Russian spies going back to the cold – 10 agents admit their guilt.

They have to be the most incompetent spies in the history of espionage. A group of people who spent decades in a foreign country and managed to obtain nothing which they couldn't have come across with a Google search.

Now they are to be deported.

Standing one by one in a New York courtroom, 10 spies confessed yesterday to working in the US as undercover agents for Russia and were sentenced to immediate deportation, setting up one of the biggest, least secret swaps of intelligence officers since the end of the Cold War.

Under an agreement hastily thrashed out between government officials in Washington and Moscow, the five men and five women captured in US cities and suburbs last week by the FBI are to be exchanged for four people imprisoned in Russia for suspected contact with western intelligence agencies.

In Manhattan's federal courthouse, the Russian agents were obliged to strip away their false US identities, rising in turn to spell out their true names.

They gave almost identical statements that they had been "acting as agents of a foreign government, namely the Russian Federation, without providing prior notification to the US attorney-general". Convicted of a single count of espionage, they were each sentenced to expulsion following 10 days' imprisonment – time they have already served on remand.

I can't be the only person who has scratched their head reading about this, wondering what the Hell it was all about. Why did Russia spend so much time and money to find out so very little? Are Obama's team allowing them to be deported because they have almost nothing to really charge them with?

While the FBI has portrayed the deep-cover "sleeper" agents as a threat to American security, their at times bumbling attempts to infiltrate high policy-making circles has made them figures of fun to many Americans.

Chapman, a red-headed 28-year-old whose British former husband has sold compromising photos to tabloids, has become such a celebrity that a New York newspaper lamented her departure and asked if the city could keep her.

It's quite the strangest spy case I have ever come across. I have yet to read anything which they did which compromised American security in any way.

And yet the Russians are willing to swap prisoners which they hold in order to get these clowns back on Russian soil. Bizarre.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Russia, United States, spies, espionage

Who was Russian President Medvedev trying not to offend?

Who could he possibly be talking about?

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've now met with President Obama many times. At least 15 meetings and phone calls.

MEDVEDEV: Sixteen times.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Sixteen. Okay, I knew it was 15. I wasn't sure about the 16. What do you make of Barack Obama the man?

MEDVEDEV: He's very comfortable partner, it's very interesting to be with him. The most important thing that distinguishes him from many other people – I won't name anyone by name – he's a thinker, he thinks when he speaks. Which is already pretty good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You had somebody in your mind, I think. (LAUGHS)

MEDVEDEV: Obviously I do have someone on my mind. I don't want to offend anyone. He's eager to listen to his partner, which is a pretty good quality for a politician. Because any politician is to a certain degree a mentor. They preach something. And the ability to listen to their partner is very important for the politician. And he is pretty deeply emerged in the subject, so he has a good knowledge of what he's talking about. There was no instance in our meetings with Mr. Obama where he wasn't well prepared for the questions. This is very good. And after all, he's simply a very pleasant man with whom it's a pleasure to deal with.

It's a mystery isn't it?

Tags: Medvedev, Russia, United States, Obama, Bush

Lieberman: Obama Won't Get Nukes Treaty Without Major Changes.

There really is nothing this snake could ever do which would surprise me, so low is the place he inhabits in my expectations.

Lieberman has let us know that he is now planning to vote against Obama's nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia.

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," the Connecticut Independent suggested that he himself would oppose ratification of the START II Treaty that Obama signed in Prague this past week, in part because, he reasoned, the language left America vulnerable to a nuclear Iran.

"I don't believe that there will be 67 votes to ratify the treaty unless the administration does two things," Lieberman said. "First: commit to modernize our nuclear stockpile, so as we have less nuclear weapons we know that they are capable if, God forbid, we need them. And secondly, to make absolutely clear that the statements by Russian president [Dmitry] Medvedev at the signing in program, that seemed to suggest that if we continue to build ballistic missile defense in Europe they may pull out of this treaty, is just not acceptable to us. We need that defense to protect our allies and ourselves from Iran."

So, he is going to demand that the US continue it's ridiculous star wars programme, the programme which many doubt will ever actually work.

And let's not forget, the deal still leaves both the US and Russia with 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons deployed and ready to fire, and to 700 deployed delivery systems (missiles and heavy bombers). How many times does Joe want to blow the planet up that he can argue that the US is somehow insufficiently covered on the nuclear bomb front?

The people of Connecticut have got to kick this creep out on his ass at the next election.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Lieberman, nuclear proliferation

Israel's "Nuclear Global Legitimacy".

Avner Cohen makes a strange point in today's Ha'aretz newspaper regarding Israel's nuclear ambiguity:

Let there be no doubt - Israel's policy of nuclear opacity is perceived by many the world over, including its best friends, as a political anachronism that is hard to swallow. To them, the problem is not the question of Israel having nuclear capacity, but the country's refusal to acknowledge it. The more Israel is viewed as a cautious, responsible nuclear nation, the harder it is to accept its policy of opacity as appropriate.

Opacity is widely perceived as concealment, an act of covering up a secret that cannot be revealed to the public. Today, however, the secret is known to all, so it's unclear why it must remain wrapped in ambiguity. In a world demanding that Iran speak the truth over its nuclear activity, ambiguity is seen as a bizarre relic from the past.

My understanding of this, and I am sure American readers can correct me if I am wrong, is that Israel's ambiguity is linked to the inability of the US to give aid to country's who possess nuclear weapons but have not signed up to the NNPT.

It is for that reason that I thought Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity exists.

Cohen appears to be arguing that Israel, by refusing to send Netanyahu to Obama's nuclear summit, is missing a chance "to win global legitimacy for its nuclear program".

I don't think that there is any such chance. Obama is moving towards nuclear disarmament. The 40 year old deal - between the US and Israel - which protects Israel from ever having to declare her nuclear status is no longer in the interests of the United States as it's currently being defined by Barack Obama.

