IRAN.

[akarunway 1]

So. Shouldn't Bechtel, Halliburton and KBR be on the terrorist list because I"M SURE they are doing business w/ Iran whether under or over the table. And no bid, no tax contracts since they moved HQ to Dubuai. Sweet deal eh. Sumbags. Story.>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/14/AR2007081401662_pf.html

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[rushmc 23]

Quote

So. Shouldn't Bechtel, Halliburton and KBR be on the terrorist list because I"M SURE they are doing business w/ Iran whether under or over the table. And no bid, no tax contracts since they moved HQ to Dubuai. Sweet deal eh. Sumbags. Story.> [/url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/14/AR2007081401662_pf.html[url] I say let em have the nukes. Maybe we'll keep our nose outta their beeswax. And fuck all you NWO and neocon motherfuckers

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[akarunway 1]

Quote

Quote

So. Shouldn't Bechtel, Halliburton and KBR be on the terrorist list because I"M SURE they are doing business w/ Iran whether under or over the table. And no bid, no tax contracts since they moved HQ to Dubuai. Sweet deal eh. Sumbags. Story.> [/url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/14/AR2007081401662_pf.html[url] I say let em have the nukes. Maybe we'll keep our nose outta their beeswax. And fuck all you NWO and neocon motherfuckers

That the bst you got?

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[TheAnvil 0]

Halliburton's move abroad should be a warning shot to those who seek to use the tax code punitively towards corporations. The corporate tax code in the US is not conducive to companies being located here in the flat world environs of today.

KBR is a Halliburton subsidiary. If you have issues with a sole-source government contract, you should cite why you disagree with the J&A signed by the cognizant Competition Advocate. To which one are you referring?

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[Darius11 12]

Yet Another example of our great arrogance and bully attitude.
Killing is ok if we are doing it or our friends are doing it, but hey I guess it is survival of the fittest.
It’s when people try to make our actions honorable that I have an issue with it.

Don't forget it's all for the money

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[skydyvr 0]

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And fuck all you NWO and neocon motherfuckers

Aren't you a sweetheart.

. . =(_8^(1)

[SpeedRacer 1]

clicky

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[nerdgirl 0]

U.S. Holds Up-To-Date Blueprint for Attack on Iran

And of course, as we all know, per our Constitutional system the US military responds to/acts on direction from civilian leadership. I do not – in any way – criticize developing plans and fleshing out hypothetical/notional scenarios. What data goes into such planning scenarios, how the scenarios are interpreted, the decision-making process, and decisions to act (or not & how to act) are of significant concern.

Found Blix’s comments very interesting.

VR/Marg

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

The U.S. military has plans and forces available for an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities although defense officials remain reserved about military intervention in this situation, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Nov. 8).

Potential targets in Iran include its Natanz uranium enrichment facility, various ballistic missile installations and military bases as well as naval resources that Iran could use to cut off the Straits of Hormuz, an important route for Gulf oil shipments.

The U.S. Navy has stationed an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf carrying about 60 fighter jets as well as other aircraft that could be used in an attack against Iran. U.S. fighters and bombers have also been placed at air bases in Iraq, a regional air operations center in Qatar and elsewhere in the region.

Roughly 2,200 U.S. Marines have been deployed to the Middle East on ships led by the amphibious assault vessel USS Kearsarge.

The United States could also deploy Delta Force soldiers or other special operations commandos to Iran to carry out a stealth attack against its nuclear facilities.

U.S. Army and Marine forces remain overstretched from years-long ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Little evidence exists that senior military officials have advocated action against Iran.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly refused to rule out an attack even as he said the United States was pursuing diplomacy and new economic sanctions to pressure Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program. He said on Oct. 25 that recently announced U.S. unilateral sanctions against Iran were intended as an alternative to war rather than an escalation toward conflict.

When asked late last month if planning for an attack on Iran was being stepped up or only going through regular updates, Gates said he “would characterize it as routine.”

Conventional military forces in Iran are considered to be more limited than the forces of other Middle Eastern countries, but Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the Iranian military possesses considerable defensive capabilities.

“Its strengths in overt conflict are more defensive than offensive, but Iran has already shown it has great capability to resist outside pressure and any form of invasion and done so under far more adverse and divisive conditions than exist in Iran today,” Cordesman wrote this year.

Cordesman estimated that Iran maintains an army of about 350,000 troops (Robert Burns, Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, Nov. 9).

Meanwhile, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix on Wednesday described Iran as a potentially greater threat than prewar Iraq, the Melbourne, Australia, Age reported.

Blix said that Iran’s is not “practically prostrate” as Iraq was in 2003.

“They had had sanctions since 1991 and were in miserable shape and everyone knew that,” he said.

