Prepare Now for the Coming Middle East War

[American Patriot]

I wonder if this was some escaped virus?

This is NOT the same as "anthrax" - I thought they were the same, but they are not. This disease won't affect humans like Anthrax will....but why is is suddenly spreading?

Foot-and-mouth disease spreads to Gaza Strip
May 02, 2012 10:49 GMT


GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- A U.N. agency says Egypt's outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has reached neighboring Gaza Strip and could soon spread across the Middle East.


The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization said Wednesday the disease was detected in Gaza's southern border town of Rafah on April 19.


Juan Lubroth, FAO's chief veterinary officer, says vaccines are in short supply and animal movement must be limited. He says the disease risks spreading to the Gulf, southern and eastern Europe and further.


The disease is not a direct threat to humans, but meat and milk from sick animals are unsafe for consumption.


Zakaria Kafarna of Gaza's Agriculture Ministry says the situation is under control. He says livestock imports from Egypt have stopped, and officials are vaccinating thousands of animals.

[American Patriot]

Well, no one is going to buy it if they know about it. I wouldn't.

Down go the little food carts and vendors who will now lose money and not be able to feed themselves. Oh, they could eat their meat huh? lol

As for "Israel being religion" - no, it is a country. I don't know why you and others keep insisting that Israel is a religion. Judaism is a religion. Israel is a country.

Contrary to what everyone seems to think, Israel IS a "Parliamentary Democracy" - that is similar to England.

[vector7]

A Second F-22 Raptor Squadron for Gulf Base opposite Iran

DEBKA-Net-Weekly #539 May 4, 2012



Real US military preparations for a strike on Iran are proceeding apace. .

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report a second F-22 Raptor squadron will be heading to the Gulf in the coming days. If not for logistical delays, such as getting hangars ready for the incoming planes and crews, they would have landed in the third or fourth week of April.

Those preparations broke surface with the Aviation Week disclosure of the USAF’s deployment of the first batch of its premier penetrating strike fighter, the F-22 Raptor, to a United Arab Emirates base across the Gulf from Iran.

debkafile’s military sources added that the Raptors from the 302^nd Fighter Squadron’s Joint Elmendorf-Richardson Base in Alaska were destined for the Al Dhafra Air Base (click on the attached map).

Israel has complained to Washington that its war preparations are impaired by US officials drumming up aspersions on Israel’s operational competence for attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Obama administration has denied any part in this campaign. It turned out this week that the denials were correct and the campaign was being run by US army and intelligence elements who oppose a war on Iran. This time they hit America’s own preparations by planting a prominent report in the Los Angeles Times claiming that “some of the nation’s top aviators are refusing to fly the radar-evading F-22 Raptor, a fighter jet with ongoing problems with the oxygen systems that have plagued the fleet for four years.”

The USAF’s reply was that, without revealing how many of its 200 F-22 pilots stationed at seven military bases across the country declined their assignment orders, current and former Air Force officials called it “an extremely rare occurrence.”

Much more than a cautionary military demonstration of might



Someone in the military intelligence community was evidently signaling Iran that the F-22s poised opposite the Strait of Hormuz and Revolutionary Guards facilities were not all that threatening because oxygen system problems occurred at top radar-evading altitudes and the pilots were refusing to fly them.

All the same, our military sources report, the second batch of F-22 Raptors will soon be arriving in the Gulf.

It is clear that Obama administration is not just engaged in a demonstration of military might for the purpose of cowing Iran into giving up its nuclear weapons ambitions. For this, a far smaller exhibition of military might would have served. There was no need to shove two squadrons of premier strike fighters plus two aircraft carriers, the USS Enterprise and Abraham Lincoln and their strike groups under Iran’s nose.

The present scale of the US military buildup is well beyond a cautionary demonstration. It means that behind the hype about an approaching breakthrough in the nuclear negotiations with Tehran, Washington is not at all sure the Iranians will reach the finishing line in good faith and not come up with a last-minute pretext for going back on its assurances. If that happened, the Obama administration would be left with no recourse other than military action for making good on its pledge to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Therefore, as one source put it, while back-channel US-Iran diplomacy is the carrot, the stick is held ready to strike if Iran fails to come up to scratch.

US strength massed on two strategic islands



The Raptors and the carriers are just part of the concentration of US strength around the Islamic Republic, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report. The bulk of its military manpower is massed ready for an offensive on two islands, Masirah in the Gulf of Oman at the southern exit of the Strait of Hormuz and Yemeni Socotra in the Gulf of Aden, near where it connects to the Indian Ocean. (See special maps attached to this article.)

Masirah off the east coast of Oman, runs 95 km long from north to south and between 12 and 14 km broad, with an area of about 649 km², and an estimated population of 12,000 in 12 villages concentrated mainly in the north of the island. Most of the island’s interior is uninhabited. It is accessible only by a small ferry for cars and Omani Air Force Hercules (RAFO) flights.

Socotra is a small archipelago of four islands in the Indian Ocean which is named for the largest. The chain lies some 240 kilometers (150 mi) east of the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometers (240 mi) south of the Arabian Peninsula.

Our sources learn that, five months ago, President Barack Obama secretly ordered the US Air Force, Navy and Marines to pile up strength on the two strategic islands of Masirah and Socotra.

Tehran and Moscow are worried



On Socotra they occupied the facilities the US has been constructing there since 2010: giant air and naval bases with facilities for submarines, intelligence command centers and take-off pads for stealth drones. Their existence is so secret that they do not appear in any catalogue of US military strongholds in the region.

On Masirah, American forces are accommodated in Camp Justice, a huge air and ground facility.

The islands are links in a chain of strategic US military bases in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, also to be found at Jebel Ali and Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates; Arifjan in Kuwait; and Al Udeid in Qatar. They are all within easy flying distances from Iran.

As we shall see in the next item, the US military preparations for attacking Iran are being taken very seriously not just in Tehran but also in Moscow.

[American Patriot]

It would seem to me that if Debka were reasonable and responsible they'd actually NOT report things that are helpful to the Israelis.....

