| Topic: |
Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus |
| User: |
"=?utf-8?B?VGhlIExhc3QgMjQ2OCBkYXlz4oSiIOKZpQ==?=" |
| Date: |
17 Mar 2006 07:34:17 PM |
| Object: |
world war III news, saturday, march 18th, 2006 AD...............The fifth horseman |
http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060316-085159-4808r.htm
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fifth horseman
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
Published March 17, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As President Bush's closest advisers enter their fifth year of 16- to
20-hour days, physical and mental exhaustion appears to have produced a
dearth of geopolitical thinking.
Mr. Bush still sees translucent light at the end of the Iraqi
tunnel he led the coalition into three years ago. Others are afraid
this may be the search party looking for survivors -- or Iran's Aladdin
lamp showing Shia Iraq how to rub it for a wish back to the dark ages
of religious obscurantism.
To sort it all out, Congress has asked veteran bipartisan
geopolitical thinkers James A. Baker III, the former secretary of
state, and Lee H. Hamilton, former chairman of the House International
Relations Committee, and co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, to
lead an "Iraq Study Group" of 10 prominent Republicans and Democrats.
With the president's "war on terror" ratings down to 36 percent,
the Iraqi "rethink" group came not a moment too soon. Much bigger
threats than civil war in Iraq already loom on horizon 2007. Israel is
marking its new frontier with a 420-mile, $2.2 billion barrier that
leaves Hamas free to cobble together a state from the patchwork of land
left, sans East Jerusalem, which can be neither viable nor contiguous,
as pledged by Mr. Bush. Intifada III is now only a matter of time --
with rockets and missiles over the wall.
If Pakistan's next elections were held now instead of 2007, Osama
bin Laden's Urdu-speaking fan club could easily win a majority -- and
inherit control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Today, they already
govern two of Pakistan's four provinces.
This time round the South Asia track, Mr. Bush inadvertently
humiliated his friend Pervez Musharraf, a "major non-NATO ally" since
2004, by extending to rival India, which is not a major non-NATO ally,
a sweetheart nuclear deal denied Pakistan. This was a major boost for
Mr. Musharraf's extremist opponents.
The deal, which faces heavy weather in Congress, allows India,
which did not sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, to separate its
military and civilian nuclear programs and buy U.S. nuclear fuel and
technology. The Economist magazine's cover put a cowboy-clad George
Bush riding a nuclear bomb down to earthly destruction, headlined,
"George W. Bush in Dr. STRANGEDEAL -- or How I learned to stop worrying
and love my friend's bomb."
The Economist, read by almost half a million movers and shakers the
world over, called it a "dangerous gamble" because "in his rush to
accommodate India, Mr. Bush is missing a chance to win wider nuclear
restraint in one of the world's tougher neighborhoods."
It's hard to see the faintest inkling of restraint in Iran. Its
nuclear horse is out of the barn. And it is becoming increasingly clear
neither the International Atomic Energy Commission nor the U.N.
Security Council can persuade Iran's Israel-hating President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad to give up his new role as the fifth horseman of the
apocalypse. He's the one called Hades that shows no pity or mercy.
The late author Larry Collins' "5th Horseman" was a nuclear bomb
plot in Manhattan circa 1980. What can the U.S. do to thwart fiction
becoming reality?
Draconian sanctions voted by the U.N. Security Council are a
nonstarter. China, Russia and the European Union have far too much
trade at stake. Even if sanctions were possible, Iran has correctly
stated, it can dish out as good as it gets.
As long as Iraq is the albatross that sharply restricts military
options in Iran, secret high-level diplomacy might be worth exploring.
What could the U.S. get in return for a nonaggression treaty with Iran?
This could only be plumbed at the level of a secret meeting that stays
secret with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei in
the holy city of Qom.
