Neo-con war-makers and 9/11 conspirators are there best friends.
"Fringe Iranian bloc has well-paid allies in D.C.; Effort to reverse terrorist label for reviled group" November 27, 2011|By Scott Shane, New York Times
WASHINGTON - At a time of partisan gridlock in the capital, one obscure cause has drawn a stellar list of supporters from both parties and the last two administrations, including a dozen former top national security officials.
That alone would be unusual. What makes it astonishing is the object of their attention: a fringe Iranian opposition group, long an ally of Saddam Hussein, that is designated as a terrorist organization under US law and described by State Department officials as a repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis.
Yeah, I noticed the neo-con globe-kickers are hated just about everywhere.
The extraordinary lobbying effort to reverse the terrorist designation of the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, has won the support of two former CIA directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former FBI director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, General James L. Jones; big-name Republicans such as the former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani and Democrats such as former Vermont governor Howard Dean; and even the former top counterterrorism official of the State Department, Dell L. Dailey, who argued unsuccessfully for ending the terrorist label while in office.
And here we were led to believe Dean was the antiwar candidate way back in 2004. Turns out Dean is a tool just like the rest of them.
The American advocates have been well paid, hired through their speaking agencies, and collecting fees of $10,000 to $50,000 for speeches on behalf of the Iranian group. Some have been flown to Paris, Berlin, and Brussels for appearances.
But they insist that their motive is humanitarian - to protect and resettle about 3,400 members of the group, known as the MEK, now confined in a camp in Iraq. They say the terrorist label, which dates to 1997 and then reflected decades of violence that included the killing of some Americans in the 1970s, is now outdated, unjustified, and dangerous.
And they would like to use or install them as a newly-liberated government of Iran.
Emotions are running high as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton completes a review of the terrorist designation. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq has said it plans to close the camp, Camp Ashraf, by Dec. 31 and move the people elsewhere in Iraq in order to reassert Iraqi sovereignty over the camp, 40 miles north of Baghdad.
Two earlier incursions by Iraqi troops into Camp Ashraf led to bloody confrontations, with 11 residents killed in July 2009 and at least 34 in April of this year.
Related:
Occupation Iraq: U.S. Harbors Terrorists
Yeah, but....
Occupation Iraq: Camping Out
Occupation Iraq: A Hostile Regime
How are they that?
The MEK and its American supporters say that they believe the Maliki government, with close ties to Iran, may soon carry out a mass slaughter on the pretext of regaining control of the camp.
(Blog editor heaves heavy sigh)
That gonna be like the kind the U.S. has been doling out around the planet the last ten years or so (in fact, centuries, but I didn't want to get into that now)?
If that happens, the supporters say, the United States - which disarmed the MEK and guaranteed the security of the camp after the invasion of Iraq - will bear responsibility.
You trying to guilt trip us, a**holes?
The MEK advocacy campaign has included full-page newspaper advertisements identifying the group as “Iran’s Main Opposition’’ - an absurd distortion in the view of most Iran specialists; leaders of Iran’s broad opposition, known as the Green Movement, have denounced the group. The MEK has hired high-priced lobbyists like the Washington firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
Nothing new for an AmeriKan newspaper.
Congress has taken note of the campaign. A House resolution for dropping the terrorist listing has 97 cosponsors, including the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan. At a hearing this month, senators pressed the defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, about the threat to Camp Ashraf.
Israel must want them off the list.
A State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said officials there are “working as quickly as possible’’ to complete a review of the MEK’s terrorist designation. US officials are supporting an effort by the United Nations to resettle Camp Ashraf residents voluntarily to other countries, a process that is making slow progress.
Other State Department officials, addressing the issue on the condition of anonymity because it is still under deliberation, said that they did believe the 3,400 residents of Camp Ashraf were in danger as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches.
“We’re in constant talks with the Iraqis and the Ashraf leadership to show maximum flexibility on the closure of the camp,’’ one official said.
But the officials expressed frustration at what they described as the American supporters’ credulous acceptance of the MEK’s claims of representing the Iranian opposition and of embracing democratic values.
That's why no one buys the Iran is making a bomb bit.
In years of observation, the official said, Americans have seen that the camp’s leaders “exert total control over the lives of Ashraf’s residents, much like we would see in a totalitarian cult,’’ requiring fawning devotion to the MEK’s leaders, Maryam Rajavi, who lives in France, and her husband, Massoud, whose whereabouts is unknown.
Yeah, they will make Iran better. That will really help when sifting through the rubble.
Moreover, the official said, the group is “hated almost universally by the Iranian population,’’ in part for siding with Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
That's the horse the Zionist Power Structure wants you to back, AmeriKa!
A State Department cable this year concluded that any indication of US support for the MEK “would fuel anti-American sentiment’’ in Iran and would “likely empower Iranian hardliners.’’
What a great way to get a war going, huh?
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"Anti-American bloc seeks new Iraq elections; Sadrist group wants ouster of prime minister" by Jack Healy and Michael S. Schmidt | New York Times, December 27, 2011
BAGHDAD - The calls for a new election won support from a leading member of the predominately Sunni Iraqiya coalition....
The Sadrists’ calls for new elections came as violence continued to roil Baghdad....
No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they were similar to others conducted by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group accused of trying to plunge the country back into a sectarian conflict by pitting Sunnis and Shi’ites against one another.
I've already covered that crap, and my view has not changed. In fact, the AmeriKan media repetition reinforces it.
Amid the political turmoil and violence, Iraq appeared to be moving closer to resolving a standoff between the government and 3,400 Iranian dissidents living at a camp in eastern Iraq.
Under the deal announced late Sunday night by the UN office in Baghdad, the members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran would leave Camp Ashraf, in Diyala province in eastern Iraq, and move to a former US military base near Baghdad’s international airport.
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There is also no doubt in my mind that MEK agents are responsible for some of the hell-raising in Iran these days.