[vector7]

U.N. nuclear inspector dies in Iran car crash: Atomic Agency

Tuesday, 08 May 2012

The inspector was identified as Seo Ok-seok, a South Korean national part of an inspection team the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Organization maintains in Iran. (AFP)

By Al Arabiya with Agencies

A U.N. nuclear inspector has died in a car accident in central Iran, the country’s Atomic Energy Organization said in a statement on Tuesday.

The statement identified the inspector as Seo Ok-seok, a South Korean national part of an inspection team the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Organization maintains in Iran.

The inspector was on a mission with an IAEA colleague near the Khondab complex in the central province of Markazi, it added without naming the other inspector who was injured in the accident around noon (0730 GMT).

“One of the two experts was injured, while Seo Ok-seok from South Korea died of severe injuries,” read the statement, carried by the official IRNA news agency.

It did not provide further details.

Iran is building a heavy water research reactor on the outskirts of the village of Khondab.

The IAEA had no immediate comment. The agency carries out regular inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites and often sends inspectors to Iran to visit some of the country’s nuclear sites.

The IAEA undertook two high-level trips to Iran at the beginning of this year in an effort to address questions raised in an IAEA report in November on suspected Iranian research activities relevant to nuclear weapons.

Iran has dismissed the allegations as fabricated.

The United States and its allies accuse Iran of using its nuclear program to cover up its development of a nuclear weapons capability but Tehran maintains its activities are purely peaceful.

[vector7]

While Europe Burns and America Slumbers, Israel prepares for War

by John Galt
May 18, 2012 19:05 ET

Last night on my live podcast I covered this story then after a customary four hours of sleep the realization hit me today of the implications of this story form the Jerusalem Post:

IDF building backup facilities for key sites


The Eurozone is in the midst of a total economic collapse, the United States mired in the summer doldrums of a political campaign between Tweedle-D and Tweedle-bo-R-edom, and in the mean time, Iran and Israel both appear to be accelerating preparations for a war which now appears set to begin in the autumn. The ignorance of the actions being taken by Israel in this article should alarm most people who have even a vague awareness of the crisis.

From the article by Yakoov Katz:

Wary of missiles attacking sensitive military installations in a future war, the IDF has approved a NIS 1.5 billion plan to build backup facilities and reinforce sites that could be targeted.


As of May, the IDF has budgeted NIS 750 million for the project, with plans to allocate the second half by the end of 2012. The IDF Home Front Command and Operations Directorate chooses the list of installations that require the reinforcement or construction of secondary facilities.

Despite having a secondary facility under construction, a key IDF base in the North will be retrofitted. The IDF fears that the base will undergo heavy damage in a future war and therefore decided to build the secondary facility. That location is confidential information, located somewhere in the center of the country.

If this is truly the case, then the retrofits and redundant facilities should be completed by August to September at the latest. Logically speaking, Israel would not dare contemplate an attack on Iran unless those hardened positions were in place, especially with the threat of Iran ordering Hezbollah to open a second front or “rocket war” on the Israeli people immediately after an Israeli attack on Iran. Hopefully my readers have some time to get their own houses in order as this might give all of us some time to deal with the European economic collapse and prepare the home front for the coming storm out of the Middle East.

[American Patriot]

Diplomat: Confidential report finds Iran shipping arms to Syria

By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 8:24 AM EDT, Thu May 17, 2012




Iran accused of arming Syria



STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: One person is dead in renewed fighting in Lebanon, state-run news reports
• U.S. government denies report it is helping supply arms to rebels
• A draft report says two shipments of weapons bound for Syria have been seized
• Al-Assad says weapons are being smuggled across the borders of Turkey and Lebanon

(CNN) -- A confidential U.N. report reveals Iran is exporting arms to the Syrian government in violation of a ban on weapons sales, the same day President Bashar al-Assad blamed the violence in his country on the work of foreign-backed fighters.
The draft report describes three seizures of Iranian weapons shipments, including two bound for Syria, within the last year, a Western diplomat told CNN on Wednesday on condition of anonymity. The official was not authorized to release details to the media.
The report was drafted by a panel of experts and submitted to the U.N. Security Council's committee that monitors sanctions against Iran, the official said.
The revelations came as al-Assad, in a rare interview, told Russia 24 that weapons in the hands of rebels were flowing into the country from neighboring Lebanon and Turkey.
"You can't simply close the borders and stop the smuggling, but you can reduce the flow," he said.
Iran accused of arming Syria
Syrian refugees flee to Turkey
Syrian man helps clear landmines
Ajami: Syria is Obama's Rwanda
In recent days, violence has spilled over into Lebanon and Turkey where thousands of Syrians have fled. At least one person was killed and an undetermined number were wounded Thursday in renewed clashes in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli between factions supporting and opposing the uprising in Syria, Lebanon's National News Agency reported.
Al-Assad put the blame instead on the so-called Arab Spring that saw popular revolutions topple the governments of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
"If we take into consideration the developments in Syria, the events in Libya and other countries, for the leaders of these countries, it's becoming clear that this is not 'Spring' but chaos."
The successful Arab Spring movements inspired the uprising in Syria that began in March 2011 with protests calling for political reforms and quickly devolved into a revolt with an armed opposition amid a brutal crackdown by al-Assad's forces.
The United Nations estimates that at least 9,000 people have died in the 14-month crisis, while opposition groups put the death toll at more than 11,000.
CNN cannot independently verify reports of deaths and violence because the Syrian government has severely restricted access by international media.
At least four people died Thursday when Syrian forces opened fire in Daraya outside the capital city of Damascus, the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition network that collects casualty reports and organizes anti-government protests.
Al-Assad blamed the violence on terrorists, including those who labeled themselves members of the rebel Free Syrian Army.
But opposition groups, including members of the rebel army, say al-Assad's government has been trying to mar their efforts with false accusations of links to terrorism.
While the rebel army says its ranks are populated by those who defected from Syria security forces, al-Assad labeled them criminals.
"It's not an army, first of all, and it's not free because they get their arms from different foreign countries," he said in the interview.
"That's why they are not free at all -- they are a bunch of criminals who have been violating the law for years and have been sentenced in various criminal cases. There are religious extremist elements among them, like those from al Qaeda."
Al-Assad dismissed the enormous international pressure put on him to end the violence and step down, vowing that Syria would not bow on any issue.
The United States, the European Union and the United Nations have targeted Syria with a number of economic sanctions targeting al-Assad and his government.
Al-Assad acknowledged the sanctions have had an adverse affect on Syria's economy.
"The world doesn't consist just of Europe and the United States, and we find alternatives which allow us to overcome these difficulties. We can support small and mid-sized business, the basic element of our economy is agriculture, and it's hard to affect it with sanctions," al-Assad said.
Al-Assad also called a boycott of recent parliamentary elections by the opposition a failure.
"It seems to some people that if we conducted the reforms earlier, the situation would have been better now. It's not right for one reason -- terrorists spit on reforms. They are not fighting for reforms, they are fighting to bring terror," he said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government distanced itself from a Washington Post report that said more and better weapons are making their way in to the hand of Syrian rebels.
The newspaper, citing unnamed officials and opposition activists, reported the arms are being paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States.
"The United States has made a decision to provide nonlethal support to civilian members of the opposition," Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman told reporters Wednesday.
"...But with regard to any assertions with regard to lethal, we are not involved in that."
The United States has expressed reservations about arming rebels, citing division among the opposition.
Meanwhile, division among Syrian opposition groups deepened Thursday with the Syrian National Council, widely perceived by Western countries as the primary coalition for the opposition, coming under fire by a leading opposition activist group.
The Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition network, called the national council a "failure," saying it will withdraw from the council. The council has been under fire for failing to unify the opposition groups and bring in international support.

