WarSclerotic

Obama’s UN nominee advocated invasion of Israel – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( This Obama just keep getting worse and worse… – JW )

Samantha Power, president’s choice for UN ambassador, said in 2002 interview US should impose solution on Israel, Palestinians, advocated deployment of massive military force in Israel

Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama has selected as his nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and academic who at one point in her career has advocated a US invasion of Israel.

Samantha Power, a former White House aide and Harvard professor, asserted in a 2002 interview in Berkley University that the US might in the future be forced to deploy a large military force in Israel in order to impose a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and establish a Palestinian state.

Asked how she would advise the president to address the situation, she replied, “What we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. It may mean investing billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars in what will have to be a mammoth protection force.”

Alluding to the Jewish lobby, she said such an undertaking would “mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.”

Power discussing Mideast conflict in 2002

While she admitted her proposal was “undemocratic,” Power added that “It seems to me that you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.”

She further described Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon as “dreadfully irresponsible” and politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people.”

However, four years after the interview Power rejected claims that Israel is an apartheid state at a Harvard University forum.

Obama, Rice and Power (Photo: Reuters)

Power caused a stir during the tense contest between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2008 election. She was serving as an adviser to Obama at the time.

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,” Power was quoted as telling The Scotsman, a British newspaper, referring to Clinton.

“But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive,” Power was quoted as saying.

Obama, Clinton in Democrats primaries 2007

The remarks prompted her resignation from Obama’s campaign team. Obama edged Clinton for the Democratic nomination, won election that November and named Clinton as his top diplomat, a post she held until earlier this year.

Republicans in the Senate, which must approve her nomination, are likely to give her a rough confirmation hearing.

If confirmed, Power’s return to government service would be a comeback after having left the White House earlier this year as senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights on the national security staff.

(Photo: AP)

While that job was relatively low profile, Power was widely reported to have argued for the US decision to intervene militarily in 2011 to support the rebels who eventually toppled long-time Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

No stranger to the power of words, her earlier work as a journalist sent her covering the Balkan wars of the 1990s and conflicts in other countries such as Rwanda, according to her biography on the White House website.

She later won the Pulitzer Prize for her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” a study of US policy responses to genocide during the 20th century.

Power is married to legal scholar Cass Sunstein, who until last year headed the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He was a friend of Obama dating back to their days on the University of Chicago Law School faculty.

The current UN ambassador Susan Rice was also very critical of Israel in the past but as an envoy adhered closely to traditional US policy in regards to Israel. It is then estimated that Power, now older and more seasoned, will align herself with Washington’s policies and act in favor of Israel in her capacity as UN ambassador.

Israel Hayom | Hezbollah trying to open new front on Golan, Israel says.

The Boston Bombings and how Political Correctness Kills – YouTube.

According to Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security System pinged when Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev went back to Russia. But was silent when he returned after six months in a terrorist training area. Was it because 700 pages of Islam-related counter-terrorism FBI training materials had been purged because of demands by Muslim Brotherhood front groups like ISNA?

Diplomats say Iran nuclear reactor damaged by quake | The Times of Israel.

Tehran claimed Bushehr facility was untouched by recent tremblers, but large cracks have apparently been seen in its structure

By AP and Joshua Davidovich June 4, 2013, 8:08 pm

A worker outside the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran (photo credit: AP/Vahid Salemi)

Diplomats say countries monitoring Iran’s nuclear program have picked up information that the country’s only power-producing nuclear reactor was damaged by one or more recent earthquakes.

Two diplomats say long cracks have appeared in at least one section of the structure.

They demanded anonymity Tuesday, because they are not authorized to divulge confidential information.

Officials in Tehran assured the international community — after the quakes struck in April and early May — that the facility at Bushehr, south of Tehran, was undamaged.

The diplomats referred to recent restricted information gathered from the site in questioning that assertion. They told The Associated Press that one concrete section of the structure developed cracks several meters long as a result of the quakes on April 9 and April 16.

Both diplomats are from member countries of the Vienna-based demanded International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran’s nuclear program. They anonymity because they are not allowed to divulge confidential information.

One of the two said that the cracks seen were not in the vicinity of the reactor core, which contains highly radioactive fuel. But he said that the information available was limited to one section of the reactor, meaning damage elsewhere could not be ruled out.

