Military Force Should Be an Option Against Iran, Intelligence Chairman Rogers Says!

[Jake Martinez]

Posted on Bloomberg-By Alan Bjerga and Susan Decker-On October 16, 2011:

“Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Military force shouldn’t be ruled out as a response to an Iranian assassination plot on U.S. soil, the top House Republican on intelligence issues said.

“I don’t think you should take it off the table,” said Representative Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said on ABC’s “This Week.” Rogers said other options would include rallying the international community against Iran or taking action against Iranian operatives in Iraq.

U.S. officials are considering what action to take following the Justice Department’s Oct. 11 accusation that Iran sponsored a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. The conspiracy involved a secret Iranian military unit and a citizen of the Islamic Republic with a U.S. passport.

President Barack Obama said this week that there were “direct links” to Iran’s government, which has rejected the allegation.

Two men were charged with conspiracy to use C-4 plastic explosives to murder Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir and attack Saudi installations in the U.S. Targets included “foreign government facilities associated with Saudi Arabia and with another country,” the U.S. said in a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan.

Increased Economic Sactions:

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she supports increased economic sanctions, especially against Iran’s Central Bank, with black lists of any foreign country or company that does business with the Central Bank.

Without some discussions to force Iran to change its policies, “we are on a collision course,” Feinstein said on “Fox News Sunday” program. “If we want to avoid it, we have to take action to avoid it.”

She rejected a call from retired U.S. General Jack Keane, an architect of the troop surge in Iraq, for the U.S. to engage in covert operations to kill members of Iran’s Quds Force. Feinstein said that, while Quds leaders were aware of the plot, there’s no evidence that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the highest ranking religious and political authority in the country, knew of it.

“It probably would escalate into a war, and the question is: Do we want to go to war with Iran at this time?”Feinstein said. “My judgment is no. We have our hands full with Iraq, with Afghanistan, with the deteriorating relationship with Pakistan.”

Ahmadinejad Rejection:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected the U.S. allegations in a Tehran meeting today. “Each day they try to campaign against Iran,” Ahmadinejad said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Khamenei warned the U.S. that any action taken will be met with a “resolute” response, according to the Associated Press.

“If U.S. officials have some delusions, (they must) know that any unsuitable act, whether political or security, will meet a resolute response from the Iranian nation,” the AP said, citing a report on Iran’s state television.

Iran has claimed that the Obama administration made up the allegations to divert attention from unemployment, the Occupy Wall Street movement and other economic problems in the U.S.

Feinstein said she had initial doubts before learning some of the details learned by investigators.

“There should be no doubt, and the evidence is very strong,” she said. “The FBI believes that the case is both strong and good and will result in a conviction.”

Rogue Nation:

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who lost the 2008 presidential election to Democrat Obama, criticized the administration’s handling of Iran, which McCain called “a rogue nation.”

The administration’s “engagement with Iran has clearly been a failure,” McCain said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

McCain said Obama should have done more when students protested on the streets of Tehran in 2009. McCain called for “severe sanctions” and said the U.S. should engage in “covert activity” to undermine the current Iranian government.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican presidential candidate, said Obama is “absolutely clueless” in his dealings with the Iranian government.

“Our goal should be the replacement of the Iranian dictatorship,” Gingrich, from Georgia, said on the CNN program.“We have done nothing of consequence to systematically undermine the regime.”

Troops to Africa:

Gingrich also criticized the president’s plan to send 100 troops to central Africa to help fight against Uganda’s renegade Lord’s Resistance Army. The troops are to “provide assistance to regional forces” and are not to directly engage with the forces unless necessary for self-defense.

Gingrich called the strategy “nonsensical” and said the administration needs “a grand strategy and a set of priorities.”

“If you can’t control the American border, why do you disperse our troops?” Gingrich said.

The White House was responding to 2010 legislation pushed by a group of lawmakers and human rights organizations that supported a comprehensive U.S. effort short of active military involvement to mitigate or eliminate the Lord’s Resistance Army threat.