[vector7]

Medvedev warns of 'regional nuclear wars'

MOSCOW - Agence France-Presse


Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. AFP photo

Russia cautioned Western powers on Thursday against launching "hasty" wars that could lead to the rise of radical Islamist factions and even result in regional nuclear wars.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a legal forum ahead of his visit to the G8 summit as Russia's official representative at Camp David that Moscow noted numerous examples of powers infringing on the sovereignty of other states.

The comments were a clear reference to Russia's current standoff with the West over Syria and its earlier condemnation of NATO's air strikes against Libya.

"The consequence of hasty military operations in foreign states usually means that radicals come to power," Russia's former president told a televised forum in Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg.

"And sometimes these actions - which undermine state sovereignty - could result in a fully-fledged regional war. And even - although I do not want to scare anyone - the use of a nuclear weapon." The Saint Petersburg event included speeches by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and other top international dignitaries and legal scholars.

Medvedev will stand in for President Vladimir Putin - elected to a third term after serving four years as premier - at talks starting Friday after the Russian leader pulled out citing the need to complete his new government.

Officials in both Moscow and Washington have denied that Putin was in fact delivering a snub meant to punish the White House for its criticism of Russia's record on human rights.

[American Patriot]

And whom, pray tell, has these alleged nukes and would use them?

The US? No...

Israel? doubtful...

Russia? Very doubtful....

Iran????? hmmmmm they already have one perhaps (if so, they got it from NK or China and not Russia)....

I think more likely this is a direct threat from Russia they will intervene using nuclear weapons to destroy US forces on the ground and are somehow "confident" we won't strike back with a nuke of our own.

[Ryan Ruck]

Iran Committed To 'Full Annihilation Of Israel,' Says Top Iranian Military Commander

May 20, 2012

Iran is dedicated to annihilating Israel, the Islamic regime’s military chief of staff declared Sunday.

“The Iranian nation is standing for its cause and that is the full annihilation of Israel,” Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi said in a speech to a defense gathering Sunday in Tehran.

His remarks came on the day International Atomic Energy Agency director Yukiya Amano flew to Tehran to negotiate for inspections of Iran’s nuclear program. They were reported by the Fars News Agency, the media outlet of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

While many within the Islamic regime, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have often stated that Israel should be annihilated, until Sunday no one in the nation’s leadership has announced Iran’s determined intention to carry it out.

Josh Block, a Middle East expert and former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, told The Daily Caller that it’s unwise to shrug off the threats of a top Iranian military commander.

“When they say it, they mean it,” Block said. “That is the lesson of history. We had best heed that reality. You can be sure the Israelis already understand it.”

Block is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute who worked in the Clinton administration’s State Department. He told TheDC that the U.S. should be concerned about “an Iran that could give nuclear technology to their terrorist allies, including those like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.”

In a statement, American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris said Firouzabadi’s comments “should also put to rest, once and for all, the fanciful views of those remaining political leaders, diplomats, and journalists who contend that Iran is a ‘peaceful’ nation which has simply been ‘misunderstood’ by the global community.”

Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s Mossad, and U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, have both said recently that Iran is a rational actor in the international arena and that the Iranians will consider the implications of their actions.

Block also told TheDC that “the radicals and pseudo-experts at places like Plowshares, Media Matters, NIAC [the National Iranian American Council], writers for ThinkProgress, the New America Foundation and on and on” are “useful idiots and regime apologists” for Iran who continue to believe irrationally that Iran does not have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.

They “are the same cranks,” he said, “who claim Iran has been ‘misquoted’ or ‘mistranslated’ and never called for the ‘annihilation’ of Israel. Well, I am sure they will find some way to continue their charade, but only to their further discredit.”

[Ryan Ruck]

Echoes Of ‘67: Israel Unites

By Charles Krauthammer
May 10, 2012

In May 1967, in brazen violation of previous truce agreements, Egypt ordered U.N. peacekeepers out of the Sinai, marched 120,000 troops to the Israeli border, blockaded the Straits of Tiran (Israel’s southern outlet to the world’s oceans), abruptly signed a military pact with Jordan and, together with Syria, pledged war for the final destruction of Israel.