The Ayatollah Khamenei says Iran will never retreat from its
nuclear ambitions. However, recent emissaries who claim to know his
thinking say he wants the wherewithal for rapid production of a nuclear
weapon if such a need should arise, but would stop short of acquiring
one. Could the U.S. live with that?
The quid pro quo needs triangulating. Would the ayatollah be
willing to grease the skids under his firebrand president? If so, in
return for what? A free hand in post-U.S. Iraq? What does he seek in
Iraq? Breakup of the country or a unitary state? If the latter, on what
terms?
The U.S. isn't too good at secret diplomacy in Iran. Last time
round, it was a 1986 scheme to fund the Nicaraguan Contra rebels from
profits gained by selling arms to Iran in return for the release of
U.S. hostages held by Hezbollah in Beirut. The architect of the
intricate plot was bridge champion Michael Ledeen whose Iranian
go-between was Monte Carlo-based arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar
(whose normal 10 percent commission suddenly escalated to a 370 percent
markup on 1,000 anti-tank TOW missiles).
Then-former NSC Adviser Robert C. McFarlane and NSC aide Col.
Oliver North traveled to Tehran in 1986. They brought a cake in the
shape of a key, a symbolic opening of U.S.-Iran relations. On a
subsequent trip, Col. North offered his Iranian host a bible signed by
President Reagan.
The scheme unraveled quickly after a Lebanese magazine exposed the
entire arrangement. Trip organizer and Mr. McFarlane's successor as NSC
adviser, Adm. John Poindexter, and Ollie North, who ran the undercover
operation, were indicted and convicted of lying to Congress, and later
pardoned by Bush 41.
Something subtler, with inbuilt plausible deniability, is now
needed to negotiate a geopolitical bargain that would derail a nascent
axis of Islamist extremists from Hamas to Baghdad to Tehran to
Islamabad (post-Musharraf) to a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. The
geopolitical stakes are so much larger than the vain pursuit of the
ideal in Iraq.
Besides, Israel is not prepared to sit this one out indefinitely.
If diplomacy as usual goes nowhere, Jerusalem will strike the country
whose president says he wants to wipe Israel off the map -- and the
rest of the world will face the mother of all Mideastern crises. Oil at
$200 no longer strains credulity.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and
of United Press International.
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| User: "=?utf-8?B?VGhlIExhc3QgMjQ2OCBkYXlz4oSiIOKZpQ==?=" |
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| Title: Re: world war III news, saturday, march 18th, 2006 AD...............The fifth horseman |
17 Mar 2006 07:40:51 PM |
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Interesting, insightful article on the Front-page magazine website:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=3D21704
HOOROO
UNCLE WALLY
---0---
Paul Craig Roberts and the Certifiable Right
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 17, 2006
Quick =E2=80=93 what columnist alleged in an article Thursday that President
=E2=80=9CBush intends to attack Iran and that he will use every means to
bring war about?=E2=80=9D That Bush has used =E2=80=9Cbribery and coercion=
=E2=80=9D to
block =E2=80=9Cevery effort to bring the dispute to a peaceful end=E2=80=9D=
? That
=E2=80=9Cin order to gain a pretext for attacking Iran,=E2=80=9D he and a
=E2=80=9C=E2=80=99black opts=E2=80=99 [sic.] group will orchestrate [an] at=
tack=E2=80=9D on
U=2ES. soil?
One would never expect to hear the author is =E2=80=9Cchairman of the
Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent
Institute, a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former
contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant
secretary of the U.S. Treasury=E2=80=9D under Ronald Reagan. That
progressively unhinged man is nationally syndicated columnist Paul
Craig Roberts.