He declined to go into details saying that could jeopardize the sources.

Asked about the reports, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief delegate to the IAEA, said “I know nothing about Bushehr.”

On April 9, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck the town of Kaki, some 80 kilometers southeast of Bushehr, according to Iranian media. Over 40 people were killed and hundreds more injured during the trembler, which caused serious damage in the region.

“No damage was done to the Bushehr power plant,” Bushehr provincial governor Fereidoun Hasanvand told state TV at the time.

A 5.1-magnitude quake also hit the same region in early May. Officials said then, as well, that there was no damage to the reactor.

The plant is not considered a proliferation threat, but some nations are concerned about how safe it is.

Iran has refused to join an international nuclear safety convention, and technical problems have shut the plant for lengthy periods since it started up in September 2011 after years of construction delays.

Reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency in February and May said the agency had been informed by the Iranians that the facility was shut down, without specifying why.

Kuwait and other Arab countries are only a few hundred kilometers (miles) away from Iran’s Bushehr reactor, on the other side of Persian Gulf coast south of Tehran, and are particularly worried about the safety of the Russian-built reactor. Saudi Arabia mentioned Bushehr as a safety concern on Tuesday at a session of the Vienna-based IAEA’s 35-nation board.

But Iran insists the plant is technically sound and built to withstand all but the largest earthquakes unscathed. Officials in Tehran reassured the international community after the quakes struck in April and early May that the facility was undamaged.

Iran is the only country operating a nuclear power plant that has not signed on to the 75-nation nuclear safety convention, which was created after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

While IAEA inspectors occasionally do inventory of nuclear material at Bushehr they do not have a mandate to conduct safety inspections.

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano suggested sending in experts after the quakes was a good idea, but an IAEA official, who also demanded anonymity because his information is confidential, said no such visits took place.

Iranian officials say the Bushehr plant was built to withstand quakes up to magnitude 8.

Because it’s not a member of the international safety convention, “there are questions about the day-to-day safety at the installation,” said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Concerns about Bushehr’s safety have been compounded by its location in the wake of Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima reactor and resulted in huge radioactive spills.

Iran is located in a zone of tectonic compression where the Arabian plate is moving into the Eurasian plate, leaving more than 90 percent of the country crisscrossed by seismic fault lines. The country has been rocked by hundreds of killer quakes over past centuries.

Nine quakes that hit Iran in the last decades were over magnitude 6 including a 2003 temblor that killed at least 26,000 people in the city of Bam. Scientists say more fault lines are waiting to be discovered and more major quakes are only a matter of time.

Iran’s is not prone to tsunamis. But a severe earthquake alone can crack protective containment vessels that keep radioactivity inside reactors. Earthquakes can also knock out the power, crippling cooling systems that prevent reactors from overheating and possibly exploding.

US considers stationing F-16s, Patriot missiles in Jordan – Israel News, Ynetnews.

State Department says ‘if requested,’ American weapons may remain beyond conclusion of military exercise ‘to assist Jordanian armed forces’

AFP

The United States will send a Patriot missile battery and F-16 fighters to Jordan for a military drill and may keep the weapons there to counter the threat posed by Syria’s civil war, officials said Monday.

The Patriot missile launchers and F-16 warplanes “were approved for deployment to Jordan as part of Exercise Eager Lion,” said Lieutenant Colonel T.G. Taylor, spokesman for US Central Command based in Tampa, Florida.

“In order to enhance the defensive posture and capacity of Jordan, some of these assets may remain beyond the exercise at the request of the Government of Jordan,” Taylor said in a statement.

US officials declined to say how many F-16 fighter jets would be taking part in the joint exercise or how many aircraft might stay in Jordan afterwards.

The United States backed a similar move earlier this year in Turkey, with the NATO alliance deploying Patriot missile batteries along Turkey’s volatile border with Syria.

The deployment of a Patriot anti-missile battery comes after warnings from Washington to President Bashar Assad’s regime against shipping advanced missiles to terrorists in Lebanon’s Hezbollah Shiite group, which is now openly taking part in the war in support of Damascus.

Syrian rebels near Qusair (Photo: Reuters)

Israel has reportedly carried out airstrikes in Syria in a bid to disrupt the possible delivery of missiles to the Hezbollah movement.