May ’67 was Israel’s most fearful, desperate month. The country was surrounded and alone. Previous great-power guarantees proved worthless. A plan to test the blockade with a Western flotilla failed for lack of participants. Time was running out. Forced into mass mobilization in order to protect against invasion — and with a military consisting overwhelmingly of civilian reservists — life ground to a halt. The country was dying.

On June 5, Israel launched a preemptive strike on the Egyptian air force, then proceeded to lightning victories on three fronts. The Six-Day War is legend, but less remembered is that, four days earlier, the nationalist opposition (Mena­chem Begin’s Likud precursor) was for the first time ever brought into the government, creating an emergency national-unity coalition.

Everyone understood why. You do not undertake a supremely risky preemptive war without the full participation of a broad coalition representing a national consensus.

Forty-five years later, in the middle of the night of May 7-8, 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked his country by bringing the main opposition party, Kadima, into a national unity government. Shocking because just hours earlier, the Knesset was expediting a bill to call early elections in September.

Why did the high-flying Netanyahu call off elections he was sure to win?

Because for Israelis today, it is May ’67. The dread is not quite as acute: The mood is not despair, just foreboding. Time is running out, but not quite as fast. War is not four days away, but it looms. Israelis today face the greatest threat to their existence — nuclear weapons in the hands of apocalyptic mullahs publicly pledged to Israel’s annihilation — since May ’67. The world is again telling Israelis to do nothing as it looks for a way out. But if such a way is not found — as in ’67 — Israelis know that they will once again have to defend themselves, by themselves.

Such a fateful decision demands a national consensus. By creating the largest coalition in nearly three decades, Netanyahu is establishing the political premise for a preemptive strike, should it come to that. The new government commands an astonishing 94 Knesset seats out of 120, described by one Israeli columnist as a “hundred tons of solid concrete.”

So much for the recent media hype about some great domestic resistance to Netanyahu’s hard line on Iran. Two notable retired intelligence figures were widely covered here for coming out against him. Little noted was that one had been passed over by Netanyahu to be the head of Mossad, while the other had been fired by Netanyahu as Mossad chief (hence the job opening). For centrist Kadima (it pulled Israel out of Gaza) to join a Likud-led coalition whose defense minister is a former Labor prime minister (who once offered half of Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat) is the very definition of national unity — and refutes the popular “Israel is divided” meme. “Everyone is saying the same thing,” explained one Knesset member, “though there may be a difference of tone.”

To be sure, Netanyahu and Kadima’s Shaul Mofaz offered more prosaic reasons for their merger: to mandate national service for now exempt ultra- Orthodox youth, to change the election law to reduce the disproportionate influence of minor parties and to seek negotiations with the Palestinians. But Netanyahu, the first Likud prime minister to recognize Palestinian statehood, did not need Kadima for him to enter peace talks. For two years he’s been waiting for Mahmoud Abbas to show up at the table. Abbas hasn’t. And won’t. Nothing will change on that front.

What does change is Israel’s position vis-a-vis Iran. The wall-to-wall coalition demonstrates Israel’s political readiness to attack, if necessary. (Its military readiness is not in doubt.)

Those counseling Israeli submission, resignation or just endless patience can no longer dismiss Israel’s tough stance as the work of irredeemable right-wingers. Not with a government now representing 78 percent of the country.

Netanyahu forfeited September elections that would have given him four more years in power. He chose instead to form a national coalition that guarantees 18 months of stability — 18 months during which, if the world does not act (whether by diplomacy or otherwise) to stop Iran, Israel will.

And it will not be the work of one man, one party or one ideological faction. As in 1967, it will be the work of a nation.

[American Patriot]

U.N. agency finds higher enrichment at Iranian site

Updated 34m ago

VIENNA (AP) – Inspectors have located radioactive traces at an Iranian underground bunker, the U.N. atomic agency said Friday in a finding that could mean Iran has moved closer to reaching the uranium threshold needed to arm nuclear missiles.

• By Hasan Sarbakhshian, AP file
  In this 2007 file photo, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at a ceremony in Iran's nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz.

Enlarge



By Hasan Sarbakhshian, AP file
In this 2007 file photo, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at a ceremony in Iran's nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz.

In a report obtained by the Associated Press, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was asking Tehran for a full explanation. But the report was careful to avoid any suggestion that Iran was intentionally increasing the level of its uranium enrichment, noting that Tehran said a technical glitch was responsible.

Analysts as well as diplomats who had told the AP of the existence of the traces before publication of the confidential report also said the higher-enriched material could have been a mishap involving centrifuges over-performing as technicians adjusted their output rather than a dangerous step toward building a bomb.

Still, the finding was bound to resonate among the 35 IAEA board members for which the report was prepared, among them the six world powers that had just concluded talks with Iran on its enrichment activities.

The talks left the two sides still far apart over how to oversee Tehran's atomic program but resolved to keep dialogue going as an alternative to possible military action.

The six nations — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — are already concerned that Iran is enriching to 20% because material at that level can be turned into weapons-grade uranium much more quickly than its main, low-enriched stockpile suitable for nuclear fuel. The higher the enrichment, the easier it becomes to re-enrich uranium to warhead quality at 90%. As a result, any finding of traces at 27% was likely to spark international interest.

Iran denies any plans to possess nuclear weapons but has for years declined offers of reactor fuel from abroad, including more recent inducements of 20% material if it stops producing at that level. The Islamic Republic says it wants to continue producing 20% uranium to fuel its research reactor and for medical purposes.

But its refusal to accept foreign offers have increased fears it may want to turn its enrichment activities toward producing such arms. The concerns have been fed by IAEA suspicions that Iran has experimented on components of an atomic arms program — suspicions Tehran also denies.


The report cited a May 9 letter from Iranian officials suggesting any enrichment at 27% at the Fordo enrichment plant in central Iran was inadvertent. The letter said the particles were produced "above the target value" and could have been for "technical reasons beyond the operator's control."

David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security looks for signs of proliferation, said a new configuration at Fordo means it tends to "overshoot 20 percent" at the start.

"Nonetheless, embarrassing for Iran," he wrote in an e-mail to the AP.
Others were more skeptical.

