RUTHFULLY YOURS

Logistics of an Israeli Strike on Iran: An Informed View from Germany Posted By David P. Goldman

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/02/17/logistics-of-an-israeli-strike-on-iran-an-informed-view-from-germany/

There are plenty of analysts who deal with the logistics of nuclear weapons and their interdiction in the abstract, and a very few who have dealt with the matter as an existential issue. Apart from the Israelis, for whom Iranian nuclear capability represents an existential threat, the list is short. The German defense expert Hans Rühle headed the Policy Planning Staff of Germany’s Defense Ministry during the 1980s, when the US installed the medium-range Pershing missiles in Germany and undercut Russia’s military advantage in the European theater. A nuclear exchange with Russia remained a live possibility in those days; after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the high water mark for strategic risk during the Cold War came in 1983, when then-Soviet premier Andropov declared a nuclear alert, ostensibly in response to NATO’s “Able Archer” exercise, but really as an attempt to panic the Germans.

Hans Rühle was one of the toughest and most perspicacious analysts in those heady ways. Today he evaluates Israel’s capacity to knock out Iran’s nuclear program in an essay in the German conservative daily Die Welt. It is worth reading (for non-German speakers, there’s Google Translate).

Rühle is highly confident that Israel could knock out Iran’s nuclear program for a decade or more with about 25 of its 87 F-15 fighter-bombers and a smaller number of its F-16′s. Each of the F-15′s would carry two of the GBU-28 bunker busters, with the F-16′s armed with smaller bombs. Rühle writes

There are 25 to 30 installations in Iran which are exclusively or predominately dedicated to the nuclear program. Six of them are targets of the first rank: the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, the conversion works in Isfahan, the heavy water reactor in Arak, the weapons and munitions production facility in Parchin, the uranium enrichment facility in Fordow, and the Bushehr light water reactor.

The location, nature, and defenses as well as (with some limitations) the type of installed anti-aircraft systems are extensively known.

-http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2032/Did-Saudi-Prince-Buy-Fox-News-Silence.aspx–

Have you heard about the 23-year-old Saudi journalist who tweeted an imaginary conversation with Muhammad? It went something like this: He loved Muhammad, he hated Muhammad, he couldn’t understand Muhammad, he wasn’t going to pray for Muhammad. If this isn’t exactly a disquisition on faith and doubt a la “The Brothers Karamazov,” remember, we’re just talking Twitter.

If you haven’t heard of this young man, whose name is Hamza Kashgari, it could be because you’re watching too much Fox News. As of this writing, almost a week after the Kashgari story broke, I haven’t found a single story about it at the Fox News website. (You try.) Meanwhile, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC and CNN have all reported the Kashgari story, clueing in their viewers on how far totalitarian Islam, Saudi style, will go to exert its control over the human spirit. But not Fox.

British Middle East Consultant’s Antisemitic Rant On Iran’s Propaganda Channel Website

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

The website of Press TV, Iran’s 24/7 satellite progaganda news channel that recently lost its licence to broadcast in Britain, carries a long over-the-top antisemitic rant by a bloke called Peter Eyre, described as “Middle East Consultant”.

The fact that the article is headed “BBC hikes up the Zionist propaganda machine” points to its crackpot nature.

Here’s a taste of Eyre’s ire:

“We now see another “Imperialistic Empire” taking its place know as the “New World Order” (NWO) with its headquarters firmly embedded in the City of London.

This evil satanic organisation, consisting mainly of Zionists and very senior members of the Freemasons have spread their evil tentacles over most of the UK and launched this country on a programme of continuous conflicts and war.

The NWO controls world finances, world politics, the UN, WHO, the ICJ, the judicial system, education, police and the military via its arm – NATO.

The heartland of the NWO are the Rothschild’s, members of the EU Royal Families, the Pilgrim Society, the very senior members of the Freemason´s (including many MP´s and members of the House of Lords), the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House London), Friends of Israel and The Bank of England etc.

There is a steady stream of politicians that pay regular visits to Chatham House to pledge their support for Israel with our current Prime Minister David Cameron, his deputy Nick Clegg and many others such as former PM Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, Ken Clarke, William Hague, George Osborne to name but a few. It is in the bowels of this building where they swear their allegiance to Zionists backed groups and Israel (their funders) instead of our own country.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/902/chavez_allies_hysterical_response_to_a_democratic_challenge_in_venezuela

“Many attacks were patently offensive. Chavez supporters are zeroing in on Capriles’s Jewish ancestry in an effort to animate latent anti-Semitism in Venezuela. A pro-government publication did not mince words: “This is our enemy, the Zionism that Capriles today represents. Zionism, along with capitalism, are responsible for 90% of world poverty and imperialist wars.”

Within 48 hours of the impressive victory in Venezuela’s first-ever presidential primary, the winner Henrique Capriles Radonski, who favours an end to polarization and national reconciliation, faced a barrage of vituperative, mendacious, and scandalous attacks by supporters of the Chavez regime.