The decision to possibly station F-16s and missile batteries in Jordan will fuel speculation on a potential US military intervention, which the White House so far has described as a remote possibility.

“Given our strong alliance with Jordan and in light of circumstances in the region and escalating violence along Jordan’s borders, if requested some (weapons) may remain beyond the conclusion of the exercise to assist the Jordanian armed forces,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

“But no decision has been made yet on that,” she told reporters.

Jordan has hosted two previous “Eager Lion” exercises, involving more than 19 countries, including the United States.

The US Patriot batteries are designed to shoot down Scud or other short-range missiles, known to be in the Assad regime’s arsenal, and could also be employed as part of a no-fly-zone or other air operation.

The Pentagon already has sent about 200 troops to Jordan, including an element of a US Army headquarters, to help the country prepare for possible military action in Syria, including scenarios to secure the regime’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

Fighting raged Monday in Syria, with regime aircraft pounding the embattled town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon, in a three-week-old offensive backed by Hezbollah forces.

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The United States said on Wednesday it is “deeply troubled” over Iran’s plans to launch a new heavy water reactor in 2014 while failing to provide the UN nuclear watchdog with necessary design information about the plant.

Western diplomats and experts say the Arak reactor could yield plutonium for nuclear bombs if its spent fuel were reprocessed, something which Iran says it has no intention of doing. The Islamic Republic says the plant will produce medical and agricultural isotopes.

The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Iran must urgently provide it with design data about the facility, warning that it would otherwise adversely affect its inspectors’ ability to monitor the site effectively.

“We are deeply troubled that Iran claims that the IR-40 heavy water reactor at Arak could be commissioned as soon as early 2014, but still refuses to provide the requisite design information for the reactor,” US Ambassador Joseph Macmanus told a meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors.

He cited IAEA rules that a member state must inform the Vienna-based UN agency about a nuclear facility, and give design details, as soon as it has decided to build it.

“Iran’s refusal to fulfil this basic obligation must necessarily cause one to ask whether Iran is again pursuing covert nuclear activities,” Macmanus said.

Syria: Victory in Qusair is a message to Zionist enemy | JPost | Israel News.

Large US Marine force lands in Aqaba to deploy on Jordanian-Syrian border.

US Marines landing in Aqaba

A large American military force disembarked Tuesday, June 4, at the southern Jordanian port of Aqaba – ready for deployment on the kingdom’s Syrian border, debkafile’s exclusive military sources report. The force made its way north along the Aqaba-Jerash-Ajilon mountain road bisecting Jordan from south to north, under heavy Jordanian military escort.
Our sources disclose that this American force numbers 1,000 troops, the largest to land in Jordan since the Syrian civil war erupted in March 2012. They are members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Force carried aboard the USS Kearsage amphibious assault ship, which has been anchored off neighboring Israeli Eilat since mid-May. Upon landing, the marines took to the road in a convoy of armored vehicles including Hummers.

Washington and Amman have imposed a blackout on their arrival. The Pentagon has only let it be known that the annual joint US-Jordanian “Eager Lion 2013” military exercise is due to begin later in June and last two months, with the participation of US F-16 fighter jets and Patriot missile defense systems.
According to our US sources, the arrival of the US force in Jordan was not directly related to the regular exercise but decided on at an emergency meeting at the Pentagon on May 31, which was attended by top military and civilian Defense Department officials. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who is away from Washington, took part by video conference.

The meeting decided that the military situation evolving in Syria and threats it posed to Jordan – including widening evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria – were urgent enough to warrant the dispatch of extra American military strength to Jordan, over and above the contingents participating in the joint exercise. The Israeli Air Force will provide air cover for the force until the F-16 jets are in place for the drill.

The US Central Command spokesman Lt. Col. T.G. Taylor in a statement to the US media said only: “In order to enhance the defensive posture and capacity of Jordan, some of these assets may remain beyond the exercise at the request of the government of Jordan.”

That request, according to our sources, was for the US to leave behind when the exercise ended and the troops departed – not just some of the weapons systems but all of the equipment which arrived with the marines Wednesday, as well as the F-16 fighters and Patriot missiles.
There is no official word about Washington’s response to this request. However, the Obama administration is not expected to turn it down.