ABC News: Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran

This evening, ABC’s World News Tonight reported that the “United States has opened a new front in its showdown with Iran.” According to the report, President Bush has directed the CIA to carry out covert operations both inside and outside Iran “aimed directly at weakening the Iranian regime.”

ABC’s investigative correspondent Brian Ross said the CIA’s “non-lethal” program had received “secret presidential approval.” Officials told ABC the CIA plan “takes the place of proposed U.S. military action against Iran, reportedly advocated by Vice President Cheney.” Watch it:

The Blotter has more coverage:

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

[…]

“Vice President Cheney helped to lead the side favoring a military strike,” said former CIA official Riedel, “but I think they have come to the conclusion that a military strike has more downsides than upsides.”

The covert action plan comes as U.S. officials have confirmed Iran had dramatically increased its ability to produce nuclear weapons material, at a pace that experts said would give them the ability to build a nuclear bomb in two years.

Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said “I think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within Iran. And this covert action is now being escalated by the new U.S. directive, and that can very quickly lead to Iranian retaliation and a cycle of escalation can follow.”

Pelosi: ‘I’m Not Likely To Vote For Something That Doesn’t Have A Timetable’

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) confirmed at a press conference late this afternoon that she does not intend to vote for the Iraq deal reached today by the White House and Congress. “I’m not likely to vote for something that doesn’t have a timetable or a goal,” she said, while still praising the deal as “a recognition by the administration that a new direction was called for by the American people.”

Later, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) insisted that “we intend to continue that fight” for an Iraq timeline “on every vehicle available to us,” adding that the “first two vehicles that we expect to join the issue on are the defense appropriations bill in July and the defense supplemental appropriations bill in September.”

Watch it:

Also during the press conference, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) called the deal “the beginning of the end of the president’s policy in Iraq,” citing the 18 benchmarks and two required ‘progress reports’ laid out in the legislation. Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the House Majority Whip, pointed out that the bill will allow for passage of the first minimum wage increase in a decade, and for more than $6 billion to be delivered to victims of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

Nobel winners urge cluster bomb ban

Wed, 23 May 2007 06:52:30

A US B-1 Lancer releasing its payload of cluster bombs

Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi and four other female Nobel prize laureates have urged civilians to press for the elimination of cluster bombs.

"While so many of the world's arms cause so much human misery, cluster munitions deserve to be singled out as an especially pernicious weapon of ill repute," Williams said.

"They have become synonymous with civilian casualties," the US Nobel laureate read from the statement signed by her and five women Nobel Peace Prize winners: Rigoberta Menchu (Guatemala-1992); Shirin Ebadi (Iran-2003); Wangari Maathai (Kenya-2004); Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire (Ireland-1976).

An international conference in Lima, Peru opening Wednesday will seek to ban the weapons.

Ninety-eight percent of 11,044 recorded cluster munitions casualties that have been registered with Handicap International are civilians. Cluster munitions are hotly opposed by many individuals and hundreds of groups, such as the Red Cross, the Cluster Munition Coalition and the United Nations, because of the high proportion of civilians that have fallen victim to the weapon.

"They cause too many entirely predictable civilian deaths and injuries during attacks because they saturate such a large area with no degree of precision whatsoever," Williams said.

Williams, whose work to ban landmines garnered the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, represents the Cluster Munition Coalition, which urged South America to follow Central America, which has already banned the weapons.

Representatives of more than 100 countries are expected in Lima for the conference that follows up on work begun February in Oslo, where 47 countries signed the Oslo Declaration seeking to ban the weapons.

Many countries shattered by their effects such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Lebanon, Vietnam and Laos also were to be on hand.

Argentina, Brazil and Chile currently manufacture cluster bombs in South America. China, Russia and the United States, the largest manufacturers of cluster bombs, oppose the ban. Israel most recently used the bombs less than a year ago on Lebanon and the bombs are causing more and more causalities everyday.

"They go on killing and maiming, for days, weeks, years, even decades after the attacks because they leave behind huge numbers of so-called duds that act just like antipersonnel landmines," Williams said.

"These indiscriminate, inaccurate, and unreliable weapons cannot be allowed to proliferate."

"Eliminated now, the world will not face their global contamination as it has with landmines," she added.

At least 400 million people live in areas contaminated by these unexploded weapons, the groups said, largely in the Middle East, where they are used by Israel, the former Yugoslavia and South East Asian countries, where the United States deployed them in the
1970s.

In Vietnam, it has been reported that people are still being killed as a result of cluster bombs and other objects left by the US and South Vietnamese militaries. Estimates range up to 300 people per year. In post-war Kosovo unexploded cluster bomblets caused more civilian deaths than landmines. Cluster bombs have claimed 30 civilians and wounded 191 in Lebanon since the August 14, 2006 ceasefire in the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon conflict.

Close to a million unexploded bombs are estimated to litter southern Lebanon, according to UN figures, threatening mostly children who pick them out of curiosity.