It's inconceivable that the US and Russia would ever contemplate going too far down the disarmament road without addressing the issue of India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

Where Cohen sees a chance "to win global legitimacy for it's nuclear programme", I see only the opposite. The US and Russia would only ask Israel to acknowledge her nuclear arsenal as a first step to asking her to dismantle it.

The notion that Israel could prove herself "as a cautious, responsible nuclear nation" seems to me to me to missing the direction in which Obama is moving.

Obviously his presidency is not going to result in a nuclear free world, but neither is it going to result in a world where the US and Russia start the process of disarming whilst India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea maintain their status quo.

This is yet another point where the interests of the US and Israel are set to clash. Cohen is kidding himself if he thinks Netanyahu is missing a chance to legitimise weaponry which two of the world's largest powers are seeking to dismantle.

Such "global legitimacy" is a myth.

Click here for full article.

Tags: nuclear disarmament, US, Russia, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea

Obama to limit use of nuclear weapons.

Obama will today reveal his administration's policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons and we are about to see a startling difference between his administration and the one of George W. Bush.

The Bush administration reserved the right to use nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear states, a position which the Obama administration is set to reverse, fulfilling a commitment he first made in Prague in April 2009.

In an interview with the New York Times before the White House reveals the revamped strategy, Mr Obama said an exception would be made for "outliers like Iran and North Korea" that have violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But in a striking departure from the position taken by his predecessors, he said the US would explicitly commit for the first time to not using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that adher to the nuclear treaty even if they attack with biological or chemical weapons.

After a review of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal that has involved, among others, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy and the intelligence services, as well as the White House, Mr Obama's much anticipated policy revamp comes as he prepares to fly to Prague on Thursday to sign the landmark Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) with President Medvedev of Russia.

Bush and the neo-cons came at this all wrong as far as I was concerned. They insisted that other nations embrace the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty whilst Bush himself, by declaring his wish to develop a new range of bunker busting nuclear weapons, remained in breach of the Treaty.

It was a classic case of "Do as I say, not as I do."

Bush's threat to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states was simply shocking. And, I would argue, gave a huge incentive for non-nuclear nations to quickly think about getting the bomb if at all possible. And certainly his threat to possibly use nukes against non-nuclear states gave no incentives at all for other countries to adhere to the NNPT.

Obama is set to reverse all that and to renounce the development of new nuclear weapons.

In other words, under Obama, the United States is once again going to embrace the NNPT and the commitments it made under international law.

And, by entering into meaningful disarmament talks with Russia, the US is showing a serious commitment to fulfilling it's international obligations under NNPT.

After the rogue years of George W. Bush, when the United States routinely ripped up previous international commitments, Obama's position is like a breath of fresh air. This is how the United States used to lead the world. As Clinton said at the DNC:

People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.

Obama is leading by the power of the United States example. He is proposing a policy which is both moral and right. Slowly, the cobwebs of the dreadful Bush years are being blown away. America is once again deciding that force is not the only - or even the best - weapon in her arsenal.

UPDATE:



Why am I not surprised that Fox News have decided that Obama is, yet again, making America less safe? Indeed, they go as far here as to state that he is "inviting attack".

How can people like Hannity claim that they loved Ronald Reagan and yet reject Obama fulfilling what was once Ronald Reagan's goal?

In 1986 at the Reykjavik summit, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, both passionate about nuclear disarmament, shocked deterrence experts with an unimaginable proposal – total nuclear disarmament. “It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons,” said Reagan. “We can do that,” replied Gorbachev, “Let’s eliminate them. We can eliminate them.”

However, U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz explained that the proposal was “too much for people to absorb, precisely because it was outside the bounds of conventional wisdom,” and “the world was not ready for Ronald Reagan’s boldness.”

Even Reagan turns out to be too left wing for these guys.

Nancy Reagan:

“Ronnie had many hopes for the future, and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons.”

But then Reagan was also opposed to torture. The truth is, much as they claim to love him, Ronald Reagan really wouldn't have a place in today's conservative movement.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Obama, NNPT, nuclear weapons, Russia

Rupert Cornwell: After this week, we may all owe Obama an apology.

I am glad that Rupert Cornwall shares my enthusiasm for just how the last week has played out in the Obama presidency:

What a week it has been. Congress passed the most far-reaching social legislation in four decades. The US and Russia agreed the most important arms control agreement since the end of the Cold War. And an American president, his patience exhausted with Israel's procrastination over what some still describe as "the Middle East peace process", dared send off a visiting Israeli prime minister with a flea in his ear. In short, it was the week that made Barack Obama.

After listening to the almost constant sniping on the right and the similar bitching which has been occurring on the left, it was nice to see Obama finally put something substantive on the plate.

Sure, there is much further to go on the issue of Israel and Palestine, but, with his treatment of Netanyahu, Obama has shown that he is willing to stand up to Israel in a way which the previous administration were not. It doesn't guarantee success, but without showing this kind of resolve, failure was always guaranteed.

Obama has, this week, sent out the message that he is perfectly serious about bringing about a meaningful peace between the two sides.

And, with his recent successes regarding US healthcare and Russian disarmament, the momentum now moves firmly behind Obama.

The prospects for financial market reform, climate and energy legislation and immigration reform have suddenly brightened. Obama, of all people, will be wary of excesses of optimism. But one thing he knows full well. Nothing succeeds like success.

The Party of No will have to come up with more than simple negativism if they are to have any realistic chance of stopping him.

Click here for Cornwall's article.

Tags: Obama, universal healthcare, Russia, Israel, Palestine

Nuclear weapons arsenals to be cut after landmark US and Russia deal.

After more than a year in which very little happened other than talk, Obama has now passed his healthcare bill and today told us of an agreement between Russia and the US which will cut both those nations nuclear arsenals by 30%, giving us the biggest breakthrough for arms control in two decades.

