Growing Risk of U.S.-Iran Hostilities Based on False Pretexts, Intel Vets Warn

 

By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), February 26, 2018
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/26/growing-risk-of-u-s-iran-hostilities-based-on-false-pretexts-intel-vets-warn/

Copied in below is the Introduction to VIPS’ latest Memorandum (link above).  The 21 VIPS signers are second to none in relevant, agenda-free expertise.

February 26, 2018

MEMORANDUM FOR:  The President

FROM:  Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT:  War With Iran

INTRODUCTION

In our December 21st Memorandum to you,
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/21/intel-vets-tell-trump-iran-is-not-top-terror-sponsor/  we cautioned that the claim that Iran is currently the world’s top sponsor of terrorism is unsupported by hard evidence. Meanwhile, other false accusations against Iran have intensified. Thus, we feel obliged to alert you to the virtually inevitable consequences of war with Iran, just as we warned President George W. Bush six weeks before the U.S. attack on Iraq 15 years ago.

In our first Memorandum in this genre,
https://consortiumnews.com/2003/02/05/powells-un-speech-and-the-case-for-war/
we told then-President Bush that we saw “no compelling reason” to attack Iraq, and warned “the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” The consequences will be far worse, should the U.S. become drawn into war with Iran. We fear that you are not getting the straight story on this from your intelligence and national security officials.

After choosing “War With Iran” for the subject-line of this Memo, we were reminded that we had used it before, namely, for a Memorandum to President Obama on August 3, 2010
https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080310c.html
in similar circumstances. You may wish to ask your staff to give you that one to read and ponder. It included a startling quote from then-Chairman of President Bush Jr.’s Intelligence Advisory Board (and former national security adviser to Bush Sr.) Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who told the Financial Times on October 14, 2004 that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had George W. Bush “mesmerized;” that “Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger.”  We wanted to remind you of that history, as you prepare to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week.

Some comic relief …

Millions of Americans Demand $130,000 for Not Having Sex With Trump
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
18 February 18

Millions of Americans on Wednesday demanded that Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, issue them checks in the amount of $130,000 for not having sex with Trump.

After Cohen revealed that he had issued such a check to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who he claims never had intimate relations with his client, there was widespread outrage among other Americans who had also not had sex with Trump but had not been paid for not doing so.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for Stormy Daniels,” Tracy Klugian, a florist in Santa Rosa, California, said. “I just want my check, too.”

Harland Dorrinson, a bank teller in Akron, Ohio, said that he had already e-mailed Cohen to demand payment. “I have never come close to having sex with Trump, and that should be worth something,” he said. “Specifically, $130,000.”

But, even as millions of Americans clamored to be compensated for abstaining from sex with Cohen’s client, others, like Carol Foyler, of Tallahassee, Florida, took a different view. “Never having sex with Donald Trump should be a reward in itself,” she said.

This is from Reader Supported News, which, since it stopped re-posting articles by the late Robert Parry a year or two ago, has been serving thin gruel from writers drinking Kool Aid at the DNC/DOJ/FBI/CIA trough.  But, this time satirist Borowitz, we think, hits the mark.  Enjoy.

Vignettes and Reflections About Robert Parry, The Consummate Outsider Journalist & Founder of Consortiuimnews.com — Shared By His Son Nat, John Pilger, and Ray

February 9, 2018 (58 minutes)

Nat Parry, John Pilger, and Ray share stories about journalist Robert Parry who died on January 27 after suffering strokes and undiagnosed pancreatic cancer.  Hosting the telephone interviews was Michael Welch of the Global Research Radio News Hour.

Pilger speaks from minute 2 to 16; Ray from 16:40 to 29:30; Nat from minute 30 to 50 and, lastly, there is 7 minutes of an interview of Robert Parry himself that Welch recorded in December 2017.  There Bob describes the ever increasing challenges to good journalism, including marginalization of alternative journalism by the giant Internet corporations.

Ray took advantage of the chance to tell a highly instructive vignette about Bob Parry and what he called the Establishment (between minutes 20:00 and 23:30).

Russiagate or Intelgate?

By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation, February 7, 2018

https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-or-intelgate/

The publication of the Republican House Committee memo and reports of other documents increasingly suggest not only a “Russiagate” without Russia but also something darker: The “collusion” may not have been in the White House or the Kremlin.

 

Warning to those who have still not recovered from the HWHW (Hillary Would Have Won) virus after 15 months: read at your own risk.

 

Steve Cohen is still the best.  Thankfully he not only knows about Russia and Joe McCarthy, but also he is allergic to the Kool Aid in so ample supply these days in “learned” circles.  “Thankfully,” for the future of our Republic is at stake.

 

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Deep State, and the dominant drivel — not only in the media, but also from people who should know better — may well help what in Soviet parlance were called “the organs of state security” prevail over our Constitution, as they did in the USSR. Please read, reflect, ask questions, and spread this one around.