In a delusional column entitled =E2=80=9CIranophobia,=E2=80=9D posted yeste=
rday=E2=80=99s
on LewRockwell.com, Roberts related =E2=80=9C[o]ne of the more extraordinary
suggestions=E2=80=9D he had heard of how President Bush will develop this
=E2=80=9Cpretext=E2=80=9D to nuke Tehran:
a low yield, perhaps tactical, nuclear weapon will be exploded some
distance out from a U.S. port. Death and destruction will be minimized,
but fear and hysteria will be maximized. Americans will be told that
the ship bearing the weapon was discovered and intercepted just in
time, thanks to Bush=E2=80=99s illegal spying program, and that Iran is to
blame. A more powerful wave of fear and outrage will again bind the
American people to Bush, and the U.S. media will not report the rest of
the world=E2=80=99s doubts of the explanation.
He concluded:
Reads like a Michael Crichton plot, doesn=E2=80=99t it?
Fantasy? Let=E2=80=99s hope so.
Even on the far-Left, such theories would be unwelcome. Although Kurt
Nimmo (a critic of DiscoverTheNetworks.org) and others have claimed for
years that Bush secretly plans to pre-emptively decimate Iran, none
have publicly claimed he would kill Americans as a pretext. The only
detail Roberts omitted was whether Bush was doing the bidding of the
Freemasons, the Illuminati, the British royal family, or the Vatican.
Not only is this irresponsible slander, it=E2=80=99s not even a new
conspiracy theory. Last August, an internet rumor campaign claimed the
Bush administration would set off a nuclear device in the port of
Charleston, SC, during a military exercise, and use the backlash as to
attack Iran. One of its promulgators was Webster Griffin Tarpley, who
wrote an =E2=80=9Cunauthorized biography=E2=80=9D of George H.W. Bush with =
Lyndon
LaRouche=E2=80=99s house historian, Anton Chaitkin. Tarpley =E2=80=93 who a=
lso
claims 9/11 was an inside job =E2=80=93 wrote last August:
The synthetic terror event required by the Bush-Cheney clique and its
masters is likely to be conducted through the U.S. military and
intelligence apparatus under the cover of a terror drill or a war
exercise.
Antiwar.com=E2=80=99s Dennis =E2=80=9CJustin=E2=80=9D Raimondo also hinted:
The other weird aspect of this =E2=80=9Cnuke Iran=E2=80=9D story is the tri=
ggering
mechanism: a terrorist attack in the U.S. on the scale of 9/11=E2=80=A6why
develop this plan at this particular moment? What aren't they telling
us? I shudder to think about it.
Greg Szymanski, a reporter for the UFO website ArcticBeacon.com and the
American Free Press =E2=80=93 which the ADL Anti-Defamation League has
classified as =E2=80=9Cthe most widely read publication on the fringe
Right=E2=80=9D =E2=80=93 played a pivotal role in formulating this nonsensi=
cal
theory. In his recounting, the Bush administration fired Gen. Kevin P.
Byrnes for threatening to expose the nuclear plot, using his affair
with a military woman as a cover. The theory of a U.S. nuclear strike
on Charleston was soon circulated by such crazies as Information
Clearing House, PrisonPlanet.com, and various =E2=80=9Cpatriot=E2=80=9D gro=
ups.
(LaRouche=E2=80=99s own speculation predated others by weeks, writing last
July: =E2=80=9CWith Congress out of Washington, the Cheney-led White House
would almost certainly unleash a =E2=80=98Guns of August=E2=80=99 attack on
Iran.=E2=80=9D)
Conspiracists so pestered Charleston media about an impending Dixie
doomsday that the local newspaper, The Post and Courier, called
military brass to get the full story: a military exercise had been
planned, in Virginia, to simulate a terrorist nuclear attack; no actual
nuclear devices would be set off. No mushroom cloud appeared, and the
conspiracy died out.
Until Roberts=E2=80=99 column on LewRockwell.com.
Roberts=E2=80=99 credulous recounting of this slander recalls Howard Dean=
=E2=80=99s
allusion to the =E2=80=9Cmost interesting theory=E2=80=9D he had heard abou=
t 9/11,
specifically that Bush had advance knowledge of the plot.