The treaty, which Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev will sign on 8 April in Prague, lowers the ceiling on the number of operational strategic nuclear weapons from 2,200 to 1,550.

The total number of launchers (missiles and heavy bombers) allowed will be reduced to 800, half the existing ceiling.

"We have turned words into action. We have made progress that is clear and concrete," Obama said. "And we have demonstrated the importance of American leadership and American partnership on behalf of our own security, and the world's."

I have no doubt that the Party of No, despite their unwavering support of Ronald Reagan - another president who wanted to reduce the US's nuclear arsenal - will find fault in what Obama has done. They will forget that Reagan also wanted to abolish nuclear weapons, as he made clear in his 1984 State of the Union address:

Ronald Reagan: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”

No doubt they will accuse him of leaving America at risk by reducing it's nuclear arsenal.

But, after his recent healthcare victory, this reduction in both the US and Russia's nuclear arsenals represents a huge win for Obama.

I remember during the campaign, when he spoke of a nuclear free world, thinking that he was pitching his rhetoric a little too high. But now, as with healthcare, he has made a significant step in the right direction.

American administrations, like huge ships, turn very slowly. But Obama is undoubtedly turning his ship in the direction which he promised.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Obama, Clinton, nuclear proliferation, Russia, nuclear arms deal

The demise of the dollar.

Robert Fisk is reporting in this morning's Independent that China, Russia, Japan and France have been having secret meetings to end the world's oil trading in dollars and move towards trading in a basket of currencies, "including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar."

In what would be the greatest shake up of the modern financial system since the Bretton Woods agreement after the Second World War, this is dynamite and an indication that the world might soon have to accept that it is working with a new financial map.

The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.

This is a serious challenge to American control of the Middle East. Indeed, the only thing which makes me think China will have to tread slowly here is that China is so heavily invested in the dollar at the moment, having spent billions over the past decade buying up dollar assets.

But it does look as if serious moves are afoot to move international transactions away from the dollar and towards the Euro and other currencies.

The last person to announce that he wasn't going to trade in the dollar in oil transactions, but would instead move to the Euro, was Saddam. Within months US and UK tanks were rolling into Baghdad.

But Chinese banking officials say that things have gone too far to now be reversed:

"The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won't be able to use the US dollar."

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."

I'm not sure that I agree with the "Chinese financial sources" who think that Obama will be too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on this. I think this will take up rather a lot of his attention.

But, should this come to pass in nine years time, it would be wrong for those on the right to lay the blame for this at the door of Obama. It will have been the credit crunch which occurred on George Bush's watch which laid the financial foundations for this to even be considered a possibility.

UPDATE:

The Independents leading article talks of why it is important to China that this process be carried out carefully and without a rush:

For the past decade Beijing has been recycling the proceeds of its giant national trade surplus into purchases of US government bonds and other dollar-denominated assets. China too stands to make a significant loss if the value of the dollar falls. For China, however, the timing is much more sensitive. Beijing needs to reduce its dollar holdings, but if it does so too quickly it will bring about the very devaluation it fears. This explains why Chinese officials appear to want this transition to take place gradually over the next decade.

They are simply, as I suspected, too heavily invested in the dollar to risk any action which might devalue it.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Obama, United States, Bretton Woods, China, Russia, France, world financial system

Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili blamed for starting Russian war.

At the time I felt as if I was living in a parallel universe. I was reading Bush and McCain talking as if Russia had attacked Georgia, whilst all the facts that I could gather led me to the opposite conclusion.

Well now an EU-commissioned report has come out, laying the blame for the war squarely at the feet of the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

But the conclusions will discomfit the western-backed Georgian leader, Saakashvili, who was found to have started the war with the attack on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, on the night of 7 August last year, through a "penchant for acting in the heat of the moment".

The war started "with a massive Georgian artillery attack", the report said, citing an order from Saakashvili that the offensive was aimed at halting Russian military units moving into South Ossetia.

Flatly dismissing Saakashvili's version, the report said: "There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation ... Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive could not be substantiated ... It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack."

I was stunned at the time at the way which Bush and McCain dismissed the truth and worked from the premise that Russia is our enemy and, therefore, Russia must be in the wrong.

If I remember correctly, McCain got around the small matter of who started the conflict by stating - and I am paraphrasing - "It doesn't matter how this started, but Russia have overreacted."

Of course, this conflict flared during the election between McCain and Obama and the Republicans saw this as a way to make Obama look weak on national defence, so the truth was literally thrown out of the window.

And I was astonished to witness Labour sending David Miliband to Georgia during this period, in what I could only conclude was an attempt to out-Tory the Tories, and declare that Georgia should become a member of Nato. That was an act of utter idiocy as I argued at the time:

The west has found itself in a bind over Georgia, not wanting to be seen to bow to Russia, and yet unwilling to go to war. Miliband and others are arguing that Georgia should be allowed to join Nato, which is an explicit promise that, should this situation occur again, we would be willing to go to war over it.

My question is very simple. If there is some great principle at stake here, why aren't we willing to go to war now? Why do we believe that membership of Nato would stop any future Russian response to Georgian aggression? And why should Russia buy this silly illogical premise?

The truth was, as the EU report has found, that Russia had not been the aggressor. Mikheil Saakashvili, seizing the moment when Putin was sitting with Bush at the Chinese Olympics, decided to strike.

What followed from that moment onwards was a succession of lies, told by politicians and repeated by many newspapers, that made Georgia out to be the victim of aggression by a stronger neighbour.

That was simply not true.

The investigators criticised and condemned Russian conduct and policy in the months and years leading up to the war and its behaviour since. But on the issues of who started what when, the report was unequivocal. The Georgian offensive against Tskhinvali was not justified under international law.

"It is not possible to accept that the shelling of Tskhinvali with Grad multiple rocket launchers and heavy artillery would satisfy the requirements of having been necessary and proportionate."

We knew McCain was a dreadful liar during the campaign against Obama, but what this report tells us is that he was not alone.