A chorus of baying hounds swiftly sought to discredit the young presidential aspirant from the start. Leading the pack was Diosdado Cabello, the rattled former military comrade and possible heir-apparent to Chavez, who denounced Capriles as a stooge of the Right. “Now we know who is the candidate of imperialism, of capitalism and the right wing. The anti-patriotic candidate has a face. He won’t have an easy election campaign.”

http://news.investors.com/article/601355/201202160805/big-deficit-from-sluggish-obama-recovery.htm? THIS IS AKIN TO A DOCTOR REASSURING A CRITICALLY ILL PATIENT THAT THE CHAPPED LIPS ARE BETTER…..RSK  View Enlarged Image President Obama told an Atlanta TV station this week that the reason he’s unable to live up to his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half is “because this recession turned out to be a […]

When Did Honesty Become Optional? By Frank Salvato

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/4590

Throughout time politicians and their handlers have been prone to omitting unpleasant facts or manipulating them so as to mold issues to their advantage. This is the concept behind “spin”; a form of propagandizing that crafts an “alternative” interpretation of an issue, organization, person, event or campaign in order to sway the public’s opinion “for” or “against” said issue, organization, person, event or campaign. In fact, the “art of spin” has created an entirely separate category of political animal; the “spin doctor,” many of whom are regularly featured on the many mainstream media news outlets disguised as “political strategists.” But somewhere along the line, the art of employing wit, reason, personality and persuasive rhetoric in order to achieve a political ends gave way to the blatant lie, and never before has it been as evident as it is today.

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/index.php/pruden/full_column/the_coming_end_to_endless_talk Crunch time is coming in Iran, but President Obama and his men act as if they’re at the senior prom, trying to dance the minuet without anyone to dance with. The White House is trying desperately to rewrite Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s interview with David Ignatius of The Washington Post, where Panetta was said […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/17/eric-allen-bell-nonie-darwish-and-mark-tapson-join-the-glazov-gang-1-1-1-1/
Breaking Ranks — on The Glazov Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Eric Alan Bell, Nonie Darwish and Mark Tapson discuss their journeys out of their political faiths.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/17/symposium-putin-forever/

Jim Woolsey, Evgeny Legedin, Yuri Yarim-Agaev, Igor Melcuk, Gregory Glazov, Theodore Dalrymple, Mike Pacepa, Jay Bergman and David Satter, thank you for joining this special edition of Frontpage Symposium.

An All-Star panel, including two ex-spy chiefs from opposite sides of the Cold War, gathers to discuss the KGB’s power and the new freedom movement in the streets of Russia.

Symposium: Putin Forever?

In this special Frontpage Symposium, we have gathered an All-Star panel to discuss the power of the KGB and the meaning of the new freedom movement in the streets of Russia. Our distinguished guests are:

Jim Woolsey, Director of Central Intelligence 1993-95.

Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking official to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. Romania’s Communist president Nicolae Ceausescu was executed at the end of a trial whose accusations came almost word for word out of Pacepa’s book Red Horizons, subsequently republished in 27 countries.

Evgeny Legedin, a street-art painter and political activist from Yekaterinburg. As a coordinator of the youth anti-Putin movement “Oborona” and participant in the democratic movement “Solidarity,” he has organized countless rallies and demonstrations of protest, including the all-Russian campaign for freedom of rallies “Strategy-31.” He is the author of the mock prize “Golden Evsyuk,” the “award” given every year to the worst policemen in Yekaterinburg. In fear for being imprisoned on fabricated criminal charges, he fled Russia on August 16 and reached the UK, where he is seeking political asylum.

Dr. Igor Melcuk, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Montreal and Member of the Royal Society of Canada. He left the Soviet Union in 1977 after being expelled from the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences because he defended Andrei Sakharov​ in a letter published in The New York Times​.

Dr. Gregory Glazov, a Rhodes scholar who is now Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Immaculate Conception School of Theology, Seton Hall University, USA and Program Coordinator of the Institute for Christian Spirituality’s Great Spiritual Books program which frequently focuses on spiritual writings in Soviet and Nazi prison camps. He is currently completing several manuscripts that include commentaries on The Lord’s Prayer and on The Book of Job, as well as an introduction to Jewish-Catholic relationships, entitled, Brothers in Hope: Models of Judaism in Catholic Perspective (NDU Press), and a translation and commentary on Vladimir Solovyov’s writings on Judaism and Christianity, an interest that bespeaks his spiritual legacy as the son of Russian dissidents, Yuri and Marina Glazov.

http://sarahhonig.com/2012/02/17/another-tack-adib-shishakli-and-shukri-al-quwatli/

“There’s no getting away from the fact that paying off dictators to secure a semblance of accommodation is a losing proposition, because eventually dictators disappear. With them vanishes the peace we’re required to fork out for. There’s no Better Business Bureau or Customer Service to refund Israel’s hefty, tangible and eminently risky investment in land-for-peace fantasies.”

Forgotten is our peculiar urban folklore, yesteryear’s spontaneous fun of small Israeli kids rapidly rolling off their tongues the names of assorted Syrian tyrants. This singsong accompanied sidewalk games and was a staple of silly summertime tongue-twister contests.

Nobody then remotely believed that riots and havoc in neighboring autocracies could betoken the rise of democracy in the Arab-speaking sphere.

But for too long we’ve lost touch with our not-so-distant past, a time when recurrent “Arab Springs” were once announced with dizzying frequency. In Syria especially they followed in furious succession until, in 1970, one Hafez Assad proclaimed the longest-lasting self-styled spring and actually managed to pass on control of the abundant Damascene sunshine and blossoms to his son, Bashar.