The Roberts-Raimondo-Rockwell wing of conservatism has become the nexus
where extremist fantasies of Left and Right converge into a toxic
mixture of venomous lunacy. The =E2=80=9COld Right-New Left Alliance=E2=80=
=9D dates
back to Murray Rothbard=E2=80=99s protests in the Vietnam era but revived
during the rise of Pat Buchanan-style protectionism and isolationism;
9/11 has given it a new vibrancy altogether.
Like his late collaborator, Lew Rockwell has addressed leftist antiwar
demonstrations. His website and the Buchanan journal The American
Conservative featured the writings of Karen Kwiatkowski, who began her
career with LaRouche and later graduated to Salon and MoveOn.org. Since
the advent of the War on Terror, the Rockwellites have birthed a
rhetoric that is at once indistinguishable from the far-Left and the
White-Wing.
The strange career of Paul Craig Roberts has been a microcosm of this
trend. In recent years, the former Reaganite has begun writing for
Alexander Cockburn=E2=80=99s ultra-leftist website Counterpunch. Roberts=E2=
=80=99
writings, however, best illustrate his sad intellectual decline.
Roberts has written that killing Americans is not the full extent of
Bush=E2=80=99s perfidious hope: the =E2=80=9CBush administration is moving =
toward
initiating two more wars, one with Iran and one with North Korea.=E2=80=9D
Bush-the-liar is provoking World War III in Iran with his
prevarications. =E2=80=9CThe Bush administration is leveling false charges
against Iran, just as it did against Iraq, of conspiring to make
nuclear weapons. These charges are known to be false by the Bush
administration and by the entire world.=E2=80=9D That would come as news,
given the recent recordings in which Iranian officials acknowledge the
obvious: their nuclear program was not intended to fulfill energy
needs. The 444-day terrorist ordeal of Terry Anderson? That was our
fault, too:
It is past time for the U.S. to give up its quarter century feud with
Iran. U.S. interference in Iranian internal affairs was the source of
the feud. We need to acknowledge it and get over it.
His conclusion could hardly have been stated with less fervor or
illogic by any fist-pumping leftist at an International ANSWER rally:
There would be no terrorism if the U.S. would stop interfering in the
internal affairs of Middle Eastern countries and if Israel stopped
stealing the West Bank from the Palestinians. The Bush administration
knows this, and that is why the administration spreads the
propagandistic lie that =E2=80=9Cthey=E2=80=9D (Muslims) hate us and our wa=
y of
life. This lie is the excuse for American aggression.
Roberts has seen Bush=E2=80=99s malfeasance before. In July 2004, he
pronounced, =E2=80=9Ceveryone interested in the truth=E2=80=A6knows that De=
fense
Undersecretary Douglas Feith, with the permission of Secretary Don
Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, created an unofficial
=E2=80=98Iraqi intelligence cell=E2=80=99 within the Pentagon to produce pr=
opaganda
to justify an invasion of Iraq.=E2=80=9D Somehow, this eluded the 9/11
Commission and every other body ever to investigate the worldwide
intelligence failure over Iraqi WMDs.
Roberts has declared the war in Iraq lost, not to mention criminal. Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are =E2=80=9Ctorture centers,=E2=80=9D and Bush w=
ould be
=E2=80=9Cprosecuted.=E2=80=9D (This although Gitmo=E2=80=99s well-fed detai=
nees are
regularly provided with religious materials and motherly affection by
female agents in flowing dresses.) His pessimism about winning the War
on Terror dates literally to its inception. Two days after 9/11,
Roberts wrote, =E2=80=9Ca guilt-ridden people are no match for fanatical
opponents who believe in their cause.=E2=80=9D
His writings also seemingly justify terrorist attacks against innocent
Americans, because, like Ward Churchill, he believes there are no
innocent Americans. =E2=80=9CAmericans are complicit in the deaths of tens =
of
thousands of Iraqi women and children as =E2=80=98collateral damage,=E2=80=
=99=E2=80=9D he
writes. So what is difference between a military target and a
=E2=80=9Ccomplicit=E2=80=9D family of four in Des Moines?