Lots of politicians across the political spectrum chose to portray this conflict in a way which suited their political beliefs rather than according to what actually happened. At last, this EU report confirms what many of us said at the time: Georgia started the war.

UPDATE:

Glenn Greenwald has a very good take on just how widespread Republican lying was during this invasion with almost all of them publicly stating the very opposite of what was true:

Sarah Palin, ABC News interview, September 10, 2008:

PALIN: For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep...

GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.

PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there.

Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, October 24, 2008:

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

John McCain, presidential debate, October 7, 2008:

[Putin] has exhibited most aggressive behavior, obviously, in Georgia. . . .We have to make the Russians understand that there are penalties for these this kind of behavior, this kind of naked aggression into Georgia, a tiny country and a tiny democracy.

Washington Post Editorial Page, August 28, 2008:

Those in the West who persist in blaming Georgia or the Bush administration for the present crisis ought to carefully consider those words -- and remember the history in Europe of regimes that have made similar claims. This is the rhetoric of an isolated, authoritarian government drunk with the euphoria of a perceived victory and nursing the delusion of a restored empire. It is convinced that the West is too weak and divided to respond with more than words. If nothing is done to restrain it, it will never release Georgia -- and it will not stop there.

George Will, The Washington Post, August 17, 2008:

Now McCain's rejuvenated hopes rest on his ability to recast this election, focusing it on who should lead America in a world suddenly darkened by Russia's war of European conquest. . . . He should ask Obama to join him in a town meeting on lessons from Russia's aggression. Both candidates favor NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, perhaps Vladimir Putin's next victim. But does Russia's behavior cause Obama to rethink reliance on "soft power" -- dialogue, disapproval, diplomacy, economic carrots and sticks -- which Putin considers almost an oxymoron? . . . Until Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it seemed that not even the Democratic Party could lose this election. But it might if McCain can make it turn on the question of who is ornery enough to give Putin a convincing, deterring telephone call at 3 a.m.

Washington Post Editorial Page, August 14, 2008:

YOU MIGHT think, at a moment such as this, that the moral calculus would be pretty well understood. . . . Yet, in Washington, the foreign policy sophisticates cluck and murmur that, after all, the Georgians should have known better than to chart an independent course . . . Part of the blame-the-victim argument is tactical -- the notion that the elected president of Georgia foolishly allowed the Russians to goad him into a military operation to recover a small separatist region of Georgia. Mr. Saakashvili says, in an article we publish on the opposite page today, that the facts are otherwise, that he ordered his troops into action only after a Russian armored column was on the move. . . . Moreover, the evidence is persuasive and growing that Russia planned and instigated this war.

Cathy Young, Reason, October 24, 2008:

Last Friday, Salon.com columnist and blogger Glenn Greenwald, one of the Bush presidency's harshest critics, blasted both major party presidential candidates for perpetuating the "blatant falsehood" that Russia launched an "unprovoked attack" on Georgia last August. . . . There is something puzzling about the sympathy for Russia evident in many quarters of the American left-from Greenwald to Noam Chomsky to Alexander Cockburn and Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation (not to mention numerous commenters at sites like Salon.com and The Huffington Post). . . . Why the sympathy, then? A knee-jerk reaction that equates hostility to Russia with red-baiting? Or could it be that to some on the left, the cause of sticking a finger in America's eye is progressive enough?

Every single one of those people were talking nonsense. Nor was the truth particularly hard to find. Indeed, all they had to do was Google it. But they chose to see this as an act of Russian aggression because (a) that is what they are hard wired always to do, and (b) because they hoped by turning this into an issue that they might be able to expose Obama as somehow "unready" to lead the US in a dangerous world. They also do this because they know they will get away with it.

The reason they get away with this is because the American press report in an almost constant "he said, she said" style without ever informing their readership that one side is talking complete and utter bollocks.

It's why they talk of death panels and killing your granny, because they are operating in a fact free environment. Until that changes, they have no reason to. You can now literally lie about who started a war and have that printed verbatim without anyone pointing out the fact that what you are saying is 100% untrue.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Georgia, Russia, Saakashvili, Putin, Bush, McCain, Obama

Barack Obama ready to slash US nuclear arsenal.

When he mentioned abolishing nuclear weapons during his campaign, I thought he was perhaps engaging in hyperbolic rhetoric; that he was simply feeding red meat to liberals and that, once he attained office, he would instantly revert to the arguments used by all previous presidents regarding why we need to keep our nuclear arsenal.

But that's not the way it's panning out.

Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal.

Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.

If Obama goes ahead with this he will be the first president in my lifetime to embrace the concept behind the NNPT, which calls for all nuclear nations to take steps to disarm.

The problem with George Bush asking Iran to desist from building a nuclear weapon was that Bush was also talking about building a new range of "bunker busting" nuclear weapons, which was in direct contravention of the NNPT.

It will be much harder for country's like North Korea and Iran to justify continuing any perceived path down the nuclear route if the rest of the world is heading in the opposite direction.

In an article for the Guardian today, the foreign secretary, David Miliband, argues that failure to win a consensus would be disastrous. "This is one of the most critical issues we face," the foreign secretary writes. "Get it right, and we will increase global security, pave the way for a world without nuclear weapons, and improve access to affordable, safe and dependable energy – vital to tackle climate change. Get it wrong, and we face the spread of nuclear weapons and the chilling prospect of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists."

According to a final draft of the resolution due to be passed on Thursday, however, the UN security council will not wholeheartedly embrace the US and Britain's call for eventual abolition of nuclear weapons. Largely on French insistence, the council will endorse the vaguer aim of seeking "to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons".

So, already, we have country's like France showing cold feet about aiming for a world without nuclear weapons. They would rather create "the conditions" for a nuclear free world, rather than actually go ahead and do it.

But the initial signs from Russia are good.