The Lord’s Resistance Army is “one of the most horrible groups to inhabit the earth,” McCain said. Still, he said, “we’ve got to be very careful in how we engage.”

He also said Obama should have done more to notify Congress of his intentions.”

• With assistance from Phil Mattingly and Kate Anderson Brower in Washington and Ladane Nasseri in Dubai. Editors: Ann Hughey, Christian Thompson.

Source:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-16/military-force-an-optio...

Note: The following articles and/or blog posts relate to this disturbing issue-You Decide:

I. Why U.S. military in Uganda? ‘Obama's billionaire friend has interests in African country's oil!’

What’s wrong with this picture?

Posted on WND.com-By Aaron Klein-On October 15, 2011:

“After President Barack Obama announced earlier this week that he would be sending American troops into Uganda, WND uncovered billionaire activist George Soros’ ties both to the political pressure behind the decision and to the African nation’s fledgling oil industry.

Soros sits on the executive board of an influential “crisis management organization” that recently recommended the U.S. deploy a special advisory military team to Uganda to help with operations and run an intelligence platform, a recommendation Obama’s action seems to fulfill.

The president emeritus of that organization, the International Crisis Group, is also the principal author of “Responsibility to Protect,” the military doctrine used by Obama to justify the U.S.-led NATO campaign in Libya.

Soros’ own Open Society Institute is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, a doctrine that has been cited many times by activists urging intervention in Uganda.

Authors and advisers of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, including a center founded and led by Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, also helped to found the International Criminal Court.

Several of the doctrine’s main founders also sit on boards with Soros, who is a major proponent of the doctrine.

Soros also maintains close ties to oil interests in Uganda. His organizations have been leading efforts purportedly to facilitate more transparency in Uganda’s oil industry, which is being tightly controlled by the country’s leadership.

Soros' hand in Ugandan oil industry:

Oil exploration began in Uganda’s northwestern Lake Albert basin nearly a decade ago, with initial strikes being made in 2006.

Uganda’s Energy Ministry estimates the country has over 2 billion barrels of oil, with some estimates going as high as 6 billion barrels. Production is set to begin in 2015, delayed from 2013 in part because the country has not put in place a regulatory framework for the oil industry.

A 2008 national oil and gas policy, proposed with aid from a Soros-funded group, was supposed to be a general road map for the handling and use of the oil. However, the policy’s recommendations have been largely ignored, with critics accusing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni of corruption and of tightening his grip on the African country’s emerging oil sector.

Soros himself has been closely tied to oil and other interests in Uganda.

In 2008, the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute brought together stakeholders from Uganda and other East African countries to discuss critical governance issues, including the formation of what became Uganda’s national oil and gas policy.

Also in 2008, the Africa Institute for Energy Governance, a grantee of the Soros-funded Revenue Watch, helped established the Publish What You Pay Coalition of Uganda, or PWYP, which was purportedly launched to coordinate and streamline the efforts of the government in promoting transparency and accountability in the oil sector.

Also, a steering committee was formed for PWYP Uganda to develop an agenda for implementing the oil advocacy initiatives and a constitution to guide PWYP’s oil work.

PWYP has since 2006 hosted a number of training workshops in Uganda purportedly to promote contract transparency in Uganda’s oil sector.

PWYP is directly funded by Soros’ Open Society as well as the the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute. PWYP international is actually hosted by the Open Society Foundation in London.

The billionaire’s Open Society Institute, meanwhile, runs numerous offices in Uganda. It maintains a country manager in Uganda, as well as the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, which supports work in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

The Open Society Institute runs a Ugandan Youth Action Fund, which states its mission is to “identify, inspire, and support small groups of dedicated young people who can mobilize and influence large numbers of their peers to promote open society ideals.”

U.S. troops to Uganda:

Obama yesterday notified House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that he plans to send about 100 military personnel, mostly Special Operations Forces, to central Africa. The first troops reportedly arrived in Uganda on Wednesday.