However, his concerns are not confined to foreign affairs; he believes
the United States and Great Britain are becoming =E2=80=9Cpolice states at
home.=E2=80=9D Indeed, he writes, =E2=80=9CThe Bush regime is asserting the=
F=C3=BChrer
Principle, and Americans are buying it.=E2=80=9DBy April 2004, he had alrea=
dy
deemed America =E2=80=9Clocked on a course toward conscription and a wider
war.=E2=80=9D This he wrote six months before House Republicans defeated a
bill, opposed by the White House and introduced by a leftist Democrat,
that would reinstate the draft.
Bush, he claims, has run roughshod over civil liberties, torturing
American citizens. =E2=80=9CThe prohibition against torture,=E2=80=9D he in=
formed,
=E2=80=9Chas been breached by the practice of plea bargaining.=E2=80=9D
He continued that the Bush/Ashcroft police state had destroyed the
fundamentals of American jurisprudence by prosecuting pro-terror lawyer
Lynne Stewart, for illegally passing messages on to terrorists
overseas:
The attorney-client privilege, another great achievement, has been
breached by the Lynne Stewart case. As the attorney for a terrorist,
Stewart represented her client in ways disapproved by prosecutors.
Stewart was indicted, tried, and convicted of providing material
support to terrorists.
Nor was she the only victim of heavy-handed executive prosecutors in
Roberts=E2=80=99 view: =E2=80=9CThe federal charges against [American Talib=
an John
Walker] Lindh are trumped up charges.=E2=80=9D After all, =E2=80=9CThe Tali=
ban did
not attack the U.S. The U.S. attacked the Taliban.=E2=80=9D
He lauded Al Gore=E2=80=99s speech at Constitution Hall in January, dubbing
it =E2=80=9Cthe first sign of leadership from the Democratic Party in six
years.=E2=80=9D He blamed its allegedly slight coverage on the =E2=80=9Cfac=
t=E2=80=9D
that =E2=80=9CU.S. media now highly concentrated in a few corporate hands.=
=E2=80=9D
Of course, Gore=E2=80=99s address was filled with blatant falsehoods. The
sour ex-president-elect claimed President Bush had violated federal law
by wiretapping terrorists. (Roberts also blasted the NSA anti-terrorist
spying program and lambasted the New York Times for not exposing it
earlier.) Gore similarly fibbed that Bush=E2=80=99s interrogation policies
=E2=80=9Cplainly constitute torture=E2=80=9D and =E2=80=9Cover 100 of these=
captives have
reportedly died while being tortured.=E2=80=9D Gore shortly headed overseas
to spread the same deception.
Roberts, who shares many of the moral concerns of religious
conservatives, saluted Jimmy Carter=E2=80=99s newest book, Our Endangered
Values, a rambling collection of bile alleging the Bush administration
is fascistic, torturous, and racist, and that Southern Baptists and the
late Pope John Paul II are responsible for Islamic female circumcision.
Roberts jumps on Carter=E2=80=99s bandwagon, claiming, =E2=80=9Cchildren as=
young
as 8 years old are being held in indefinite detention and tortured.=E2=80=
=9D
To understand Gitmo, Roberts also recommends the book Hitler=E2=80=99s
Prisons.
Paul Craig Roberts has outstripped both Gore and Carter in his claims
of the Bush police state. This Reagan appointee claims Bush is
preparing concentration camps. Three weeks ago, he declaimed, =E2=80=9CWe n=
ow
read of Halliburton awarded a $350 million contract to build detention
camps in the United States.=E2=80=9D (In the same column, he asserted Nikita
Kruschev recognized the evil of Stalinism and =E2=80=9Cbrought it to an
end.=E2=80=9D Pity no one notified Solzenitsyn or Sakharov.)