Russia has approximately 2,780 deployed strategic warheads, compared with around 2,100 in the US. The abandonment of the US missile defence already appears to have spurred arms control talks currently underway between Washington and Moscow: the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, said today that chances were "quite high" that a deal to reduce arsenals to 1,500 warheads each would be signed by the end of the year.

I happen to think that this is quite a modest aim, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. And it's certainly a sign that the nuclear powers are serious about fulfilling their role in the NNPT.

The Obama strategy is to create disarmament momentum in the run-up to the non-proliferation treaty review conference next May, in the hope that states without nuclear weapons will not side with Iran, as they did at the last review in 2005, but endorse stronger legal barriers to nuclear proliferation, and forego nuclear weapons programmes themselves.

Until now, the NNPT has been used as a way of banning other country's from joining the nuclear club; the members who possess nuclear weapons have certainly shown no inclination to ever give them up, despite the fact that our doing so was supposedly central to our convincing other nations that they should not pursue such weaponry. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world has began to lose faith in our reading of this treaty. And who can blame them?

Obama is attempting to breath new life into a treaty which Bush and the neo-Cons treated with contempt.

I wish him well. Up until now it has been impossible for us to hold the moral high ground, insisting others stick to a treaty which we ourselves have been breaking.

Obama is seeking to change that. That can only be a good thing.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Obama, Russia, United States, NNPT

US scraps plans for missile defence shield in central Europe.

At the time, I said I thought it was "yet another example of the reckless unilateralism at the heart of the neo-con agenda" which made "the world a more dangerous place whilst promising the opposite".

It seemed to me to be idiotically insensitive to the Russians at a time when they were co-operating in the War on Terror. Indeed, I thought Bush was acting as if the Cold War had never ended.

So I am delighted at Obama's latest decision.

Barack Obama today reversed almost a decade of Pentagon strategy in Europe, scrapping plans to deploy key elements of a US missile defence shield.

Instead, he said, a more flexible defence would be introduced, allowing for a more effective response to any threat from Iranian missiles.

The U-turn is arguably the most concrete shift in foreign policy from that of the Bush administration, which spent years negotiating to place silos and interceptor missiles in Poland, and a radar complex in the Czech Republic.

The Bush administration always behaved as if the rest of the world simply had to accept whatever America gave them, ignoring the lessons of both Iraq and Afghanistan: that this theory worked much better on planning boards that it ever did in reality.

In reality, for every move, there is a possible counter move. And when Bush attempted to pull off this particular one there were many who thought he was in danger of setting off a new Cold War on European soil.

President Dmitry Medvedev described today's announcement as a "responsible move ... We value the US president's responsible approach towards implementing our agreements," he said. "I am ready to continue the dialogue."

Obama could never hope to get any Russian agreement when it came time to discuss what to do about Iran whilst he was effectively holding a gun to Russia's head. So, he has done the right thing, and put the gun down.

The decision was welcomed among Nato allies in western Europe, which had viewed the earlier project as an unnecessary provocation to the Russians.

No-one, not even the eastern Europeans, thought that this was a clever move by Bush. Indeed, 70% of Czechs were opposed to this deployment. The rest of Europe thought it incendiary and unnecessary. In truth, it had Dick Cheney written all over it.

The Republicans will no doubt have a seizure, claiming that Obama has capitulated to Putin and that America's defences have been left wide open, but it's a pile of old tosh.

Robert Farley points out the contradictions in the Republican case:

The decision to deploy a US ballistic missile defence system to eastern Europe was, at its core, a political manoeuvre. The military arguments in favour of the deployment were confused and contradictory. Advocates initially argued that the system was intended to deter Iran, and that it could not defend against Russian missiles. Later, as concern about the Iranian missile threat ebbed, supporters argued that cancellation of the programme would represent appeasement of Russian aggression.

The technical case for the system was never terribly compelling, as sea-based ballistic missile defences have proven to be more mobile and more capable than the system that was proposed for Poland. The real reasons for the decision to deploy the system were the happy nexus of defense industry financial interest and an ideological commitment on the part of the Republican party. The former requires no explanation. As for the latter, one foreign policy analyst described it thusly: "Cancelling missile defence is like denying communion to Reagan cultists." Since the Reagan administration, missile defence has stood as an unchallenged article of faith in Republican foreign policy circles. The eastern European system was a logical culmination of these two forces.

These people were denied power because of the way they behaved over the last eight years and the state in which they left the United States after two terms of their rule.

There is simply no reason why anyone should listen to them now as they squeal about Obama surrendering to the Russians. One need only remind them that they had previously argued that this missile defence system had nothing whatsoever to do with the Russians in the first place.

Overall, this is a tremendous victory for a sane foreign policy and a responsible defence policy. The US will save money, and avoid needlessly antagonising Russia. While neither the Obama nor Medvedev administrations have characterised the decision as part of any quid pro quo on Iran or any other aspect of US-Russia relations, Russia and the US have been exploring co-operation on several issues, including the war in Afghanistan and policy towards Iran. Russia has recently taken steps to open up its airspace, making resupply of Nato forces in Afghanistan much easier.

Even if Obama didn't win specific concessions from the Russians, he still made the right decision. Saving money and avoiding needless antagonism of Moscow are victories in and of themselves.

It's extraordinary, but one can make the case for cancelling missile defence without even going into the fact that it doesn't actually work.

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Tags: Obama, Putin, missile defence

Obama plans nuclear talks to lift threat of proliferation.

We all remember that Obama actually campaigned on eliminating nuclear weapons, although most people thought that this was simply campaign rhetoric. But, since coming to office, Obama has not let up on his insistence that total nuclear disarmament remains his ultimate goal.

Now he has called for a global summit to talk about how the world can reduce it's nuclear arsenal.

The US President told G8 leaders at their meeting in Italy yesterday that between 20 and 30 nations would be invited to the non-proliferation summit in Washington next spring. He hopes to build on his successful disarmament talks held on Monday with the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev.

