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Once again, what's good for the plaintiffs' lawyers is bad for everyone else, including those who need the latest medical breakthroughs to help save or improve their lives.

The Dutch intelligence service, the AIVD, has called off an operation aimed at infiltrating and sabotaging Iran's weapons industry due to an assessment that a US attack on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program is imminent, according to a report in the country's De Telegraaf newspaper on Friday. The report claimed that the Dutch operation had been "extremely successful," and had been stopped because the US military was planning to hit targets that were "connected with the Dutch espionage action." The impending air-strike on Iran was to be carried out by unmanned aircraft "within weeks," the report claimed, quoting "well placed"...

Saudi Columnist: Bomb Iran Now, Let Chips Fall Where They May In his August 4, 2008 column in the liberal Arab e-journal Elaph, Saudi columnist Saleh Al-Rashed argued that the Gulf states should urge the West to attack Iran before it acquires nuclear weapons. Following are excerpts from the column: [1] A Nuclear Iran is Like a Nuclear Bin Laden "'One cannot avoid the inevitable' - this adage came to mind when I read the pronouncement by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Mohammad 'Ali Ja'fari, who said: 'My country is easily capable of closing the Straits of Hormuz, the...

----SNIP A Nuclear Iran is Like a Nuclear Bin Laden "'There's no avoiding what there's no avoiding' - this adage came to mind when I read the pronouncement by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Mohammad 'Ali Ja'fari, who said: 'My country is easily capable of closing the Straits of Hormuz, the main passageway for oil freighters, if the country is attacked due to its nuclear program.' "In my estimation, confronting this country, which is trying to gain the time necessary to acquire nuclear weapons, is unavoidable. The possession of nuclear weapons by a state like Iran, which is ideological...

It was mid December 2006, days before the biggest Holiday in America, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ; only weeks after Americans angrily removed Republicans from control of congress in the mid-term election and replaced them with Democrats who promised to end the unpopular Bush war on terror. Americans were busy working, shopping, decorating, cooking, traveling and preparing for guests. The memory of September 11th 2001, the American financial center, the military command in ruins and 3,000 innocent American civilians dead with countless others injured, had faded into distant recesses of the subconscious. Democrats had been warning for...

The Bush administration should stop talking about a military attack as an option if negotiations do not immediately halt Iran's uranium reprocessing program, two former national security advisers said yesterday. "Don't talk about 'do we bomb them now or later?' " said Brent Scowcroft, adviser to presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H.W. Bush, during a discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the negotiations between the United States and Iran. Scowcroft added that by mentioning that threat, "we legitimize the use of force . . . and may tempt the Israelis" to carry out such a...

Representative Ron Paul says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi removed a section from a bill passed by Congress which would have barred the U.S. from going to war with Iran without a congressional vote, claiming she did so at the behest of the leadership of Israel and AIPAC. Paul, a former Republican presidential contender who formally removed himself from the party’s nomination race last week, makes the allegation on C-SPAN during a recently held foreign policy conference in Virginia. Paul says Pelosi’s first act as House Speaker in 2006 was to “deliberately” remove a portion of a legislative spending bill which...

The Sunday Times of London reported this weekend that "President George W. Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down." The Times report quoted a senior Pentagon official as its source. With increased resistance from the Pentagon and the November elections closing in, the White House may be choosing its next best option in dealing with Tehran: to have Israel launch strikes on Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. The paper said Bush has told Israel it has an "amber light" to proceed....

President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official. Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an "amber light" to an Israeli plan to attack Iran's main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times. "Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by...

President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official. Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times. “Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by...

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that no option should be ruled out in order to stop Iran's march toward nuclear weapons. "Iran must be stopped. They are a threat to the neighborhood and a source of funding for Hamas and Hizbullah," Pelosi told Channel 1. While hoping there would be no need for a military strike, the House speaker stressed, "I do think we must not take anything off the table."

WASHINGTON, April 29 (AP) - (Kyodo)—(EDS: TO BE LED) President George W. Bush said Tuesday the recent U.S. disclosure of North Korea's alleged transfer of nuclear technology to Syria was intended to sound a tough warning to Iran of its nuclear aspirations. Bush made the remarks at a White House press conference.