An equal opportunity irrationalist, Roberts has also suggested the
Clinton-era Oklahoma City bombing may have been the consequence of an
FBI =E2=80=9Csting operation that went awry.=E2=80=9D
Although he has compared President Bush unfavorably with Clinton and
smeared the Swift Boat Vets, he would not find himself at home in the
Democratic Party, either; he referred to that organization as =E2=80=9Ca Na=
zi
Party=E2=80=9D in 2000. Instead, while favorably reviewing Where the Right
Went Wrong, he asked, =E2=80=9CHaving experienced the Clinton and George W.
Bush administrations, do Americans wish they had elected Patrick J.
Buchanan president?=E2=80=9D Based upon previous election results, apparent=
ly
Roberts is among the less-than-one-percent of the electorate that does.
Roberts shares several common concerns with modern Buchananites: the
omnipresent influence of neocons, Zionist power generally, and the
society=E2=80=99s lack of reverence for white Christian civilization.
Roberts=E2=80=99 columns teem with hand-wringing references to =E2=80=9Cneo=
cons.=E2=80=9D
The Committee on the Present Danger, he warns, =E2=80=9Cconsists of
neoconservatives who are, in effect, an unregistered lobby group for
Israel=E2=80=99s Likud Party.=E2=80=9D The 9/11 reference above to =E2=80=
=9Ca
guilt-ridden people=E2=80=9D indicated the lack of white cohesion in dealing
with the dusky Arab menace, a concern he raised more than once.
Although the white middle class did not turn out for Pat in 2000,
Roberts forecast, =E2=80=9CSooner or later whites will wake up to the
realization that they are being marginalized in their own country, and
they will cease to support the two political parties that have
marginalized them.=E2=80=9D
Roberts has defended Strom Thurmond=E2=80=99s 1948 Dixiecrat run for the
presidency, and warned of the constant =E2=80=9Cmarginalization of
native-born white citizens.=E2=80=9D Not surprisingly, he has belittled the
Supreme Court=E2=80=99s Brown v. the Board of Education decision, which he
states, =E2=80=9Cstrikes at the heart of democracy.=E2=80=9D Indeed, he cla=
ims
America was well on its way to desegregation without the decision, as
proven by=E2=80=A6federal documents of the Truman administration. Presumably
the federalized National Guard troops stationed in Little Rock and
Birmingham were part of Eisenhower and Kennedy=E2=80=99s police state
designs.
Roberts also shows antipathy for the first Republican president.
Roberts declares there is much evidence that Abraham Lincoln
=E2=80=9Cinvaded=E2=80=9D the South =E2=80=9Cin order to hold on to the tar=
iff revenues
with which to subsidize Northern industry and build an American
Empire.=E2=80=9D Seemingly, for Roberts as so many other paleocons, our
nation=E2=80=99s greatest president is a villain, just like the present one.
Bush and Lincoln; not bad company to share.
Whatever his party leanings, one thing is clear: Roberts considers
modern conservatives the enemy. Last month, he wrote, =E2=80=9CLast week=E2=
=80=99s
annual Conservative Political Action Conference signaled the
transformation of American conservatism into brownshirtism.=E2=80=9D Why?
Because attendees jeered Bush administration critic Bob Barr. (Roberts
would have made a better case by mentioning the Muslim fundamentalists
and leftists who attended CPAC this year.) In fact, Roberts has
denounced the conservative movement as brownshirted fascism for some
time. Already by October 2004, he had likened conservatives to
=E2=80=9Cbrownshirts.=E2=80=9D Last June, he referred to =E2=80=9CBush and =
his neocon
brownshirts=E2=80=9D before branding Bush a =E2=80=9Cwar criminal.=E2=80=9D=
Last February
15, he insisted the conservative media had =E2=80=9Cjoined the New
Brownshirts.=E2=80=9D On May Day 2004, he wrote his former publication,
National Review, was possessed of the =E2=80=9Cspirit=E2=80=9D of =E2=80=9C=
Hitler and
Stalin.=E2=80=9D
He has repudiated the conservative movement. It is past time for us to
reciprocate.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: world war III news, saturday, march 18th, 2006 AD...............The fifth horseman |
18 Mar 2006 01:57:21 AM |
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Funny how they try to impose Democracy on the ME, whilst reducing it in
the Homeland.