The US-led initiative could pave the way for the world to warn Iran and North Korea that they would be treated as "pariah states" unless they stop developing nuclear weapons. The burden of proof would be on countries that are not yet members of the nuclear club to show they had not breached the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, raising the prospect of attempts to send weapons inspectors in if they refused to comply.

There will be cynics who state that Obama is merely showing his naivete when he discusses such matters, but he is actually simply continuing the dream of both Reagan and Gorbachev who attempted such a goal at Reykjavik.

In 1986 at the Reykjavik summit, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, both passionate about nuclear disarmament, shocked deterrence experts with an unimaginable proposal – total nuclear disarmament. “It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons,” said Reagan. “We can do that,” replied Gorbachev, “Let’s eliminate them. We can eliminate them.”

However, U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz explained that the proposal was “too much for people to absorb, precisely because it was outside the bounds of conventional wisdom,” and “the world was not ready for Ronald Reagan’s boldness.”

Now, we all know that the modern day Republican party have almost deified Ronald Reagan, so it will be interesting to watch them line up to remind us that, much as they loved Gripper, he was simply wrong on this one.

And it's interesting to note that Brown is willing to put Trident on the table for further discussion, even if it is not on the table initially.

British officials insisted that Trident would not be "on the table" in March, but confirmed it could eventually form part of the talks if they resulted in a process of multilateral disarmament. They played down the chances of the £25bn Trident programme being axed as part of a drive to cut public spending, saying the "fixed costs" of the four submarines which carry the weapons accounted for the bulk of the budget, so reducing the number of warheads would not save much.

Gordon Brown will publish Britain's proposals for a historic "new deal on nuclear security" in the world in the next few days. He has told Mr Obama that he believes there is a chance of securing a trade-off under which countries promise not to develop nuclear weapons in return for help with developing civil nuclear power.

The Prime Minister told journalists: "Iran is attempting to build a nuclear weapon. North Korea is attempting to build a nuclear weapon. We have got to show we can deal with this by collective action.

"Unilateral action by the United Kingdom would not be seen as the best way. What we need is collective action by the nuclear weapons powers to say that we are prepared to reduce our nuclear weapons, but we need assurances also that other countries will not proliferate them. And we need new kinds of assurances to prevent a situation such as we have got in Iran emerging in exactly the same way again."

The Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, which the Bush administration were fond of reminding us required country's like Iran to desist from acquiring nuclear weapons, also made other demands which the Bush administration always ignored. As the Bush administration planned a new range of bunker busting nuclear weapons they failed to acknowledge that they themselves were actually in breach of the NNPT, as it requires nuclear nations to take steps to disarm.

At talks in the Kremlin on Monday, the US and Russian presidents agreed to limit their arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons to a range of between 1,500 and 1,675 each and their strategic delivery vehicles to between 500 and 1,100 each . The current maximum levels are 2,200 warheads and 1,600 launch vehicles.

Mr Brown, who said he had submitted proposals to Mr Obama on the issue, added: "There is a possibility of a nuclear deal that we will help countries that are non-nuclear gain access to civil nuclear power and to do it in a way that is safe for the whole of the world, but we want them to agree to tight conditions about non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. We will try at the same time to talk with Russia and America to achieve some reduction in nuclear weapons."

At last the US has a leader who is prepared to seriously address the commitments of nuclear nations under the NNPT. It has previously been possible for country's like Iran to point to the US's hypocrisy on this matter.

Obama, by seriously addressing the subject of nuclear disarmament, removes this argument from the table.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Obama, nuclear disarmament, Reagan, Iran, NNPT

US and Russia agree nuclear disarmament road map.

Obama has had his "reset" summit with Russia, where he has attempted to undo some of the damage which the Bush presidency, in all it's arrogance, had brought to the relationship between the two countries.

And there have been some tangible results, most welcome of all, the agreement of both countries to cut their nuclear arsenals.

The US and Russia today agreed a nuclear disarmament road map that would see them cut their arsenals by up to a third, in a preliminary agreement signed by Barack Obama during his Russia trip.

Pledging to reverse a "sense of drift" in Washington's relations with Moscow, the US president said he hoped a new nuclear arms reduction treaty to replace the Start-1 pact, which expires this December, would be ready by the end of the year. "We must lead by example and that is what we are doing here today," he said in Moscow.

However, I note that Obama continues to refuse to rule out implementing Bush's nuclear shield, which would render any achievement made here worse than useless.

The Kremlin has made it clear that a deal is impossible if the US administration goes ahead with its missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Obama said today that a review of that shield would be completed as early as this summer. But he gave no indication whether he was willing to dump it – instead merely predicting that the diametrically opposed positions of the two nations on the shield "could be reconciled".

Obama also insisted the purpose of the shield was to intercept missiles from Iran or North Korea or other states rather than from Russia. But he conceded that convincing Moscow of this would be hard work. "It's going to take time to break down existing suspicions," he noted.

However, Obama has agreed to convene a nuclear security summit next year to tackle proliferation, with a follow up in Moscow soon after. Obama is, at least, slowly thawing the frost which developed during the latter stages of the Bush era.

The neo-cons had always proceeded as if the US had no need to co-operate with any other country, that they would state their will and that other nations had no choice other than to comply. It's nice to see Obama acknowledge the fact that Russia is a nuclear giant and to give them their place when it comes to any discussion of nuclear proliferation.

Analysts said the nuclear deal at the very least revived the notion of disarmament, which had been lost amid the hostilities of recent years, and was realistic.

"The negotiations are going to be tense," said Paul Ingram, the executive director of the British American Security Information Council. "The Russians will be playing hardball but the Americans know Moscow has a strong interest in getting a treaty signed. Both sides have too much invested in reaching an agreement."

Once the treaty is signed, the next question will be how much further the US and Russia have to go. Obama has dedicated himself to a world free of nuclear weapons, but that remains a theoretical target.

