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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: philv who wrote (14361)	1/30/2007 8:07:02 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 22250

Phil > I think if Israel's survival is threatened, the US will not stand by. Like the little boy who cried wolf, Israel's survival is always threatened. To my knowledge, since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, there has never been a time when Israel's survival has not been threatened. In other words, the very existence of the state of Israel is associated with threats to that existence. Why? Because Israel was created by tricks, by fraud, by theft and by war and no one knows this better than Israelis themselves. That is why Israel always has to be making war because the alternative of peace, and especially if peace is associated with a democratic government in Israel, is "too ghastly for Israelis to contemplate". > Iran is an entirely different matter in my opinion, a long touted enemy and a real adversary. When Iraq fought with Iran, Israel sold arms to Iran. With the arrival of the Ayatollah, however, relations soured. The real enemy of the state of Israel/Zionism is Islam -- and there are about one and a half billion Muslims to Israel's 5 million Jews. This ensures Israel will be involved in permanent war, forever -- unless Israeli attitude changes which, at the moment, would seem to be very unlikely. The choice is Israel's to make. But if Israel chooses peace it has to pay the price. Talking about US reluctance to be involved in more war, or even the present one, this article gives an insight into what I'm talking about. news.yahoo.com >>Obama pushes deadline for Iraq pullout Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) said Tuesday U.S. combat forces should be out of Iraq by spring 2008 to end "a foreign policy disaster" but he stopped short of endorsing a cutoff in funds. The Illinois senator introduced a bill to force the redeployment under law, but that's unlikely while Bush is president. Still, Obama said he's taking Bush up on his challenge to critics to offer alternatives. "It is important at this point that Congress offer specific constructive approaches to what's proven to be a foreign policy disaster," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press, "because we've got too much at stake to simply stand on the sidelines and criticize." Obama's bill would cap troop levels in Iraq at the early January level of around 130,000, when Bush announced he would send 21,500 additional U.S. forces to Iraq. It would require that troops begin coming home on May 1 with the goal of removing all combat brigades by March 31, 2008. Some Democratic rivals such as John Edwards and Tom Vilsack have called on lawmakers to withhold funds for the additional troops. "If we simply cut off funding without any structure for how a redeployment takes place, then you could genuinely have a Constitutional crisis or at least a crisis on the ground where the president continues to send troops there but now they're being shortchanged in terms of armaments and support," Obama said. Some legal scholars question whether Congress has the authority to bring troops home because the president has control of military forces. Obama noted that he taught constitutional law for 10 years and rejected the notion that the congressional authorization for war in 2002 gives Bush "carte blanche to proceed in any way."<< In other words, Bush no longer has carte blanche to push the Zionist agenda and expect that the US is going to pay for it.

To: philv who wrote (14361)	1/31/2007 8:46:57 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22250

Shell defies US pressure and signs £5bn Iranian gas deal guardian.co.uk >>Shell has signed an important deal to help Iran develop a major gas field, ignoring growing pressure from George Bush to isolate the country for being part of what he alleges is an "axis of evil".* The Anglo-Dutch group, which is struggling to bring more momentum to its business after being forced to hand over vital Russian reserves at Sakhalin island to the Kremlin, confirmed it had finally reached agreement on various aspects of its "Persian LNG" - liquefied natural gas - project centred on the South Pars gas field. Shell insisted last night it was still a year away from a final decision on whether to proceed with the multi-billion-dollar project to build a liquefied natural gas terminal capable of handling 8m tonnes a year. "We have signed an upstream service agreement as part of our work to assess the feasibility of the project," a spokeswoman said, referring to the production deal. "Implementation of the upstream service agreement is subject to taking a final decision to proceed with the midstream LNG project." The move is a bold one by Shell because its arch-rival BP has declared itself unwilling to invest in Iran at a time when the international political climate surrounding the country is so forbidding. The United Nations has imposed limited sanctions on Iran to stop it enriching uranium and Washington is pushing for harsher sanctions against a programme it believes is aimed at building an atom bomb - an accusation Tehran rejects. Washington has increased pressure on non-US companies in the past year not to invest in Iran and some analysts believe it could be hard for oil companies to maintain operations in both Iran and the United States, where Shell and its Spanish partner Repsol both have fields. Fadel Gheit, oil analyst with the Oppenheimer & Co brokerage in New York, said Shell was right to proceed in Iran. "This is very positive for the company because those that get in at an early stage will be rewarded. They are clearly willing to ignore Bush because he is coming to the end of his presidency and when he goes everything could change." On Sunday, Gholamhossein Nozari, head of the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company, told Iran's student news agency ISNA that Iran had signed an initial deal worth $10bn (£5bn) with Repsol and Shell to produce liquefied natural gas from the South Pars field. The Shell spokeswoman said the upstream side of the project would be developed under a buyback agreement. Shell and Repsol would build the production facilities, which would be owned and operated by an Iranian company. Shell and Repsol would be paid back their costs plus a pre-agreed profit. Separately yesterday, Shell agreed to sell its Los Angeles refinery to Texan oil firm Tesoro in a deal worth nearly $2bn.<< *Clearly, Shell has made an assessment of the possibility of war and has decided that war is unlikely. That should tell us something.