Leon Panetta Confirms U.S. Will ‘Take Action’ if Isreal Strikes Iran

Source: End The Lie
Madison Ruppert

With senior Pentagon officials confirming that they have already been drawing up plans to attack Iran as well as Syria, the continued (and accelerating) buildup of military assets in the region, and now United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirming that the United States would backup Israel in an attack on Iran, the unfortunate prospect of an attack looks even more likely.

While he did indeed confirm that the United States would take a role if Israel moved to strike Iranian nuclear facilities – which are not producing nuclear weapons – he would not explicitly explain the extent to which the United States would be involved.

Similarly, in the past Obama has made statements about “having Israel’s back,” but both Obama and Panetta have not been forthcoming when it comes to details or specifics.

“Obviously Israel is an independent country, and they’ll make whatever decisions they make on their own based on what they think is in their national interests,” Panetta said to Arabic news outlet al Hurra.

“If they should make that decision, then obviously the United States will – would take action to protect our facilities in this area and protect our interests in this area,” Panetta stated.

I find Panetta’s correction from “will” to “would” a bit interesting. It might be an innocent slip but it also might be an indication that an attack on Iran by both the United States and Israel is set in stone at this point.

Military Attack Against Syria Without Congressional Approval Could Lead To Obama’s Impeachment

Source: RT


‘Impeach Obama’ Bill: Use of military without Congress approval ‘high crime’

An American military attack on Syria could effectively lead to the impeachment of President Barack Obama. Congressmen say that any war without congressional authorization would be “unconstitutional”.

Republican Representative Walter B. Jones Jr. has come up with a resolution demanding Obama’s impeachment in case his administration starts another military action without the approval of Congress. This came as a reaction to the American Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announcing that in order to carry out the offensive, the US military needs permission from the UN and NATO alone. 

Jones’s resolution states that the prime authority to rule on the attack is the US Congress, not international bodies, be it NATO or UN. 

“Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a president without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under Article II, Section 4 of the constitution,” Jones’s resolution said. 

In an exchange which occurred at a session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that in case the Obama administration decides to strike Syria, it would merely “inform” Congress after the decision has been made. 

“Our goal would be to seek international permission and we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this,” Panetta said. “Whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress, I think those are issues I think we would have to discuss as we decide what to do here.”

Responding to Panetta, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions said he was “breathless” to hear the statement.

Corbett Report Radio - Breitbart, Stratfor and Food World Order

Source: Corbett Report
James Corbett

Tonight on the broadcast we go over the continuing, puzzling saga of Andrew Breitbart’s death, look into the Stratfor email embargo, and take your calls. In the last half of the show we’re joined by James Evan Pilato for our weekly Food World Order update.

Works Cited:

Breitbart’s Obama college video turns out to be a dud, sparks race debate
Breitbart: “Wait ‘Til They See What Happens March 1st”
Breitbart Autopsy Leaves More Questions Than Answers
WikiLeaks’ Elaborate Embargo on the Stratfor Emails
Panetta: International Mandate Trumps Congressional Authorization for Wars
While We Were Looking The Other Way–Obama To Be First President To Chair UN Security Council
AntiSec dumps Monsanto data on the Web
Corporations Kidnap ‘Lorax’ to Greenwash Dangerous Products
Genetically Altered Bird Flu Virus ‘Not Dangerous’
U.S. Stands Firm Against Drug Legalization, Biden Says
More Foods Going to Pouch Packaging
Michigan Lottery Winner Loses Government Food Aid
#BingeAndPurge: Pink Slime, Satire, Coconut Cottage and more

Pentagon Launches Desperate Damage Control Over Shocking Panetta Testimony

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

Alex Jones: “This represents absolute 100 per cent proof that the military industrial complex which runs the United States is under the control of foreign central banks who are imposing a military dictatorship.”

The Pentagon is engaging in damage control after shocking testimony yesterday by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at a Senate Armed Services Committee congressional hearing during which it was confirmed that the U.S. government is now completely beholden to international power structures and that the legislative branch is a worthless relic.

During the hearing yesterday Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey brazenly admitted that their authority comes not from the U.S. Constitution, but that the United States is subservient to and takes its marching orders from the United Nations and NATO, international bodies over which the American people have no democratic influence.

