Kerry. She's a true bitch.

[Bluebear]

14. The worst. nt

[alphafemale]

9. The war in Iraq is her father’s BUSINESS.

Finally. The truth.

[bigtree]

13. family business

IN MID-MID-MARCH 2005, as part of the new U.S. charm offensive toward Europe, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that the United States shares "the desire of European governments to secure Iran's adherence to its obligations through peaceful and diplomatic means." It was certainly a different tune from what had been sung, at least internally, since George Bush began his second term. It was also largely empty. Within the executive branch, there's little doubt that Dick Cheney along with Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton, Bush's choice to be the new ambassador to the United Nations—is committed to a tougher Iran policy. Cheney's daughter Elizabeth has been assigned to the State Department to head democratization efforts there. "Vice President Cheney is giving interviews and speeches that paint a stark picture of a soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Iran and declaring that this is something the Bush administration will not tolerate."

David Kay, the White House's former weapons inspector in Iraq, warned. He added that, as with Iraq, "Iranian exiles are providing the press and government with a steady stream of new 'evidence' concerning Iran's nuclear-weapons activities." In the spring of 2003, hawks in the Pentagon drafted a national-security presidential directive on Iran, a statement that formally commits the White House to a certain policy, the way a congressional act does for Congress. According to one official, the proposed language argued that the United States should push harder for regime change and target Iran's key economic and political centers, using independent actors not formally employed by the U.S. government. Due to infighting within the administration, the presidential directive was never formalized. Several current and former officials say they now expect movement toward a presidential directive to begin again.

No matter what Rice says publicly, administration hawks also have been pushing for a stronger commitment to the possibility of outright military strikes action Rice herself has pointedly refused to rule out. New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh recently reported that the United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran, identifying potential nuclear, chemical, and missile sites that could be targets of missile strikes and commando raids.

One government official I spoke with confirmed that last fall, after a meeting of "principals"—cabinet secretaries and other top officials—Iran specialists within the administration were told that a secret new strategy of "deterrence and disruption" toward Tehran was being adopted. This strategy, the official said, could mean a number of different things. It involves conducting stepped-up intelligence assessments of Iranian nuclear facilities, as well as launching covert actions by Special Forces inside Iran in an effort to sabotage those facilities. "You'll start seeing reports;' he told me, "of an 'accidental gas leak' at Natanz," a suspected nuclear site.

[Emit]

16. bigtree, thanks for that article

Personally, I think it deserves it's own post. It ties together all that I have been reading about over the last several months.

[bigtree]

18. It was packed full wasn't it

could have been written yesterday

[upi402]

10. They could trot Clinton out, it still won't work.

duh

[TlalocW]

15. Get the lesbian daughter out there

Who better to lead a war on religious extremists - in this case, mullahs - than a lesbian? Why don't these people think?

TlalocW

[susu369]

19. Married but still retains the Cheney name

Hmm-m-m....

[SpiralHawk]

20. Looks a lot like her mom

And apparently has the same jaundiced neoCON view of the planet

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

23. Because that IS Lynne Cheney. Elizabeth Cheney here:

[spanone]

21. Like father like daughter...nation fucking.

[enfield collector]

22. more cronyism, I'm not surprised.

[pschoeb]

24. “democracy czar” pretty much sums it up

Using the term czar is really idoitic in general, I hate all the stupid czar titles the US has been using. But calling someone a “democracy czar” has got to be the best, showing exactly what their true intentions are, why not just call her the "democracy dictator" or the "democracy tyrant".