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Following the decision by a Philadelphia judge earlier this morning, prohibiting enforcement of a series of gun-control laws passed in violation of state law by the Philadelphia City Council, Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) – the trade association of the firearms industry and plaintiff in the suit – issued the following statement: “We are pleased with the court’s decision to honor state law and grant our petition to enjoin Philadelphia from enforcing the City Council’s recently passed gun-control laws. These laws would only hurt law-abiding firearms...

  The Antiwar Movement's Case for Preemption and Profiling   By Ben JohnsonFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, April 18, 2008 CODE PINK MAY HAVE UNWITTINGLY BECOME THE BEST EXPONENTS of the policies of preemption and profiling in the War on Terror. Last Tuesday, Sen. Joseph Biden ejected Code Pink protesters set to interrupt General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's testimony on the state of Iraq. Biden instructed security to eject "the people making noise," and the Capitol police quickly responded, expelling the full Code Pink delegation. The latter stood out from the Hill staffers and military attachés listening respectfully to...

WESTPORT, Conn. (AP) - Republican Sen. John McCain refused Wednesday to rule out a pre-emptive war against another country, although he said one would be very unlikely. The likely Republican presidential nominee was asked Wednesday at a town-hall style meeting if he would reject "the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war," a reference to Bush's decision to invade Iraq without it having attacked the United States. "I don't think you could make a blanket statement about pre-emptive war, because obviously, it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces," McCain told his audience at Bridgewater Associates Inc., a...

An East Bay lawmaker's bill to clear the way for local handgun bans has a committee hearing today, delving into issues now pending before the state and nation's highest courts. Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, authored Assembly Bill 2566 in reaction to a state Court of Appeal ruling in January which upheld the voiding of San Francisco's Measure H of 2005, approved by voters to bar city residents from owning handguns or from making or selling firearms or ammunition in the city. The California Supreme Court is mulling whether to review this ruling, which found state law leaves no room for...

U.S. ready to strike Iran in early April - intelligence source -1 18:02 | 30/ 03/ 2007 MOSCOW, March 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russian intelligence has information that the U.S. Armed Forces have nearly completed preparations for a possible military operation against Iran, and will be ready to strike in early April, a security official said. The source said the U.S. had already compiled a list of possible targets on Iranian territory and practiced the operation during recent exercises in the Persian Gulf. "Russian intelligence has information that the U.S. Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea threatened South Korea with destruction Sunday after Seoul's top military officer said he would consider attacking the communist nation if it tried to carry out a nuclear attack. The statement from North Korea's official news agency marked the third straight day of bellicose rhetoric from the North, which is angry over the harsher line the South's new president has taken against the country since assuming office last month. "Our military will not sit idle until warmongers launch a pre-emptive strike," said an unidentified KCNA military commentator. "Everything will be in ashes, not just...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's official news agency warned South Korea Sunday that the country's military would not "sit idle" until "warmongers" launched a pre-emptive strike. "Everything will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, if our advanced pre-emptive strike once begins," the North's Korean Central News agency said. The harsh rhetoric from an unidentified KCNA military commentator also warned that the North will suspend all scheduled inter-Korean dialogue unless Seoul retracts and apologizes for a remark by the new head of the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kim Tae-young told a parliamentary hearing Wednesday the...

LONDON (AFP) - A military strike against Iran would be unlikely to succeed and would only inflame tensions in the Middle East, an influential group of British MPs warned on Sunday. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee also recommended that British ministers urge their American counterparts to begin direct negotiations with Iran and consider offering it a security guarantee if it provides "credible and verifiable" assurances it will not manufacture nuclear weapons. "A military strike would be unlikely to succeed and could provoke an extremely violent backlash across the region," the committee said in its "Global Security: Iran"...

LONDON (Reuters) - Gulf states believe Israel will destroy Iran's nuclear programme rather than allow it to acquire an atomic bomb, an adviser to the Kuwaiti government and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) said on Tuesday. If Iran did build the bomb, said adviser Sami Alfaraj, then the Jewish state might be one of the countries -- along with the United States and Pakistan -- Gulf Arab nations would ask to provide a "nuclear umbrella" to guarantee their security. Alfaraj, president of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies, said Israel might bomb Iranian nuclear facilities in the same way it destroyed...

You Tube video interview on Israeli TV with the President expressing the use of the military option against Iran.

Nato 'must prepare to launch nuclear attack' Last Updated: 1:51am GMT 22/01/2008 Nato must prepare to launch pre-emptive nuclear attacks to ward off the use of weapons of mass destruction by its enemies, a group of former senior military officials has warned. Calling for a major change to Nato's approach to defending its members and their interests, the authors of the report, which has been handed to Nato and Pentagon chiefs, said the first-strike use of nuclear weapons was a "indespensible instrument". According to a report, the authors of the blueprint for reforming Nato include Lord Peter Inge, the former...

Russia Issues Pre-Emptive Nuclear Threat By Sky News SkyNews - 27 minutes ago Russia's military chief of staff says Moscow would use nuclear weapons in pre-emptive strike if it felt threatened. (Advertisement) General Yuri Baluyevsky said there were no plans "to attack anyone" but reasserted Russia's right to defend itself. "To defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, including with the use of nuclear weapons," Gen Baluyevsky said. The remarks do not represent a change in policy for Moscow. But they do come at a time of heightened tension...

We must bomb Iran, says US Republican guru By Toby Harnden in New York Last Updated: 7:28pm BST 26/10/2007 A senior foreign policy adviser to the Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani has urged that Iran be bombed using cruise missiles and "bunker busters" to set back Teheran’s nuclear programme by at least five years. Iran threatens 'decisive strike' if US attacks Analysis: Iran and US in political flux US elections coverage in full The tough message at a time of crisis between the United States and Iraq was delivered by Norman Podhoretz, one of the founders of neoconservatism, who has also...

Prime Minister Gordon Brown refused Monday to rule out any measures against Iran to ensure it complies with the international community over its nuclear program. Brown said it was possible to make Teheran meet its international obligations by diplomatic means, including sanctions if necessary, but refused to rule out the use of force. "What I am prepared to say is that we take very seriously what Iran is proposing and we are prepared to use the methods that we have used in diplomacy and sanctions to deal with this problem, and I do not rule out anything," Brown said. Brown...

"Everything" did not change on 9/11, as some expected, but one thing certainly did: the U.S. government's willingness to preempt enemies before they act. This new policy has outraged so many, it may be discontinued.In foreign affairs, preemption replaced the long-established policy of deterrence. A series of speeches established the new policy, culminating in George W. Bush's June 2002 declaration that "our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." Nine months later, preemption justified the invasion of Iraq before Iraqis...

Judge, Jury, and Executive Branch by: Bethany Stotts, September 18, 2007 With ever-increasing federal intervention in state affairs, delineations between Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Creative Federalism” and Bill Clinton’s “New Age Federalism” have lost meaning, denoting pale differences between degrees of federal hegemony. The federal bureaucratic expansion has made some conservatives nervous that the welfare state will irreversibly centralize government into small department kingdoms, headed by unelected bureaucratic kingpins. “If you strip all the legalese here that shrouds the debate,” asserted Georgetown Law Professor David Vladeck at a September 12 Senate Judiciary hearing, “what is going on here is that the...

Bush setting America up for war with Iran By Philip Sherwell in New York and Tim Shipman in Washington Last Updated: 2:29am BST 17/09/2007 Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.   Dick Cheney ('The Man') with George W Bush Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.Pentagon and...

A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a massive threat to global peace and security. It would trigger a deadly arms race drawing in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Israel and Pakistan. That would raise significantly the prospect of nuclear war and the likelihood of terrorists acquiring an atomic weapon.