Panetta was asked by Senator Jeff Sessions, “We spend our time worrying about the U.N., the Arab League, NATO and too little time, in my opinion, worrying about the elected representatives of the United States. As you go forward, will you consult with the United States Congress?”

The Defense Secretary responded “You know, our goal would be to seek international permission. And we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this, whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress.”

Despite Sessions’ repeated efforts to get Panetta to acknowledge that the United States Congress is supreme to the likes of NATO and the UN, Panetta exalted the power of international bodies over the US legislative branch.

U.S. Intelligence Agencies Agree: No Evidence of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program

Source: End The Lie
Madison Ruppert

Despite the repeated statements made by United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta which have clearly indicated that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons and the analysis of the American intelligence community, the heated anti-Iranian rhetoric never seems to let up.

Indeed, it has even been reported by none other than the New York Times that intelligence analysts in America have yet to find any hard evidence indicating that Iran has even decided to construct a nuclear bomb.

American intelligence assessments have continued to be congruent with the 2007 intelligence report which clearly concluded that Iran had in fact completely abandoned their nuclear program years before (scroll to the bottom of the article to read the embedded report).

According to anonymous U.S. officials, this assessment was reinforced by the 2010 National Intelligence Estimate and “it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.”

So, how can the governments of the United States and Israel continue to ignore their own intelligence agencies and nonsensically push forward with the effort to go to war with Iran?

If nothing else, it has become painfully clear that our so-called leaders are ignoring any and all contrary evidence which might weaken their war effort and making the relentless push towards war.

The Noose is Tightened Around Iran

Source: Global Research
Ilya Kharlamov

The US [says it] is against the strike and believes that the current sanctions are more than sufficient.

However, these statements are at odds with the growing US and NATO presence in the Persian Gulf. Their troops and military hardware have already been moved to bases in Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The campaign could also affect innocent bystanders like China, which is the biggest consumer of Iranian oil. Thus, Beijing is actively calling for a resumption of a dialogue on Iran’s nuclear program. Russia also strongly opposes violence.
   
Israel could strike Iran this spring, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stated in an interview with The Washington Post. According to the official, the Israeli government seems to have already made a decision on this.

Panetta believes that Israel can strike Iran after the latter crosses into the so-called “zone of immunity” and starts building a nuclear bomb.

Earlier, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated that his country would consider launching a military operation if the sanctions fail to stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear program.

The US [says it] is against the strike and believes that the current sanctions are more than sufficient.

However, these statements are at odds with the growing US and NATO presence in the Persian Gulf. Their troops and military hardware have already been moved to bases in Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Panetta: Military Spending Is Going Up

Source: Global Research
David Swanson

On Thursday, Leon Panetta held a press conference announcing what he called "cuts" to military spending.  The first question following his remarks pointed out that the "cuts" are to dream budgets, while the actual spending will be increased over Panetta's 10-year plan.  Is there any year, the reporter asked, out of the 10 years in question, other than the first one, 2013, in which spending will actually decrease at all.  Panetta replied that he was proposing really truly to cut the projected dream budgets that he had hoped for.  In other words, he did not answer the question.

Now, there are additional minor cuts "on the table" as the saying goes, cuts that Panetta has described as disastrous, cuts that would take U.S. military spending back to about 2007 levels, cut nowhere close to what a majority of the country favors.  (How we survived 2007 and all the years preceding it has never been explained.)  Earlier this week, Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee sent President Obama a video denouncing these cuts.  They are, of course, the cuts mandated by the legislation that created the Super Committee, which failed, resulting in supposedly automatic cuts.

The video (available here) is itself packed with lies.  It falsely claims that cuts have already been made.  It uses dollar figures derived from lumping 10 years of budgets together to make cuts sound 10 times larger.  It pretends the automatic cuts would all be to the military, whereas many could be to the State Department and other subsidiary arms of the military.  These Republicans propose slashing 10% of non-military government jobs and describe this as saving jobs, even though non-military spending produces more jobs for the same dollars than military spending does.  And of course there is no mention in this video or in any official discussion of exactly how outrageously huge the U.S. military has become.  But a crazy video, and a bill to go with it, can not only pass the House and make its way into the Senate (Senator John McCain is already working on companion legislation), but the President is already in agreement with this bill's primary purpose of undoing any actual cuts to the military.  The history of lame duck officials, by the way, is that of becoming less, not more, representative of the public will. Caveat emptor!