I can't help but think that Obama would be better off abandoning plans for a nuclear shield. As I remember the arguments of the eighties, MAD - mutually assured destruction - was the thing which prevented nuclear bombs from ever being used. Or so the right wingers used to say at dinner parties.

Surely, if one side has a shield, then that balance shifts and nuclear war becomes - however fractionally - more likely.

It's an insane idea as, shield or no shield, a nuclear war would destroy the planet. The shield merely gives the false comfort that it might be possible to survive such an event.

But, perhaps Obama is merely holding on to the idea of a shield until the Russians give him something else. Perhaps this is just a negotiating tool. Because I find it very hard to believe that a man of Obama's intellect actually thinks a nuclear shield would work.

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Tags: Obama, Medvedev, Putin, United States, Russia, nuclear weapons

The 52 minutes of Obama magic that changed the nuclear rules.

As right wing bloggers obsess over whether or not Obama has stopped using the phrase war on terror or are lambasting him for observing customs like bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia, a man Bush never bowed to as he much preferred a good old snog, Obama is getting on with doing something much more radical.

I would have thought his aim of ridding the world of many of it's nuclear weapons would have incensed them, but they appear not to have even noticed what he is proposing, as they are so obsessed with trivia. In two recent speeches, both exactly 26 minutes long, Obama has set out a radical plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons:

The president pledged a drive on nuclear disarmament, possibly bigger than any ever attempted. He spelled out how he would accelerate arms control agreements with Russia, following his first summit meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev last week. The deal to conclude a new arms reduction treaty with Moscow, which would slash stockpiles by about a third was a beginning, setting the stage for further cuts.

Building on the momentum of a new agreement with the Russians, Obama said he wanted to cajole the other nuclear powers into agreeing international arms cuts.

This would include Britain's independent nuclear deterrent as well as France's force de frappe and could run into resistance.

I love the fact that this guy is such an idealist, and that he will take on something like this even though he must know that he will run into considerable resistance. He's doing it, not because it is easy, he is doing it because it is the right thing to do.

And he is signaling such a reversal of the tactics of the Bush years, where Bush actually proposed developing new bunker busting nuclear weapons. The signal Obama is sending simply couldn't be more different than the message sent by the Bush White House.

"It is time for testing of nuclear weapons to be banned," Obama said. He called for a resuscitation of the 1996 comprehensive test ban treaty outlawing all nuclear tests. Obama's Democrat predecessor, Bill Clinton, signed the treaty, but then gave up on it after running into resistance from the Republican-controlled Senate which refused to ratify it a decade ago. George Bush did not pursue the issue.

America is the most important country that has not ratified the treaty, although other nuclear countries such as China, Israel and Pakistan, as well as Iran have also declined to ratify.

Obama said he would pursue US ratification "immediately and aggressively".

This is one of my bugbears when it comes to our argument against nations like Iran. Under the NNPT no non nuclear country is allowed to develop nuclear weapons, but there is also an agreement that the countries which do have nuclear weapons will disarm.

That part of the equation is always ignored in this argument concerning Iran and other countries. We demand that others comply with a treaty that the US, under Bush, was clearly in breach of by developing a new range of nuclear weapons, rather than actively acting to disarm as the treaty demands.

Obama is certainly moving in the right direction. The last US president to attempt this was Ronald Reagan:

In 1986 at the Reykjavik summit, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, both passionate about nuclear disarmament, shocked deterrence experts with an unimaginable proposal – total nuclear disarmament. “It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons,” said Reagan. “We can do that,” replied Gorbachev, “Let’s eliminate them. We can eliminate them.”

However, U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz explained that the proposal was “too much for people to absorb, precisely because it was outside the bounds of conventional wisdom,” and “the world was not ready for Ronald Reagan’s boldness.”

It also failed because Reagan refused to drop his star wars scheme. But Obama could be said to be following in Reagan's footsteps. Perhaps that's why the right wing blogs are leaving this subject alone and obsessing over facile rubbish.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Obama, nuclear weapons, NNPT, Iran, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, UK

Colin Powell Dismisses McCain on Georgia Russia Conflict.

Colin Powell dismisses McCain's reading of the Georgia/Russia conflict. McCain has always insisted that it doesn't matter how this started but that Russia's reaction was "disproportionate". Powell points out that it does matter who started it and that it was foolish of Saakashvili to do so.

SESNO: So you're saying the Georgians provoked this?

POWELL: They did. I mean, there was a lot of reasons to have provocations in the area, but the match that started the conflagration was from the Georgian side.

AMANPOUR: And yet...

POWELL: And that's a given.

AMANPOUR: And some debate in the presidential elections has basically been, "We are all Georgians now." What does that mean? It's the same as was said after 9/11.

POWELL: One candidate said that, and I'll let the candidate explain it for himself.

(LAUGHTER)

I was astonished that McCain's comments on this conflict were taken as seriously as they were, as he was basically talking nonsense. It's nice to see someone with a rounder perspective talking about what actually took place there, rather than the delusional argument which McCain has been putting forward.

I seriously wouldn't be surprised if Powell came out and endorsed Obama.

Tags: Christiane Amanpour, Colin Powell, John McCain, Georgia, Russia

Vladimir Putin: 'Georgia? We couldn't just let Russia get a bloody nose'

As Sarah Palin uses her first interview during this election to claim that Russia's actions against Georgia were "unprovoked", Vladimir Putin has made clear just how much he disagrees with that version of events.

"They attacked South Ossetia with missiles, tanks, heavy artillery and ground troops. What were we supposed to do?"

If his country had not invaded, he said, it would have been like Russia "getting a bloody nose and hanging its head down", and there would be a "second blow" into the north Caucasus.

Reminding his guests that he had been at the Olympics in Beijing when the crisis broke out, Mr Putin said he was "astonished, astounded," by the world media silence on the Georgian aggression. "What did you expect us to do? Respond with a catapult? We punched the aggressor in the face, as all the military text books prescribe."