The U.S. mission will be to advise forces seeking to kill or capture Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. Kony is accused of major human rights atrocities. He is on the U.S. terrorist list and is wanted by the International Criminal Court.

In a letter on Friday, Obama announced the initial team of U.S. military personnel “with appropriate combat equipment” deployed to Uganda on Wednesday. Other forces deploying include “a second combat-equipped team and associated headquarters, communications and logistics personnel.”

“Our forces will provide information, advice and assistance to select partner nation forces,” he said.

Both conservatives and liberals have raised questions about whether military involvement in Uganda advances U.S. interests.

Writing in The Atlantic yesterday, Max Fisher noted the Obama administration last year approved special forces bases and operations across the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.

“But those operations, large and small, target terrorist groups and rogue states that threaten the U.S. – something the Lord’s Resistance Army could not possibly do,” he wrote.

“It’s difficult to find a U.S. interest at stake in the Lord’s Resistance Army’s campaign of violence,” continued Fisher. “It’s possible that there’s some immediate U.S. interest at stake we can’t obviously see.”

Bill Roggio, the managing editor of The Long War Journal, referred to the Obama administration’s stated rationale for sending troops “puzzling,” claiming the LRA does not present a national security threat to the U.S. – “despite what President Obama said.”

Tea-party-backed presidential candidate Michele Bachmann also questioned the wisdom of Obama’s move to send U.S. troops to Uganda.

“When it comes to sending our brave men and women into foreign nations, we have to first demonstrate a vital American national interest before we send our troops in,” she said at a campaign stop yesterday in Iowa.

Soros group: Send military advisors to Uganda:

In April 2010 Soros’ International Crisis Group, or ICG, released a report sent to the White House and key lawmakersadvising the U.S. military run special operations in Uganda to seek Kony’s capture.

The report states, “To the U.S. government: Deploy a team to the theatre of operations to run an intelligence platform that centralizes all operational information from the Ugandan and other armies, as well as the U.N. and civilian networks, and provides analysis to the Ugandans to better target military operations.”

Since 2008 the U.S. has been providing financial aid in the form of military equipment to Uganda and the other regional countries to fight Kony’s LRA, but Obama’s new deployment escalates the direct U.S. involvement.

Soros sits in the ICG’s executive board along with Samuel Berger, Bill Clinton’s former national security advisor; George J. Mitchell, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader who served as a Mideast envoy to both Obama and President Bush; and Javier Solana, a socialist activist who is NATO’s former secretary-general as well as the former foreign affairs minister of Spain.

Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is the ICG’s senior advisor.

The ICG’s president emeritus is Gareth Evans, who, together with activist Ramesh Thakur, is the original founder of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, with the duo even coining the term “responsibility to protect.”

Both Evans and Thakur serve as advisory board members of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, the main group pushing the doctrine.

As WND first exposed, Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect.

Soros’ Open Society is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.

Samantha Power, Arafat deputy:

Meanwhile, a closer look at the Soros-funded Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect is telling. Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.

WND was first to report the committee that devised the Responsibility to Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

Also, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has a seat on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect. The commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term “responsibility to protect” while defining its guidelines.

The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, was Carr’s founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect.

With Power’s center on the advisory board, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

Power reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya, widely regarded as test of Responsibility to Protect in action.

In his address to the nation in April explaining the NATO campaign in Libya, Obama cited the doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.

Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege, but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”

The term “war crimes” has at times been indiscriminately used by various United Nations-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops who commit alleged “war crimes” overseas.

Soros: Right to 'penetrate nation-states':

Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article titled “The People’s Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World’s Most Vulnerable Populations.”

In the article Soros said, “True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments.”

“If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified,” Soros wrote. “By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’ borders to protect the rights of citizens.

“In particular,” he continued, “the principle of the people’s sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict.”

'One World Order':

The Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, meanwhile, works in partnership with the World Federalist Movement, a group that promotes democratized global institutions with plenary constitutional power. The Movement is a main coordinator and member of Responsibility to Protect Center.