“In the case of Iran, this is very different. Iran is a country that has a big military apparatus,” he said

“They have also a large nuclear sector with two nuclear power reactors that are ready to go into operation, research reactors going on, a lot of people and a lot of money.

“Therefore the suspicions and concerns about Iran and enriched uranium are far more substantial than they were in the case of Iraq,” Blix said (Daniel Flitton, The Age, Nov. 8).

In remarks published yesterday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called on Iran not to heighten tensions with Western powers over its nuclear program and urged Tehran to reach an international compromise enabling it to pursue a peaceful nuclear energy program, Reuters reported.

“The world fears that Iran's nuclear program will lead to developing nuclear weapons. Iran has announced its nuclear program is intended for peaceful use,” Abdullah said. “If this is the case, then we don't see any justification for escalation, confrontation and challenge, which only makes issues more complicated” (Reuters I, Nov. 8).

A high-level Russian diplomat said Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not deliver a secret message to Iran about its nuclear program while attending a summit in Tehran last month, Reuters reported (see GSN, Oct. 19).

On Oct. 17, Iranian state media quoted Ali Larijani, then Iran’s top nuclear envoy, as saying Putin had delivered a “special message” to Iran’s government. The report provided no further details.

“There were no secret messages,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said when asked about Putin’s visit.

Some media reports indicated that Putin’s message might have been that the United States would open direct negotiations with Tehran if it abandoned its uranium enrichment efforts (Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters II, Nov. 7).

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[mccallj 0]

USA always has plans for what the invasion of a hostile country would look like. They exist for Russia, China, N. Korea, Iran etc.. This is nothing new, it has been going on for decades. As far as Halliburton moving their corporate offices to Dubai, its a tax move, nothing more. All of their top people still live in the USA. If they do business with Iran in anyway they will be fined hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars and the executives will face criminal prosecution. There is no protection for things like that. Even if they were pardoned by the President how would it be any different than Marc Rich being pardoned by Clinton? As far as the guy talking about NWO and neocons, he needs to either grow up and get some common sense or go back to high school.

“Last week I helped my friend stay put. It's a lot easier than helping someone move. I just went over to his house and made sure that he did not start to load his shit into a truck.”

[warpedskydiver 0]

If they dealt with Iran outside the wishes of the USA/UK they would end up in a trajic self-inflicted accident, that proved to be fatal.

[nerdgirl 0]

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USA always has plans for what the invasion of a hostile country would look like. They exist for Russia, China, N. Korea, Iran etc.

True ... I'm not sure anyone was debating that. It is entirely possible, however, that I missed that part.
So what do you think about the indications with respect to the "Up-To-Date" plans as compiled by GSN or based on other sites/cites/assessments and why?

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[Lefty 0]

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but hey I guess it is survival of the fittest.

That's the way the world works. "The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must." Sounds like as good a system as any, to me.

Provoking a reaction isn't the same thing as saying something meaningful.
-Calvin

[nerdgirl 0]

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"The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must." Sounds like as good a system as any, to me.

Really? Why?

Historically which nation-states have most resembled what you describe in practice?

Consider applying your notional concept to modern, Westphalian international security and nuclear weapons proliferation. A number of states voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons programs or unquestionably posses the latent technical capability to pursue nuclear weapons programs if they made such a decision, including but not limited to Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, South Africa, Japan, ROK.

Some of those nation-states voluntarily relinquished that “strength” because they were confident in agreements – signed pieces of paper and verbal promises – made by the US that they would be protected under our “nuclear umbrella.” Would you advocate that those states … & others with latent technical capability pursue … their own strength through proliferation of nuclear weapons? The now-declassified predictions/assessments of SecDef Robert McNamara in 1963 suggested that w/in 10 years the world would see up to 8 additional nuclear weapons states with additional other possible candidates for NWS (p. 6 has the now-infamous table). Consider the role of the NPT and the vigorous participation of the US in its negotiation in the mid to late 1960s largely due to concerns that US-USSR deterrence would not be enough to limit proliferation.

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

W/r/t the overall thread:

This morning’s Financial Times features an interview with Admiral Fallon, in which the head of US CENTCOM criticizes the rhetoric of folks like AEI’s Michael Leeden and others who are advocating for military action.

Admiral Fallon: “None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go…

“Getting Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.

“There has got to be some combination of strength and willingness to engage. How to come up with the right combination of that is the real trick.

“We need to see them do something along the lines of ‘we are serious about having a dialogue’ and then maybe we can do something,”

While it’s not a completely parallel situation, one might take pause & wonder if Adm Fallon would be the next Gen Eric Shinseki? [Frankly, I don’t think so, largely because the dynamics of OSD have changed under SecDef Gates and DepSecDef England.]

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying