AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about similarities or differences you see between the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq and what’s happening now with Iran?

SCOTT RITTER: The biggest similarity that we need to point out is that in both cases no evidence was put forward to sustain the allegations that are being made. Iraq was accused of having weapons of mass destruction programs, reconstituting chemical, biological, nuclear, long-range ballistic missile programs. There was an inspection process in place that had access, full access to the facilities in question, and no data was derived from these inspections that backed up the Bush administration's allegations. And yet, Iraq was told, it’s not up to the inspectors to find the weapons. It’s up to Iraq to prove they don't exist. Iraq had to prove a negative. And they couldn't. We now know that in 1991, Saddam Hussein had destroyed the totality of his weapons programs. There weren’t any left to find, discover. There was no threat.

We now have Iran. It’s alleged to have a nuclear weapons program. And yet the International Atomic Energy Agency, the inspectors who have had full access to the sites in Iran, have come out and said, “Well, we can’t say that there isn’t a secret program that we don’t know about. What we can say, as a direct result of our investigations, there is no data whatsoever to sustain the Bush administration's claims that there is a nuclear weapons program.” And yet, the Bush administration once again is putting the onus on Iran, saying, “It’s not up to the inspectors to find the nuclear weapons program. It’s up to the Iranians to prove that one doesn’t exist.” Why do we go down this path? Because you can’t prove a negative. There’s nothing Iran can do that will satisfy the Bush administration, because the policy at the end of the day is not about nonproliferation, it’s not about disarmament. It’s about regime change. And all the Bush administration wants to do is to create the conditions that support their ultimate objective of military intervention.

jason smith wrote:Scott Ritter

raw story 10/16/06 wrote:The Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), has recently held meetings in Paris with a front man working for Iranian arms dealer and Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, US and foreign intelligence sources tell RAW STORY.

In July 2005, it was reported that Congressmen Hoekstra had travelled to Paris along with Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), the No. 2 Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, to meet with Ghorbanifar front man Fereidoun Mahdavi.

Two former senior intelligence officers and current intelligence sources abroad have now described a more recent meeting between Hoekstra and Mahdavi that took place in Paris sometime between the spring and summer of this year. What is by far of greatest concern to the sources is that accompanying Hoekstra on the trip was Vaughn Forrest, a mysterious character who, like Ghorbanifar, has ties to the Iran-Contra scandal.

A source close to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed the meeting as well, but was unable to verify if Forrest made the trip with Hoekstra.

Repeated requests for comment from RAW STORY were not answered by Hoekstra's office.

One source says they believe the meeting to be part of a larger campaign to allegedly create and launder falsified intelligence by planting it with key publications and individuals abroad, in hopes that it will seep back into official American channels as though it were legitimate information, collected by allied intelligence organizations. Such a campaign of disinformation, if it exists, would be difficult to track, precisely because it is designed to mask its origins through other channels.

While other sources could not definitely confirm this aspect of the story, they indicated that they were not surprised by the possibility, identifying the "cooking" of pre-war intelligence on Iraq as an earlier example of such a campaign.

clocker bob wrote:

jason smith wrote:Scott Ritter

...so I hope people will at least pause and think about the possibility of a false flag attack if there is an 'incident' over there.

clocker bob wrote:
...so I hope people will at least pause and think about the possibility of a false flag attack if there is an 'incident' over there.

rayj wrote:Good luck on that. It's about as likely to rain diamonds. I remember hoping something similar when the 9-11 thing happened...

rayj wrote:Oh, we probably have a couple of hundred years before we have to eat handfuls of sand. How long did it take Rome to fall? Including the Byzantine PR angle?

Quite a while.

rayj wrote: How long did it take Rome to fall? Including the Byzantine PR angle?

Quite a while.