"It's not surprising because they have the technology. Iran doesn't intend to stop its nuclear weapon program, and the fact that they are at 27% shows the Iranian intentions," said a senior Israeli defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to speak with the media.

International concerns have increased since Iran started higher enrichment at Fordo, which is carved into a mountain to make it impervious to attack. Israel and the United States have not ruled out using force as a last option if diplomacy fails to curb the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

Iran already has about 700 centrifuges churning out 20% enriched uranium at Fordo. The report noted that although Iran has set up about 350 more centrifuges since late last year at the site, these machines are not enriching.

While the reason for that could be purely technical, it could also be a signal from Tehran that it is waiting for progress in the negotiations.

The IAEA report also detailed some progress in separate talks between the U.N. nuclear agency and Iran that the agency hopes will re-launch a long-stalled probe into the suspicions that Tehran has worked on nuclear-weapons related experiments.


The latest attempt to persuade Iran to compromise ended inconclusively Thursday at a meeting in Baghdad. At the talks, the six world powers failed to persuade Tehran to freeze its 20% enrichment. Envoys said the group will meet again next month in Moscow.

Iran went into the Baghdad talks urging the West to scale back on recently toughened sanctions, which have targeted Iran's critical oil exports and have effectively blackballed the country from international banking networks. The 27-nation European Union is set to ban all Iranian fuel imports on July 1, shutting the door on about 18% of Iran's market.

Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, offered a lukewarm assessment of the latest negotiations, in light of European and American refusal to lift tough sanctions against Iran as Tehran had hoped.

"The result of the talks was that we were able to get more familiar with the views of each other," Jalili told reporters.

European diplomats focused on the positives.

"It is clear that we both want to make progress and that there is some common ground," European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who led the Baghdad talks, told reporters. "However, significant differences remain. Nonetheless, we do agree on the need for further discussion to expand that common ground."

But in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said significant differences remain between the two sides and that it's now up to Iran "to close the gaps."

"Iran now has the choice to make: Will it meet its international obligations and give the world confidence about its intentions or not?" Clinton said.

[eversman]

Interesting article up at debka right now as the lead story.... food for thought.

-ev

[American Patriot]

Plop it on here Ev.

[Ryan Ruck]

Iran Has Enough Uranium For 5 bombs: Expert

May 26, 2012

Iran has significantly stepped up its output of low-enriched uranium and total production in the last five years would be enough for at least five nuclear weapons if refined much further, a U.S. security institute said.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a think-tank which tracks Iran's nuclear program closely, based the analysis on data in the latest report by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which was issued on Friday.

Progress in Iran's nuclear activities is closely watched by the West and Israel as it could determine how long it could take Tehran to build atomic bombs, if it decided to do so. Iran denies any plan to and says its aims are entirely peaceful.

During talks in Baghdad this week, six world powers failed to convince Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment program. They will meet again in Moscow next month to try to defuse a decade-old standoff that has raised fears of a new war in the Middle East that could disrupt oil supplies.

Friday's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based U.N. body, showed Iran was pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment work in defiance of U.N. resolutions calling on it to suspend the activity.

It said Iran had produced almost 6.2 tons of uranium enriched to a level of 3.5 percent since it began the work in 2007 - some of which has subsequently been further processed into higher-grade material.

This is nearly 750 kg more than in the previous IAEA report issued in February, and ISIS said Iran's monthly production had risen by roughly a third.

"This total amount of 3.5 percent low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons," ISIS said in its analysis.

It added, however, that some of Iran's higher-grade uranium had been converted into reactor fuel and would not be available for nuclear weapons, at least not quickly.

HIGHER ENRICHMENT

Friday's IAEA report also said environmental samples taken in February at Iran's Fordow facility - buried deep beneath rock and soil to protect it from air strikes - showed the presence of particles with enrichment levels of up to 27 percent.

Iran's permanent representative to the body played down the findings, saying some western media sought to turn a technical issue into a political one.

"This matter is a routine technical discussion that is currently being reviewed by experts," IRNA quoted Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as saying.

The IAEA report suggested it was possible that particles of uranium enriched to higher-than-declared levels could be the result of a technical phenomenon. Experts say that while it is embarrassing for Iran, there is no real cause for concern.

The U.N. agency also said satellite images showed "extensive activities" at the Parchin military complex which inspectors want to check over suspicions that research relevant to nuclear weapons was done there.

After talks in Tehran earlier this week, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said the two sides were close to an agreement to let inspectors resume investigations into suspected nuclear explosive experiments in Iran.

NUCLEAR GOALS

Enriched uranium can be used to fuel power plants, which is Iran's stated purpose, or to provide material for bombs, if refined to a much higher degree. The West suspects that may be Iran's ultimate goal despite the Islamic Republic's denials.

Iran began enriching uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent in 2010, saying it needed this to fuel a medical research reactor. It later expanded the work sharply by launching enrichment at Fordow.

It alarmed a suspicious West since such enhanced enrichment accomplishes much of the technical leap towards 90 percent - or weapons-grade - uranium.

Central to the talks in Baghdad were attempts to get Iran to halt enrichment to 20 percent, in exchange for measures to ease sanctions and assistance with safety at its nuclear plants.

Iran demanded world powers expressly confirm its right to enrich uranium.

Iran has installed more than 50 percent more enrichment centrifuges at Fordow, the IAEA report said. Although not yet being fed with uranium, the new machines could be used to further boost Iran's output of uranium enriched to 20 percent.

ISIS said Iran still appeared to be experiencing problems in its testing of production-scale units of more advanced centrifuges that would allow it to refine uranium faster, even though it had made some progress.

[American Patriot]

Naw, can't be for real. After all, no on thinks they can pull it off. So-called experts don't know shit.