As the Presidential contest heats up, the Iran question comes into focus. As it has been for decades, the Middle East continues to be the bane of U.S. foreign policy, and the tinder box that could ignite a major regional or global hot war. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is marching ever closer to the point of no return, and a radical nuclear Iran is the true nightmare scenario for America. Though by most accounts it will be some time before Iran has the kind of intercontinental delivery system that could directly threaten the U.S. mainland, Europe is within Iran’s...

Sanctions and diplomacy have failed and it may be too late for internal opposition to oust the Islamist regime, leaving only military intervention to stop Iran's drive to nuclear weapons, the US's former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. Worse still, according to Ambassador Bolton, the Bush administration does not recognize the urgency of the hour and that the options are now limited to only the possibility of regime change from within or a last-resort military intervention, and it is still clinging to the dangerous and misguided belief that sanctions can be effective. As...

A top Iranian security official said on Saturday that there was "zero chance" of a US attack on Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions, the state IRNA news agency reported. "There is about zero possibility of a US military attack on Iran," deputy interior minister Mohammad Baqer Zolghadr said.

Republican presidential candidates would not rule out tactical nuclear strikes to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Four of the 10 candidates appearing at a debate Tuesday night in Manchester, N.H., were asked whether they would use tactical nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive strike. All four – Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore – said they would. "I think it could be done with conventional weapons, but you can't rule out anything and you shouldn't take any option off the table," Giuliani said. Later...

California officials upset -- Pelosi aides say plan needs work -- House Democrats, in their first draft of new energy legislation, would wipe out California's landmark global warming law -- despite their California speaker's promises that her party would use the state as a model to combat climate change. The legislation would pre-empt California and 11 other states from implementing laws requiring automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across their fleets. The bill would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from granting the states waivers to put their climate change rules into effect. California officials, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's top environmental...

Every decision we make involves risks and benefits. On the world stage, the upside of preemption is that we don't have to live through the consequences of appeasement. The downside is the endless chattering and speculation of politicians and pundits because preemption assures that we'll never know what those consequences might have been. For parents of teenagers the analogy is obvious. We're confronted every day with conflicts that require parental judgment and the judicious application of authority. When my sixteen year old son asks if he can get on the subway and go to a video-game show in the city,...

Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio - As gun-rights groups lauded a new law passed last week lifting most local restrictions on carrying firearms, Ohio's big cities were contemplating joining forces to stop it. In a rare confrontation with lawmakers, Gov. Bob Taft vetoed a bill that wiped out half a dozen assault-weapons bans across the state and dozens of other local gun laws - but the Legislature overrode the veto soundly, the first time it had done so since 1977. Jeff Garvas, who represents Ohioans for Concealed Carry, said gun rights advocates had been boggled by how to comply with an...

GEORGE W. Bush just delivered what may be the most important speech of his presidency since he went before the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, and declared his intention to seek regime change in Iraq. The time has come, the president all but said yesterday, to take the gloves off with Iran. "The world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said flatly. He prefaced those words by saying that efforts were being made to find a diplomatic solution to the problem. Nonetheless, Bush has now said in the strongest sentence he has yet...

BY BARRY SCHWEID AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON Enlarge | Purchase President Bush gestures during remarks on the global war on terror on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006 in Washington. Bush used terrorists' own words Tuesday to battle complacency among Americans about the threat of future attack, defending his national security record as the fall campaign season kicks into high gear. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) President Bush said Tuesday a nuclear-armed Iran would blackmail the free world and raise a mortal threat to the American people. "I am not going to allow this to happen," Bush said in a speech on terrorism. "And...

Gingrich opposed to U.S. strike on Iran By Ralph Z. Hallow THE WASHINGTON TIMES September 1, 2006 ROME -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich this week moved a step further toward casting himself as the conservative alternative to Sen. John McCain in a possible run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. In an impromptu speech during a Mediterranean cruise that hosted scores of conservative donors and activists, the Georgia Republican expressed unexpected skepticism about prospects of military intervention to halt Iran's nuclear program. "I am opposed to a military strike on Iran because I don't think it accomplishes very much...