In 2004, three times in three debates Senator John McCain proposed cutting military spending and Obama avoided the topic. Candidate Obama proposed significantly enlarging the largest military the world had ever seen.  And he has done so.  He now proposes not to cut it while pretending to cut it.  The best bit of rhetoric in this week's State of the Union address was this:

"Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home."

The Elite's Military Problem

Source: The Daily Bell

US 'turns page on a decade of war' ... The United States is "turning the page on a decade of war", President Barack Obama said, as he unveiled a major strategic review that will cut $489 billion in defence spending over the next ten years ... As the wars of the September 11 era pass, Mr Obama said America should abandon its traditional capability of fighting two major wars at once and focus on becoming a "leaner and smarter" fighting force with an emphasis on counter terrorism, reconnaissance, cyber warfare and maintaining a nuclear deterrent. In a rare appearance in the Pentagon press briefing room, Mr Obama however insisted that the US military would comfortably maintain its military supremacy, with proposed spending still larger than that of the next 10 countries combined. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: We've changed. We're gonna be more powerful but more gentle, too. We're going to emphasize the efficiency of killing rather than its scope.

Free-Market Analysis: The Obama administration has announced a new page in a decade of war. But is this really the case? We would argue that this downsizing is noteworthy because it acknowledges that the pretense of using "citizen armies" to realize the New World Order is actually drawing to a close.

What Obama is enunciating is nothing more than a dominant social theme, in our view. The idea is to indicate to the West and to America in particular that the country's war-fervor is abating. The US will continue to be triumphantly powerful but it won't be so brash or quite so destructive.

But really nothing much has changed in terms of power elite goals. What IS changing is the way force is going to be distributed and applied.

There is going to be a transition to a more secretive military methodology, in our view. It's already happening. The powers-that-be will seek to advance their agenda via mercenaries and intelligence agencies and to fund these activities via drug dealing and various other black ops.

Is there any other choice? The Anglosphere power elite that seeks to run the world cannot likely wean itself from its military methodologies. Its command-and-control agenda rests on the threat of violence and increasingly on its actuation.

Western economies are seemingly almost entirely in the thrall of this elite. Using the wealth of central banking, it has over time created a worldwide economy that is driven by war and directed by a few select, titanic corporations that are basically the handmaidens of Washington DC and the City of London.

US Sources: Israel Ministers Who Opposed Iran Strike Are Now For It

Source: DEBKA file

American sources told Fox television early Sunday, Nov. 6 that all the senior Israeli ministers who were formerly against attacking Iran's nuclear sites are now for it, having been updated on Iran's clandestine progress toward building a nuclear weapon. This information is due to be borne out when the IAEA publishes its next Iran report Tuesday, Nov. 8. The ministers are said to have changed their minds in the belief that the next round of sanctions will not be tough enough and point to the precedent of Israel's 1981 attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor which was never rebuilt.

According to Debkafile's Washington sources, the Obama administration attributes the change of heart by those ministers to a conviction that Iran already has a nuclear weapon.

And so after ten days after feverish, unattributed Israeli news reporting on an imminent attack, the administration has drawn certain lines: Israel should go forward with its plans to strike Iran, while Washington will stress "diplomatic strategy."

Obama Tells Allies U.S. Will Attack Iran By Fall 2012

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

Barack Obama has told America’s allies that the United States will attack Iran before fall 2012 unless Tehran halts its nuclear program, a time frame that suggests Obama is willing to use war as a re-election campaign tool to rally the population around his leadership.

A subscriber-only report by DebkaFile, the Israeli intelligence outfit which has been proven accurate in the past, reveals that shortly after the end of NATO operations in Libya at the start of this week, “President Barack Obama went on line to America’s senior allies, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Saudi Arabia, with notice of his plan to attack Iran no later than September-October 2012 – unless Tehran halted its nuclear weaponization programs.”