Even the Messiah could not pull them out of this ONE.
Not that he would.
LB
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| User: "Pastor Dave" |
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| Title: Re: world war III news, saturday, march 18th, 2006 AD...............The fifth horseman |
18 Mar 2006 08:18:57 AM |
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On 17 Mar 2006 17:34:17 -0800, "The Last 2468 days™ ?"
<stargatedecember2012@yahoo.ca> spake thusly:
http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060316-085159-4808r.htm
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fifth horseman
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
Published March 17, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newspaper prophecy. (:
--
"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass,
till all these things be fulfilled." - Matthew 24:34
I know God won't give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish He didn't trust me so much.
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| User: "Mr. Hyde" |
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| Title: Re: world war III news, saturday, march 18th, 2006 AD...............The fifth horseman |
18 Mar 2006 03:09:50 AM |
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Wally, you're 'Digressing'.
Where is that "BOLD Wally" that had 'premonitions' of things "To Come" like the 'Hurricanes'
of the southern region of North America of 2005, that I use to BANTER with ???
Are you "Cowering Out" like our good friend Su Z. (or what) ??? [nothing personal Suzanne - if
you are still here - I do realize it became to 'close to home' to tolerate.]
But, Wally, you are too dependant on "Other POSTed Predictions" (mostly Wrong), that I don't
recognize you anymore !!!
Will the REAL Wally; "Please Stand Up."
--
Mr. Hyde(ing) in Plan Site [ :-) ]
"The Last 2468 daysT ?" <stargatedecember2012@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:1142645657.787268.155740@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060316-085159-4808r.htm
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fifth horseman
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
Published March 17, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As President Bush's closest advisers enter their fifth year of 16- to
20-hour days, physical and mental exhaustion appears to have produced a
dearth of geopolitical thinking.
Mr. Bush still sees translucent light at the end of the Iraqi
tunnel he led the coalition into three years ago. Others are afraid
this may be the search party looking for survivors -- or Iran's Aladdin
lamp showing Shia Iraq how to rub it for a wish back to the dark ages
of religious obscurantism.
To sort it all out, Congress has asked veteran bipartisan
geopolitical thinkers James A. Baker III, the former secretary of
state, and Lee H. Hamilton, former chairman of the House International
Relations Committee, and co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, to
lead an "Iraq Study Group" of 10 prominent Republicans and Democrats.
With the president's "war on terror" ratings down to 36 percent,
the Iraqi "rethink" group came not a moment too soon. Much bigger
threats than civil war in Iraq already loom on horizon 2007. Israel is
marking its new frontier with a 420-mile, $2.2 billion barrier that
leaves Hamas free to cobble together a state from the patchwork of land
left, sans East Jerusalem, which can be neither viable nor contiguous,
as pledged by Mr. Bush. Intifada III is now only a matter of time --
with rockets and missiles over the wall.
If Pakistan's next elections were held now instead of 2007, Osama
bin Laden's Urdu-speaking fan club could easily win a majority -- and
inherit control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Today, they already
govern two of Pakistan's four provinces.
This time round the South Asia track, Mr. Bush inadvertently
humiliated his friend Pervez Musharraf, a "major non-NATO ally" since
2004, by extending to rival India, which is not a major non-NATO ally,
a sweetheart nuclear deal denied Pakistan. This was a major boost for
Mr. Musharraf's extremist opponents.
