Jack Straw Vs Truth

I seem to remember Jack Straw saying recently that reports about an attack on Iran were "completely nuts". Was he referring to himself in that case?

That excellent film "The Princess Bride" leaps to mind. "I do not think that word means what Jack thinks it does."

But at least the Bishop of Blackburn thinks that light shines from orifices unmentionable...

"Here, below the painting of Christ bound in the tomb, foreign secretary and secretary of state joined Dean Christopher for prayers for global justice and lit candles for peace.

"To many, these might have looked quite fragile lights, particularly when set against global conflict symbolised by the protesters' slogans and the stormy weather of that morning." from BBC News

I'm sure the good Bish means well but he does talk the most utter crap.

If you read through Sy Hersh's original piece on US' Iran war plans and his subsequent interview with Amy Goodman, he contends that US and UK special ops forces are already operating in Iran. There have also been reports of troubles in Iran's provinces - Baluchistan (Baluchis) to the east and Khuzestan (Arabs) in the west. Something fishy is already afoot. Could it be that the west is actively engaged in stirring up sectarian dessent to destabilise the government for regime change? There is also barefaced misinformation from the US administration with one aide claiming Iran is 16-17 days away from producing weapons grade uranium. Nothing can be further from the truth. Iran enriched uranium to 3.5% using 164 centrifuges. 3.5% enrichment is adequate for electricity generation and luminous LCD displays. Weapons grade uranium requires 80% enrichment and thousands of centrifuges. All reliable reports estimate that Iran has around 200 centrifuges to date.

Juan Cole has a post on this.In it he asserts that Iran would need 16,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for a nuke.

http://www.juancole.com/2006/04/iran-can-now-make-glowing-mickey-mouse.html

Earlier I referred to S Hersh's contention that US & UK are already operating in Iran. Hersh is a journalist of impeccable reputation who broke the story of Abu Ghraib. Confirmation of Hersh's account is surfacing from other other sources. Raw story reported a CNN interview with Frank Gardiner, a retired US Air Force colonel: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Retired_colonel_claims_U.S._Military_operations_0415.html

The US administration meanwhile seems to be laying the ground for an imminent anouncement re Iran with Condi issuing dictats to the UN. This was on most major TV channels but also reported in the UK and elsewhere:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006170340,00.html
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/060415/2006041524.html

Gerecht, ex CIA, PNAC senior fellow and member of American Enterprise Institute, a right wing think tank, had a piece in the Wall Street Journal in which advocated a Falluja style cleansing of Baghdad: 'The Bush administration would be wise not to postpone any longer what it should have already undertaken - securing Baghdad. This will be an enormously difficult task: Both Sunnis and Shiites will have to be confronted.............Pacifying Baghdad will be politically convulsive and provide horrific film footage and skyrocketing body counts. But Iraq cannot heal itself so long as Baghdad remains a deadly place' (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008178).
Gerecht has another piece in the Weekly Standard, edited by William Kristol entitled "To Bomb, or Not to Bomb: That is the Iran Question". To quote from this: 'Terrorism is in the ruling clergy's DNA- …….. the Islamic Republic's ruling revolutionary elite is a politer, more refined, more cautious, vastly more mendacious version of bin Ladenism. It is best that such men not have nukes, and that we do everything in our power, including preventive military strikes, to stop this from happening………..in a post-9/11 world the United States has ........... one nonnegotiable red line [concerning].... a virulently anti-American terrorist-supporting rogue state obtain nukes……....... we may have to fight a war--perhaps sooner rather than later--to stop such evil men from obtaining the worst weapons we know'. Th link to this is at http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/100mmysk.asp

Or see anything recent by Gordon Prather e.g.

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8853