And, of course, Putin is completely correct and Palin is talking the kind of nonsense which has come to be the McCain camp position.

Now whilst McCain doesn't actually go as far as Palin did, by stating that this was "unprovoked", McCain prefers the defence of it doesn't matter how it started the Russian response was "disproportionate". However, this too got shot down by Putin yesterday:

Mr Putin responded angrily to accusations that Moscow had used disproportionate force in Georgia, saying Russian troops were not sent into South Ossetia for 36 hours after the initial attack. Russian forces then unleashed an aerial bombardment, tanks and ground troops but not before Georgia had captured the southern part of South Ossetia up to and including the suburbs of its capital, Tskhinvali, he said.

I've said enough about this in the past but it is very obvious to me that Russia has as much right to object to Nato interference in it's back yard as the Americans had to objecting to Soviet missiles 90 miles from the Florida coast in Cuba.

McCain is actually the one who is engaging in Cold War talk of the most irresponsible kind, pretending that he would go to war over Georgia, which is simply a nonsense. Nor is he being honest about the way other Nato members feel about the plans to include Georgia and Ukraine under it's umbrella. This is actually deeply unpopular with the other member states.

And that's before we get to McCain's insane plan to exclude Russia from the G8.

I would have thought that the last eight years might have shown Americans what happens when they elect a group of people who insist that reality is what they state it to be. McCain is, in this respect, simply offering more of the same.

The world is simply too dangerous for the US to continue down this path.

Although, from what the US opinion polls seem to be stating, many Americans appear to have forgotten that already.

McCain and Palin can continue to insist until their faces turn red that what took place in South Ossetia was Russia's fault, but they are talking to themselves. The rest of the world knows what happened. And that reality won't be changed just because McCain refuses to acknowledge it.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Vladimir Putin, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Georgia, South Ossetia, Russia, Cold War

How far the Republicans will go to win elections.

Putin states that Americans were involved Saakashvili's imbecilic invasion of South Ossetia. Indeed, he has come right out and said that they were doing so to help McCain get elected:

“The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US President.”

But I don't find this accusation surprising in the slightest.

The McCain camp's ties to Saakashvili and Georgia are well documented and the Republican party have always shown that they will go to any lengths to win elections, including stopping peace from breaking out during Vietnam in case it aided Humphrey and not Nixon prior to the 1968 election.

As the race entered its final weeks, their great fear was that President Johnson would negotiate a settlement to the Vietnam War and thus push Vice President Hubert Humphrey over the top to victory.

So, although a half million American soldiers were in the battle zone and the war was tearing the United States apart, Nixon's campaign made secret contacts with South Vietnamese leaders, allegedly offering the assurance that if they refused to cooperate with the Paris peace talks, they could expect a better deal from Nixon.

The evidence is now clear that the Nixon campaign dispatched Anna Chennault, a fiercely anti-communist Chinese-American, to carry that message to South Vietnamese president Nguyen van Thieu.

Journalist Seymour Hersh first described the initiative in his 1983 biography of Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power. Hersh reported that U.S. intelligence "agencies had caught on that Chennault was the go-between between Nixon and his people and President Thieu in Saigon. … The idea was to bring things to a stop in Paris and prevent any show of progress."

So Nixon was literally prepared to allow young US soldiers to remain in a war zone if he though it might help him get elected.

And Reagan was no better. At the time George Bush, running to be Reagan's VP, worried that Carter might pull off an "October surprise" by managing to free captured American hostages, and there is now overwhelming evidence that the Reagan team contacted the Iranians.

Over the past 28 years, more than a score of witnesses - including senior Iranian officials, top French intelligence officers, U.S. and Israeli intelligence operatives, the Russian government and even Palestine leader Yasir Arafat - have confirmed the existence of a Republican initiative to interfere with Carter's efforts to free the hostages.

In 1996, for instance, during a meeting in Gaza, Arafat personally told former President Carter that senior Republican emissaries approached the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1980 with a request that Arafat help broker a delay in the hostage release.

"You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the elections," Arafat told Carter. [Diplomatic History, Fall 1996]

Arafat's spokesman Bassam Abu Sharif said the GOP gambit pursued other channels, too. In an interview with me in Tunis in 1990, Bassam indicated that Arafat learned upon reaching Iran in 1980 that the Republicans and the Iranians had made other arrangements for a delay in the hostage release.

"The offer [to Arafat] was, 'if you block the release of hostages, then the White House would be open for the PLO'," Bassam said. "I guess the same offer was given to others, and I believe that some accepted to do it and managed to block the release of hostages."

And, they didn't simply try to ensure that American hostages were kept imprisoned, they issued threats to make sure that they were.

Bani-Sadr said a nephew of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, returned from a meeting with an Iranian banker, Cyrus Hashemi, who had close ties to Casey and to Casey's business associate, John Shaheen.

Bani-Sadr said the message from the Khomeini emissary was clear: the Republicans were in league with pro-Republican elements of the CIA in an effort to undermine Carter and were demanding Iran's help.

Bani-Sadr said the emissary "told me that if I do not accept this proposal they [the Republicans] would make the same offer to my rivals." The emissary added that the Republicans "have enormous influence in the CIA," Bani-Sadr wrote. "Lastly, he told me my refusal of their offer would result in my elimination."

So, the Republicans have a long history of interfering overseas in order to aid the election of Republican candidates, so it shouldn't really be a surprise - especially when one considers the close ties between the McCain camp and Saakashvili, and how much McCain benefited from the conflict in the polls - that there are people like myself who wonder why this happened at such a fortuitous time for John McCain.

There's actually nothing shocking about Putin's accusation, the Republicans have been pulling off this kind of shit for years.

Click title for Robert Parry's article.

Tags: Saakashvili, Putin, Bush, Cheney, McCain, Obama, US election 2008