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Top Things you Think You Know about Iran that are not True

October 4, 2009 / Klint Finley

Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US

Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of “no first strike.” This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.

Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.

Reality: Iran’s military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates. […]

Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.

Actuality: Iran announced Monday a week ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it did break its word to the IAEA that it would immediately inform the UN of any work on a new facility. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.

Juan Cole: Top Things you Think You Know about Iran that are not True

Who’s Afraid of A Terrorist Haven?

September 21, 2009 / Klint Finley

The debate has largely overlooked a more basic question: How important to terrorist groups is any physical haven? More to the point: How much does a haven affect the danger of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests, especially the U.S. homeland? The answer to the second question is: not nearly as much as unstated assumptions underlying the current debate seem to suppose. When a group has a haven, it will use it for such purposes as basic training of recruits. But the operations most important to future terrorist attacks do not need such a home, and few recruits are required for even very deadly terrorism. Consider: The preparations most important to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks took place not in training camps in Afghanistan but, rather, in apartments in Germany, hotel rooms in Spain and flight schools in the United States.

In the past couple of decades, international terrorist groups have thrived by exploiting globalization and information technology, which has lessened their dependence on physical havens.

Washington Post: Who’s Afraid of A Terrorist Haven?

JRR Tolkien trained as British spy

September 17, 2009 / Klint Finley

Tolkien, one of his generation’s most respected linguists, was ”earmarked” to crack Nazi codes in the event that Germany declared war.

Intelligence chiefs singled him and a ‘cadre’ of other intellectuals to work at Bletchley Park, the codebreaking centre in Buckinghamshire.

Its staff – which included Alan Turing, the gay codebreaker – would later decipher the ‘impenetrable’ Enigma machines.

This saved Britain from German conquest by allowing the Navy to intercept and destroy Hitler’s U-Boats.

According to previously unseen records, Tolkien trained with the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS).

He spent three days at their London HQ in March 1939 – six months before the outbreak of the Second World War and just 18 months after the publication of his first book, The Hobbit.

But although he was ”keen”, Tolkien – a professor of English literature at Oxford University – declined a £500-a-year offer to become a full-time recruit.

Telegraph: JRR Tolkien trained as British spy

(via Disinfo)

Refuse to be Terrorized

September 11, 2009 / Klint Finley

Our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show’s viewership.

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn’t make us any safer.

Bruce Schneier: Refuse to be Terrorized

I have cynically accepted that the terrorists have already won – our nation is bankrupt, our economy in shambles, our infrastructure is crumbling, and our people live in constant fear. (And to top it off, Osama bin Laden was never brought to justice.) But maybe it’s not to late to refuse to be terrorized.

Fine collection of 9/11 links

September 11, 2009 / Klint Finley

Trevor Blake has a fine collection of links regarding 9/11. My favorite is Verbatim Quotes from Republicans when Clinton was Prez. Examples:

“Domestic terrorism is not a cause we have to fight or a project we need to fund. We are not interested in capturing bin Laden. Even though he has been offered to us. We are not the world’s policemen. It’s not our job to clean up other countries messes or arrest it’s bad guys.” – Senator Mitch McConnell […]

“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.” – Governor George W. Bush (R)-TX

OVO: 9/11

There are those who would say that now is not the time to look to past to place blame and point fingers. In most cases, those are the people who are to blame. Some are guilty of neglect, some are guilty of war crimes. None, to my knowledge, have been brought to justice.

Success of legal surveillance still being used to justify illegal surveillance

September 9, 2009 / Klint Finley

This is the most pervasive and perverse assumption permeating national security discussions: that we cannot Stay Safe and simultaneously have a government that abides by the law [in his McCarthyite screed recently accusing me of “indifference” to American national security, Joe Klein wrote that I have never “ma[d]e a single positive suggestion about how to confront that [terrrorist] threat in ways that might conform to [my] views” — as always, it’s simply assumed that the “suggestion” I’ve been making for four years (that the Government should follow the law when eavesdropping on, interrogating and detaining Terrorists) is simply not a means for Staying Safe]. That’s the assumption that emerges time and again in virtually every national security controversy. If one really thinks about it, it’s a truly magnificent achievement for the Government to have convinced its citizenry that they must be allowed to break the law if the citizens want to survive.

Glenn Greenwald: The difference between “legal” and “illegal”

Blackwater Contractor Saw Killing Iraqis as 9/11 Payback – Justice Department

September 8, 2009 / Klint Finley

For sport, they rolled through the streets of Baghdad hurling frozen oranges and water bottles at civilians and nearby vehicles, trying to smash windshields and injure bystanders. Convoying through the city in armored vehicles, the contractors fired their weapons indiscriminately. One member of the Blackwater security team known as Raven 23 regularly bragged about his body count and viewed killing Iraqis as “payback for 9/11.”

These allegations are contained in court records [PDF] filed on Monday by Justice Department lawyers prosecuting five Blackwater contractors for the September 2007 shooting frenzy in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that killed 14 Iraqis and wounded 20 others. Anticipating that lawyers representing the contractors will argue that they were acting in self defense, the prosecution is seeking to introduce evidence that “several of the defendants had harbored a deep hostility toward Iraqi civilians which they demonstrated in words and deeds.” The charges are similar to those that recently emerged in civil lawsuits against Blackwater, stemming from the Nisour Square episode.

Mother Jones: Justice Dept.: Blackwater Contractor Saw Killing Iraqis as 9/11 Payback

The Washington Post’s Cheney-ite defense of torture

August 29, 2009 / Klint Finley

If anyone ever tells you that they don’t understand what is meant by “stenography journalism” — or ever insists that America is plagued by a Liberal Media — you can show them this article from today’s Washington Post and, by itself, it should clear up everything. The article’s headline is “How a Detainee Became An Asset — Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding” — though an equally appropriate headline would be: “The Joys and Virtues of Torture — how Dick Cheney Kept Us Safe.” I defy anyone to identify a single way the article would be different if The Post had let Dick Cheney write it himself. The next time someone laments the economic collapse of the modern American newspaper, one might point out that an industry which pays three separate reporters (Peter Finn, Joby Warrick and Julie Tate) and numerous editors to churn out mindless, inane tripe like this has brought about its own demise. […]

As Sargent reported, even Bush’s loyal Terrorism adviser, Frances Fargos Townsend, admitted that the IG Report provides no basis for what the Post today is ludicrously implying

Glenn Greenwald: The Washington Post’s Cheney-ite defense of torture

See this paper on the effectiveness of torture.

Seven Points on the CIA Report

August 25, 2009 / Klint Finley

The worst is yet to come. Yesterday the CIA released a fresh copy of the report with roughly half of the “case study” discussion now unmasked. But context and placement suggest that the material that remains concealed contains some of the worst discussion of abuse in the report. The heavy redactions start around page 25, and the redactions cover discussion of the origins of the program and the approval process, as well as the discussion of specific prisoners, notably Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammad. Although cases in which the guidelines provided by the Justice Department were exceeded have been discussed, it’s likely the case that the still blacked-out passages cover instances where Justice gave a green light but the conduct was so gruesome that CIA wants to keep it under wraps. That means we haven’t heard the last of the Helgerson report, and further disclosures are likely.

Harper’s: Seven Points on the CIA Report

(via Jorn Barger)

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