WND reported that Responsibility doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a “global rebalancing” and “international redistribution” to create a “New World Order.”

In a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, “Toward a new world order,” Thakur wrote, “Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution.”

He was referring to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which he argued, “Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions.”

In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.

“The West’s bullying approach to developing nations won’t work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia,” he wrote. “A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train.”

Thakur continued: “Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behavior for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations.”

Thakur contended “the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of ‘superior’ Western power.”

• With research by Brenda J. Elliott.

Source:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=356321

II. Iran's former president warns of possible US attack!

Posted on Saudi News Today-on October 13, 2011:

“Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami on Thursday warned the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of a possible US military attack, following charges that Iran was behind a plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington.

“Our political officials should be careful not to give the US any pretext to target our security and territorial integrity,”Khatami told the opposition website Rahesabz.

After his eight-year presidential tenure that ended in 2005, Khatami has become a senior member of the Iranian opposition and on several occasions has blamed Ahmadinejad for creating unnecessary international crises by making thoughtless and provocative remarks. 

“I am worried because the pretexts for starting campaigns against Iran are constantly increasing, and escalation of the current pretext and use of any hostile language could have consequences that eventually only harm the Iranian people,” Khatami said.

Khatami rejected the latest US charges as a conspiracy by the US administration to gain advantages in next year’s presidential election.

“We should all stand united with regards to any possible threats against our land and people, but at the same time also be more careful not to give any pretexts to others to raise such charges against us,” the 68-year-old cleric said.

The foreign ministry in Tehran meanwhile said in a press release that it had invited the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Tehran to a meeting in order to reassure him that Iran was not involved in the alleged plot.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian categorically rejected the charges, which he termed as a “fabricated and see-through scenario” by the US and Israel.

In his meeting with the Saudi diplomat, Abdollahian blamed the Saudi embassy in Washington for what he called a “premature and undocumented reaction” to the charges.

The Saudi ambassador was quoted as responding that his country simply reacted to the incident itself, without accusing any country by name as long as the investigations were not concluded.

According to state media, the foreign ministry also summoned the Swiss ambassador to Tehran, in order to protest the US charges levelled against the Islamic republic.

As the US has had no diplomatic mission in Tehran for more than three decades, Switzerland represents Washington’s interests in Iran.”

Source:

http://www.saudinewstoday.com/article/84188__Iran%27s+former+presid...

III. Saudi Arabia Vows ‘Measured Response’ to Alleged Assassination Plot!-Posted on FoxNews.com-On October 13, 2011:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/13/saudi-arabia-vows-measur...

IV. Panetta: Obama Can Unilaterally Use Military to Protect ‘National Interests’!-Posted on CNSNews.com-By Matt Cover-On June 13, 2011:

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/panetta-obama-can-use-military-...

V. Podesta: Obama Can Use ‘Armed Forces’ To Push Progressive Agenda!-Posted on The Blaze-By Jonathon M. Seidl-On November 18, 2010:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/podesta-obama-can-use-armed-forces-...

Note:  My following blog posts contain numerous articles and/or blog posts and videos that relate to this disturbing issue-You Decide:

The President Must Stop Voting "Present" on Iran!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/the-president-must-stop-vo...

New World Order By Executive Order!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/new-world-order-by-executi...

Is George Soros deliberately handicapping American energy?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/is-george-soros-deliberate...

The Military Pays the Price for Obama’s Agenda!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/the-military-pays-the-pric...

Is it important to understand the Marxist assault on the foundations of our system?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/is-it-important-to-underst...

Note:  If you have a problem viewing any of the listed blog posts please copy web site and paste it on your browser. Be aware that some of the articles and/or blog posts or videos listed within the contents of the above blog post(s) may have been removed by this administration because they may have considered them to be too controversial.  Sure seems like any subject matter that may shed some negative light on this administration is being censored-What happened to free speech?-You Decide.

“Food For Thought”

God Bless the U.S.A.!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65KZIqay4E&feature=related

Semper Fi!

Jake