[vector7]

06/04/2012
Operation Samson Israel's Deployment of Nuclear Missiles on Subs from Germany

AFP
Many have wondered for years about the exact capabilities of the submarines Germany exports to Israel. Now, experts in Germany and Israel have confirmed that nuclear-tipped missiles have been deployed on the vessels. And the German government has long known about it. By SPIEGEL



The pride of the Israeli navy is rocking gently in the swells of the Mediterranean, with the silhouette of the Carmel mountain range reflected on the water's surface. To reach the Tekumah, you have to walk across a wooden jetty at the pier in the port of Haifa, and then climb into a tunnel shaft leading to the submarine's interior. The navy officer in charge of visitors, a brawny man in his 40s with his eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, bounces down the steps. When he reaches the lower deck, he turns around and says: "Welcome on board the Tekumah.

Welcome to my toy."

He pushes back a bolt and opens the refrigerator, revealing zucchini, a pallet of yoghurt cups and a two-liter bottle of low-calorie cola. The Tekumah has just returned from a secret mission in the early morning hours. The navy officer, whose name the military censorship office wants to keep secret, leads the visitors past a pair of bunks and along a steel frame.

The air smells stale, not unlike the air in the living room of an apartment occupied solely by men. At the middle of the ship, the corridor widens and merges into a command center, with work stations grouped around a periscope. The officer stands still and points to a row of monitors, with signs bearing the names of German electronics giant Siemens and Atlas, a Bremen-based electronics company, screwed to the wall next to them.

The "Combat Information Center," as the Israelis call the command center, is the heart of the submarine, the place where all information comes together and all the operations are led. The ship is controlled from two leather chairs. It looks as if it could be in the cockpit of a small aircraft. A display lit up in red shows that the vessel's keel is currently located 7.15 meters (23.45 feet) below sea level.

"This was all built in Germany, according to Israeli specifications," the navy officer says,"and so were the weapons systems." The Tekuma, 57 meters long and 7 meters wide, is a showpiece of precision engineering, painted in blue and made in Germany. To be more precise, it is a piece of precision engineering made in Germany that is suitable for equipping with nuclear weapons.

No Room for Doubt
Deep in their interiors, on decks 2 and 3, the submarines contain a secret that even in Israel is only known to a few insiders: nuclear warheads, small enough to be mounted on a cruise missile, but explosive enough to execute a nuclear strike that would cause devastating results. This secret is considered one of the best kept in modern military history. Anyone who speaks openly about it in Israel runs the risk of being sentenced to a lengthy prison term.

Research SPIEGEL has conducted in Germany, Israel and the United States, among current and past government ministers, military officials, defense engineers and intelligence agents, no longer leaves any room for doubt: With the help of German maritime technology, Israel has managed to create for itself a floating nuclear weapon arsenal: submarines equipped with nuclear capability.

Foreign journalists have never boarded one of the combat vessels before. In an unaccustomed display of openness, senior politicians and military officials with the Jewish state were, however, now willing to talk about the importance of German-Israeli military cooperation and Germany's role, albeit usually under the condition of anonymity. "In the end, it's very simple," says Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. "Germany is helping to defend Israel's security. The Germans can be proud of the fact that they have secured the existence of the State of Israel for many years to come."

On the other hand, any research that did take place in Israel was subject to censorship. Quotes by Israelis, as well as the photographer's pictures, had to be submitted to the military. Questions about Israel's nuclear capability, whether on land or on water, were taboo. And decks 2 and 3, where the weapons are kept, remained off-limits to the visitors.

In Germany, the government's military assistance for Israel's submarine program has been controversial for about 25 years, a topic of discussion for the media and the parliament. Chancellor Angela Merkel fears the kind of public debate that German Nobel literature laureate Günter Grass recently reignited with a poem critical of Israel. Merkel insists on secrecy and doesn't want the details of the deal to be made public. To this day, the German government is sticking to its position that it does not know anything about an Israeli nuclear weapons program.

'Purposes of Nuclear Capability'

But now, former top German officials have admitted to the nuclear dimension for the first time. "I assumed from the very beginning that the submarines were supposed to be nuclear-capable," says Hans Rühle, the head of the planning staff at the German Defense Ministry in the late 1980s. Lothar Rühl, a former state secretary in the Defense Ministry, says that he never doubted that "Israel stationed nuclear weapons on the ships." And Wolfgang Ruppelt, the director of arms procurement at the Defense Ministry during the key phase, admits that it was immediately clear to him that the Israelis wanted the ships "as carriers for weapons of the sort that a small country like Israel cannot station on land." Top German officials speaking under the protection of anonymity were even more forthcoming. "From the beginning, the boats were primarily used for the purposes of nuclear capability," says one ministry official with knowledge of the matter.

Insiders say that the Israeli defense technology company Rafael built the missiles for the nuclear weapons option. Apparently it involves a further development of cruise missiles of the Popeye Turbo SLCM type, which are supposed to have a range of around 1,500 kilometers (940 miles) and which could reach Iran with a warhead weighing up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds). The nuclear payload comes from the Negev Desert, where Israel has operated a reactor and an underground plutonium separation plant in Dimona since the 1960s. The question of how developed the Israeli cruise missiles are is a matter of debate. Their development is a complex project, and the missiles' only public manifestation was a single test that the Israelis conducted off the coast of Sri Lanka.

The submarines are the military response to the threat in a region "where there is no mercy for the weak," Defense Minister Ehud Barak says. They are an insurance policy against the Israelis' fundamental fear that "the Arabs could slaughter us tomorrow," as David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel, once said. "We shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter," was the lesson Ben-Gurion and others drew from Auschwitz.

Armed with nuclear weapons, the submarines are a signal to any enemy
that the Jewish state itself would not be totally defenseless in the event of a nuclear attack, but could strike back with the ultimate weapon of retaliation. The submarines are "a way of guaranteeing that the enemy will not be tempted to strike pre-emptively with non-conventional weapons and get away scot-free," as Israeli Admiral Avraham Botzer puts it.

Questions of Global Political Responsibility

In this version of tit-for-tat, known as nuclear second-strike capability, hundreds of thousands of dead are avenged with an equally large number of casualties. It is a strategy the United States and Russia practiced during the Cold War by constantly keeping part of its nuclear arsenal ready on submarines. For Israel, a country about the size of the German state of Hesse, which could be wiped out with a nuclear strike, safeguarding this threat potential is vital to its very existence. At the same time, the nuclear arsenal causes countries like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to regard Israel's nuclear capacity with fear and envy and consider building their own nuclear weapons.

