YEP, GOP PREPS BATTLEFIELD FOR MCCAIN by Dyan Kane

Of course Joe Lieberman has weighed in for the herd head mentality (if you can believe it): Vote for McCain cuz we're gonna get hit hard in the first days of the next new Presidency, and who better to handle it than a 72 year old ex-vet? And yes, we've funded covert ops in Iran, gathering the ammunition we need (a la pre-Iraq invasion style). The GOP's plan, as we've all assumed, is to begin a war with Iran before the elections so that the American People will be too scared to change the status quo during wartime. Worked in '04, right? But this time, we're going to write our congress reps and let them know we're on to the scheme, right???

The following is an exerpt from Seymour Hersh's latest and greatest. Let's get ready to rrrrrumble.

New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reports on how the Bush Administration has stepped up covert operations against Iran:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program.


Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of "high-value targets" in the President's war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees--the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

Read Hersh's full report here.


Watch Hersh discuss his article on CNN below:


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