Want to know where the Democratic Party stands and where America would be under their leadership? Just ask Jimmy Carter. Carter is certainly not bashful about bashing the United States, even on foreign soil or to the foreign press. He sat for an interview with Der Spiegel recently and fired with both barrels at President Bush, "fundamentalist" Christians and Israel. But do Carter's views represent those of the Democratic Party? Well, he sure seems to think so. He told Der Spiegel, "I think I represent the vast majority of Democrats in this country." If so, that's scary. Expanding on the...

Japan mulls preemptive stike on N Korea missile bases Associated Press Tokyo, July 10, 2006 Japan is considering whether a preemptive strike on North Korean missile bases would be an acceptable form of self-defence under the pacifist Japanese constitution, the government spokesman said on Monday. "If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defence. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said. Abe added that the ruling party might take up the...

Starting on the Fourth of July, North Korea launched a salvo of seven short-, medium- and long-range missiles. Despite the failure of the single long-range missile, the Taepo Dong-2, the launches confirmed that North Korea is seeking to advance its missile arsenal in order to threaten both the United States and its allies in Asia. The short- and medium-range missiles, the Scud and No Dong respectively, all flew in the direction of Japan, so it seems that North Korea is focused on achieving a military capability to threaten Japan in particular. It remains unclear at this point whether North Korea...

Viewpoint: Former Clinton administration officials Ashton Carter and William Perry argue that the most effective way to curb the threat from Pyongyang is to destroy its missiles at their test sites * Analysis: North Korea's Missile Test - Diplomatic Arm-Twisting * Related: Can America's Missile Defense Handle North Korea? * Related Blogs: Click here for blog postings from around the web that are related to the topic of this article. The Bush Administration has tried to downplay the mounting danger posed by North Korea. That might be the understandable reaction of officials necessarily preoccupied with the ongoing campaign in Iraq....

The next feud between America's freedom and democracy hawks and old United Nations diplomats will likely develop this week with the release of a much-anticipated report. Ordered by Secretary-General Annan, it was prepared by a panel of 16 former world movers and shakers now in their 70s, who will undoubtedly be hailed at Turtle Bay as wise men, and derided elsewhere as has-beens. Men who held previous posts like Russian foreign minister and Saddam champion Yevgeny Primakov, British U.N. envoy David Hannay, or current Arab League chief Amr Moussa, are not going to excite anyone looking for fresh insights into...

IRAN'S gleeful announcement of advancements in its uranium-enrichment program was disturbing enough. But it came just as the Bush administration was elevating its rhetoric and dropping hints about using military force to knock out Iran's program before it evolved into a capability of producing nuclear weapons. Tehran's timing was not a coincidence. The brinksmanship is building, with a decided hype quotient on both sides. There may be a temptation to draw parallels with the saber rattling before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, but the differences are at least as profound as the similarities. Tehran clearly has a nuclear program,...

The Bush administration is studying options for military strikes against Iran as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy to pressure Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear development program, according to U.S. officials and independent analysts. No attack appears likely in the short term, and many specialists inside and outside the U.S. government harbor serious doubts about whether an armed response would be effective. But administration officials are preparing for it as a possible option and using the threat "to convince them this is more and more serious," as a senior official put it. According to current and former...

US 'planning to bomb Iran' THE Administration of President George Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key suspected nuclear weapons facility. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker magazine, said Mr Bush and others in the White House had come to view Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler. "That's the name they're using," a former senior intelligence official told the magazine. A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted as saying that "this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem...

This is an excellent article via RealClearPolitics.com from a source which has requested that we post no material from their site. Therefore, I am posting only a link to the article. The article is long and meaty.Link to unmentionable source

President Bush plans to issue a new national security strategy today reaffirming his doctrine of preemptive war against terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, despite the troubled experience in Iraq. The long-delayed document, an articulation of U.S. strategic priorities that is required by law, lays out a robust view of America's power and an assertive view of its responsibility to bring change around the world. On topics including genocide, human trafficking and AIDS, the strategy describes itself as "idealistic about goals and realistic about means." The strategy expands on the original security framework developed by the...