This makes the question of its global political responsibility all the more relevant for Germany. Should Germany, the country of the perpetrators, be allowed to assist Israel, the land of the victims, in the development of a nuclear weapons arsenal capable of extinguishing hundreds of thousands of human lives?

Is Berlin recklessly promoting an arms race in the Middle East? Or should Germany, as its historic obligation stemming from the crimes of the Nazis, assume a responsibility that has become "part of Germany's reason of state," as Chancellor Merkel said in a speech to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in March 2008? "It means that for me, as a German chancellor, Israel's security is never negotiable," Merkel told the lawmakers. The perils of such unconditional solidarity were addressed by Germany's new president, Joachim Gauck, during his first official visit to Jerusalem last Tuesday: "I don't want to imagine every scenario that could get the chancellor in tremendous trouble, when it comes to politically implementing her statement that Israel's security is part of Germany's reason of state."
The German government has always pursued an unwritten rule on its Israel policy, which has already lasted half a century and survived all changes of administrations, and that former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder summarized in 2002 when he said: "I want to be very clear: Israel receives what it needs to maintain its security."

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• Next

• Part 1: Israel's Deployment of Nuclear Missiles on Subs from Germany
• Part 2: Franz-Josef Strauss and the Beginnings of Illegal Arms Cooperation
• Part 3: First Submarines Are Secretly Assembled in England
• Part 4: The Shipyards of Kiel
• Part 5: The Germans and the Atomic Question: No Questions, No Problems
• Part 6: The Deal for Submarine Number Six

[American Patriot]

Iran Accuses IAEA of Spying, Says It Will Never Halt Enrichment

By Jonathan Tirone on June 06, 2012




Iran accused the United Nations nuclear inspectorate of spying, vowed never to suspend uranium enrichment and cast doubt on whether a deal allowing wider atomic inspections is possible.



“Iran will resist to the end” and “will not permit our national security to be jeopardized” by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors working for Western intelligence agencies, the Persian Gulf nation’s IAEA envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said today at a press briefing in Vienna.



“Iran will never suspend its enrichment activities,” he said.



The Iranian comments came as the agency’s 35-member board of governors concluded its quarterly review of the country’s nuclear work today in the Austrian capital. IAEA officials meet their Iranian counterparts on June 8 in an attempt to conclude a deal for wider access to sites alleged to conceal atomic-weapons work. Iran, the No. 2 producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, says its nuclear program is peaceful.



“The agency, which is supposed to be an international technical organization, is somehow playing the role of an intelligence agency,” Soltanieh said.



“This negotiation is happening because Iran wants it to happen,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace nuclear analyst Mark Hibbs said today in an interview in Vienna. “There’s nothing that obligates the IAEA to negotiate over a work plan. That implies the burden is on Iran.”
Wider Access

Soltanieh contradicted IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano’s May 22 announcement after returning from talks in Tehran that a “decision” had been made to allow inspectors wider access. Iran’s top negotiator Saeed Jalili had only pledged his country’s “determination” to reach an agreement, the envoy said.



IAEA inspectors use intelligence received from member states to press Iran for answers on its program. The agency reported in November that it had “credible” intelligence pointing to Iranian work on a nuclear trigger at its Parchin nuclear complex. The country has subsequently cleaned-up the site, Amano said June 4 at a press conference.



Iran says IAEA inspectors should be sticking to their core duty of accounting for nuclear material and shouldn’t be asked to investigate alleged missile and military activities.



Diplomats from China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. meet their Iranian counterparts in Moscow on June 18-19. It will be the third round of talks in three months over Iran’s nuclear work, which the West says is a cover for nuclear weapons development and Iran says is peaceful.



“Right now we’re at an impasse because Iran believes these matters fall outside the mandate of the agency,” Hibbs said. “Two weeks before the meeting in Moscow, Ambassador Soltanieh is showing Iran will be defiant. That’s not a good development.”



To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Tirone in Vienna at jtirone@bloomberg.net



To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net

[American Patriot]

Senior Iranian exile to U.S. Jews: Target regime change rather than nuclear program

Former deputy prime minister and founder of Revolutionary Guards warns: military attack will only reinforce the Islamic regime.

By Chemi Shalev | Jun.07, 2012 | 10:37 PM



Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Photo by AP




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Chemi Shalev



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Mohsen Sazegara, one of the founders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and a former Deputy Prime Minister of Iran, has called on U.S. Jews to help refocus U.S. Administration efforts away from Iran’s nuclear program and toward changing the regime.



In an unprecedented appearance before the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations Sazegara – who was jailed four time in Tehran and went into exile in 2003 – said that Iran is “on the brink of implosion” because of a combination of the international sanctions and internal mismanagement by the government.



Sazegara chastised the Obama Administration’s decision not to intervene in the 2009 Green Revolution, describing it as “a great disappointment”.

But he said that “beneath the surface there is a great anger burning across the land” and that the time has come to “reignite the revolution.”
Sazegara said that the U.S. was “focused on the wrong course” in its dealings with Tehran, because the regime “will never give up its nuclear program.” The only recourse, he said, was to “reach over their heads” to the Iranian people and to encourage a change in the regime.
Sazegara issued a stern warning against any military attack against Iran’s nuclear installations, saying that these would only “prolong the life of the regime, allow it to whip up nationalistic sentiments and to gain time to complete their nuclear program.” He added that Iran was “relying on Hezbollah to rain down thousands of missiles on Israel” within hours of an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Sylvan Shalom said that “unlike many in the Israeli leadership” he continues to support international sanctions against Iran. He said that Israel is of the same mind with both the U.S. and the international community concerning Iranian intentions – though “we may have some misunderstandings about the timing.”
Shalom said that part of the problem facing tougher international sanctions is the refusal of both China and Russia to comply. He said that China was worried that the U.S. “would take over the entire Middle East” if Iran, Syria and Lebanon were to fall, and that it might “choke China off” oil supplies in a time of crisis.
On a separate issue, Shalom said that Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayad sees himself as the proper successor to President Mahmoud Abbas, and that this is the reason that he has adopted increasingly hostile positions towards Israel lately.