The deal, which faces heavy weather in Congress, allows India,
which did not sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, to separate its
military and civilian nuclear programs and buy U.S. nuclear fuel and
technology. The Economist magazine's cover put a cowboy-clad George
Bush riding a nuclear bomb down to earthly destruction, headlined,
"George W. Bush in Dr. STRANGEDEAL -- or How I learned to stop worrying
and love my friend's bomb."
The Economist, read by almost half a million movers and shakers the
world over, called it a "dangerous gamble" because "in his rush to
accommodate India, Mr. Bush is missing a chance to win wider nuclear
restraint in one of the world's tougher neighborhoods."
It's hard to see the faintest inkling of restraint in Iran. Its
nuclear horse is out of the barn. And it is becoming increasingly clear
neither the International Atomic Energy Commission nor the U.N.
Security Council can persuade Iran's Israel-hating President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad to give up his new role as the fifth horseman of the
apocalypse. He's the one called Hades that shows no pity or mercy.
The late author Larry Collins' "5th Horseman" was a nuclear bomb
plot in Manhattan circa 1980. What can the U.S. do to thwart fiction
becoming reality?
Draconian sanctions voted by the U.N. Security Council are a
nonstarter. China, Russia and the European Union have far too much
trade at stake. Even if sanctions were possible, Iran has correctly
stated, it can dish out as good as it gets.
As long as Iraq is the albatross that sharply restricts military
options in Iran, secret high-level diplomacy might be worth exploring.
What could the U.S. get in return for a nonaggression treaty with Iran?
This could only be plumbed at the level of a secret meeting that stays
secret with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei in
the holy city of Qom.
The Ayatollah Khamenei says Iran will never retreat from its
nuclear ambitions. However, recent emissaries who claim to know his
thinking say he wants the wherewithal for rapid production of a nuclear
weapon if such a need should arise, but would stop short of acquiring
one. Could the U.S. live with that?
The quid pro quo needs triangulating. Would the ayatollah be
willing to grease the skids under his firebrand president? If so, in
return for what? A free hand in post-U.S. Iraq? What does he seek in
Iraq? Breakup of the country or a unitary state? If the latter, on what
terms?
The U.S. isn't too good at secret diplomacy in Iran. Last time
round, it was a 1986 scheme to fund the Nicaraguan Contra rebels from
profits gained by selling arms to Iran in return for the release of
U.S. hostages held by Hezbollah in Beirut. The architect of the
intricate plot was bridge champion Michael Ledeen whose Iranian
go-between was Monte Carlo-based arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar
(whose normal 10 percent commission suddenly escalated to a 370 percent
markup on 1,000 anti-tank TOW missiles).
Then-former NSC Adviser Robert C. McFarlane and NSC aide Col.
Oliver North traveled to Tehran in 1986. They brought a cake in the
shape of a key, a symbolic opening of U.S.-Iran relations. On a
subsequent trip, Col. North offered his Iranian host a bible signed by
President Reagan.
The scheme unraveled quickly after a Lebanese magazine exposed the
entire arrangement. Trip organizer and Mr. McFarlane's successor as NSC
adviser, Adm. John Poindexter, and Ollie North, who ran the undercover
operation, were indicted and convicted of lying to Congress, and later
pardoned by Bush 41.
Something subtler, with inbuilt plausible deniability, is now
needed to negotiate a geopolitical bargain that would derail a nascent
axis of Islamist extremists from Hamas to Baghdad to Tehran to
Islamabad (post-Musharraf) to a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. The
geopolitical stakes are so much larger than the vain pursuit of the
ideal in Iraq.
Besides, Israel is not prepared to sit this one out indefinitely.
If diplomacy as usual goes nowhere, Jerusalem will strike the country
whose president says he wants to wipe Israel off the map -- and the
rest of the world will face the mother of all Mideastern crises. Oil at
$200 no longer strains credulity.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and
of United Press International.
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