[American Patriot]

To the leftist who has no problem with rocket fire on Israel

When a leftist notes that rockets have killed 'only 28' Israelis it may be time to ask, what it is, exactly, that's supposed to make a person a leftist?

By Bradley Burston | Mar.13, 2012 | 4:15 PM | 84

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Broken glass of a window display after a rocket from Gaza landed near Ashdod on March 12, 2012. Photo by AFP




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The reasons behind Islamic Jihad’s incessant rocket fire at Israel
By Avi Issacharoff | Mar.13,2012 | 4:15 PM | 17

Some 200 rockets hit Israel since start of latest Gaza escalation
By Gili Cohen , Reuters and DPA
Mar.13,2012 | 4:15 PM | 53



War again. Rockets again. Israel assassinates the commander of a radical Palestinian militia coalition in Gaza. In retaliation, gunners in the Strip fire rockets at cities across southern Israel. Israel launches a series of air strikes targeting the launch crews. More than 20 Palestinians are killed and scores injured. In Israel, questions are raised about the wisdom and the necessity of the assassination.

Sounds all too familiar. Not much new here, from the looks of it. Back pages, even in the Arab world.

In the hard left media, reports on the fighting are often more prominent, but they too have a tone of same-old. Especially when they gloss over or justify rocket attacks targeting civilians in southern Israel.
The attacks of "Israel's latest massacre in Gaza," said a headline post by commentator Ali Abunimah post at his Electronic Intifada,"have followed a typical pattern," with Palestinians responding with rockets of scant consequence, providing Israel a desired pretext for continued bombing of Gazans.
What are your thoughts on this issue? Follow Haaretz.com on Facebook and share your views.
In fact, there has been much about the current fighting that has departed from the typical pattern. In an era of constraints spurred and modulated by the Goldstone Report, the carnage in Syria, Hamas friction with Assad and Iran, a new Egypt, the Iron Dome antimissile system and a host of other factors, both Israel and Hamas have made marked and largely successful efforts to limit civilian casualties on both sides of the border.
One thing that has not changed, however, is the way much of the hard left relates to the moral issues posed by Palestinian rocket attacks on Israelis.
A weekend Mondoweiss news account of Israeli air strikes, while acknowledging that most of the Gaza dead were Islamic Jihad fighters, notes as something of an afterthought, "Local resistance in Gaza retaliated and showered nearby Israeli settlements with homemade rockets."
In every account, the rockets are dismissed as little more than toothless, impromptu, life-affirming symbols of Palestinian refusal to surrender.
In recent years, Palestinian rocket fire has become a measure of whether progressives can be compassionate to and respectful of the rights of, civilians on both sides, or whether their attitude is, at root, no more nuanced than Palestine Good, Zionist Entity Unredeemably Evil.
An opinion piece on Tuesday suggested that Israel intentionally brought on the rocket fire in order to give its Iron Dome a trial run. "What better way to test the system," asked Linda Heard in Arab News. "It’s hard to believe that a state would put its own people at risk for a test-run, but that’s exactly what Israel is doing," she wrote.
In an exchange of reader comments to the Mondoweiss piece, one respondent asks, "Is it relevant that for many months there have been persistent rocket attacks launched from Gaza against Israel?"
A reply comes from a reader signed on as Annie Robbins. "Yes, why shouldn’t they respond to Israel’s violent provocations? That is human nature."
It is also a war crime. In August 2009, Human Rights Watch issued a detailed report condemning rocket strikes by Hamas and other Palestinian groups in Gaza. An HRW official said at the time that "rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians are unlawful and unjustifiable, and amount to war crimes."
Times like this, with rockets targeting civilian populations, I wonder what it means to call yourself a leftist. I believed, and still do, that to be on the left entails a certain universality of concern for the rights and safety and welfare of people, regardless of nationality, race, religion, culture or political outlook.
There is a current on the left that argues that no one, certainly no Israeli, should tell Palestinians how to respond, how to resist. That is so. Moreover, it is unfair and plain wrong to expect Palestinians to refrain from responding to attacks, such as the assassination that set off the current spate of violence.

At the same time, just as anyone - Palestinians certainly included – has the right to tell Israelis what they think is wrong about what they do, anyone – Israelis included – ought to be able to say what they believe about the moral issues involved in targeting non-combatants.
It is wrong to simply grant a moral pass to this response, to rocket fire on civilians, whether you write this off as self-defense – which, in practice, it is not – or as human nature, or as inconsequential relative to Israeli aggression.
In his article, Ali Albunima, waved away Palestinian shelling as little more than a tool for "Israel's tired hasbara [PR] refrain about rockets, rockets, rockets."

"Israeli propaganda insists that the attacks are about preventing 'terrorism' and stopping 'rockets,'" he wrote. Albuminah cited a 2007 HRW study, "Indiscriminate Fire," which showed, accurately, that Israel employs much more powerful weaponry against Palestinians and exacts much higher casualties. What he failed to include, was the report's conclusion that:
"Both sides have shown disregard for civilian loss of life in violation of international humanitarian law (IHL): Palestinian armed groups have directed their rockets at Israeli towns …
"The 10 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian rocket attacks since mid-2004 range from 2 to 57 in age and include four children. The attacks also have inflicted property damage and created a pervasive climate of fear in affected Israeli communities."
Just one question.
When a leftist places quotation marks around the word rockets, when a leftist terms attacks on civilian populations a matter of human nature, when a leftist dismisses rockets as crude, homemade, and unguided, or blames Israelis for their use, when a leftist notes that rockets have killed "only 28" Israelis, or sniffs or jeers at the fact that one out of seven Israelis, one million in all, are currently in rocket range – it may be time to ask, what it is, exactly, that's supposed to make a person a leftist?