McCain Meets with Billy Graham and Son
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/400877.aspx
CBNNews.com - MONTREAT, N.C. - John McCain met Sunday with evangelist Billy Graham and his son, Franklin, at the family's mountaintop retreat.
The Republican presidential candidate, who is actively courting religious voters and trying to reassure skeptical conservatives, visited privately with the Grahams on the grounds of Little Piney Cove in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina.
"We had a very excellent conversation. I appreciated the opportunity to visit with them," McCain said after the 45-minute meeting.
The meeting was McCain's first with Billy Graham, 89, and his son, although McCain's father and the elder Graham were acquainted.
The world-renowned evangelist is in poor health but apparently felt well enough to visit with McCain, who flew to North Carolina with the expectation of meeting only with Franklin Graham, who is president and chief executive of the evangelistic association his father founded in 1950.
McCain said he did not know if the Grahams would vote for him. "I didn't ask for their votes," he said, calling them "great leaders."
After the meeting, Franklin Graham issued a statement praising the Arizona senator's "personal faith and his moral clarity."
"The senator and I both have sons currently serving in the military, and also have a common interest in aviation," Franklin Graham said. "I was impressed by his personal faith and his moral clarity on important social issues facing America today."
Franklin Graham said his father told a story about meeting McCain's father, a Navy admiral, on a trip to Vietnam during the war when John McCain was being held prisoner of war. The two prayed for John McCain during his captivity.
Franklin Graham said his father "expressed gratitude for the senator's long and brave service" to the country.
"We had an opportunity to pray for the senator and his family, and for God's will to be done in this upcoming election," Franklin Graham said.
He said he was not endorsing anyone for president, but was urging "men and women of faith everywhere" to vote and be involved in the political process.
"I encourage people to vote for the candidate at every level who best represents their values and convictions, and then to pray for those in authority over us as required in Scripture," Franklin Graham said.
McCain said last week that he did not consider the meeting with Franklin Graham a political one.
"He is a man whose family is respected, incredibly respected, and I consider it a privilege to have the opportunity to meet with him," McCain said. "I think the Graham family really transcends politics in America. Billy Graham was an adviser to every president and so I'm not sure that there is any - there certainly is no political aspect to the meeting that I will have."
This month, Barack Obama, McCain's Democratic rival, met with the younger Graham, who was part of a group of some 30 evangelicals with whom Obama was meeting in Chicago.
McCain also was greeted by country singer Ricky Skaggs, who had lunch plans with the father and son and had arrived early to meet McCain.
Israeli government approves prisoner swap with Hizballah
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5392
Twenty-two ministers, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert voted for the deal, over objections from three. The prime minister disclosed that the two Israeli soldiers whose handover was covered by the deal, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, are believed to have died shortly after they were taken captive two years ago in a cross-border Hizballah raid. The three ministers who voted against the decision acted on the advice of heads of Israeli intelligence services who warned that it would open the door to more kidnaps of Israeli soldiers. Minutes after the decision was announced, Hizballah launched victory celebrations in Lebanon.
According to the deal, mediated by a German official, Israel has agreed to hand over the Nahariya murderer Samir Kuntar, after 24 years in jail, four Hizballah gunmen and bodies of fallen members, information about four Iranian diplomats who went missing 30 years ago in Lebanon and a group of Palestinians whose number will be determined by the Israeli government. Hizballah will hand over Regev and Goldwasser and information about the Israeli navigator Ron Arad who disappeared in Lebanon after he was captured 22 years ago.
Top US commander briefed on IDF’s four-front strategy in potential Iran war context
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5386
The visiting Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, carried out a guided tour of Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip over the weekend. It was led by the IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and OCs Northern and Southern Commands, Maj. Gens. Eisenkott and Galant.
He was briefed on IDF tactics in a war on all these potential flashpoints in the context of a comprehensive conflict with Iran and then held long conversations with defense minister Ehud Barak and Ashkenazi.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that it is very unusual for the top American commander to carry out a close, on-the-spot study of Israel’s potential war fronts. It was prompted on the one hand by skepticism in parts of the US high command of Israel’s ability to simultaneously strike Iran’s nuclear installations and fight off attacks from three borders while, at the same time, Adm. Mullen showed he was open to persuasion that the IDF’s prospective tactics and war plans were workable.
Military circles in Washington, commenting on the large-scale air maneuver Israel carried out with Greece earlier in June, have opined that 100 warplanes are not enough for the Israel Air Force to destroy all of Iran’s secret nuclear sites; more than 1,000 would be needed. Israel military tacticians in contact with US commanders have countered that, while Iran’s secret nuclear locations are scattered and buried deep, still, every chain has weak links and is therefore vulnerable.
The tough threats issued by Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Mohamed Ali Jafari on Saturday, June 28, were prompted by the Adm. Mullen’s Israeli border tour, word of which was flashed to Tehran by Syrian-Iranian observation posts inside Syrian and Lebanese borders.
(The Sunday Times added that Iran moved its ballistic Shihab-3 missiles into launch positions, with Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant among its possible targets.)
Saturday, DEBKAfile reported:
The IRGC chief, Mohammad Ali Jafari issued Tehran’s toughest and most explicit threats yet in response to recent reports of Israeli preparations to strike Iran’s nuclear installations.
Hinting at an American attack, he said: “If there is a confrontation between us and the enemy from outside the region , definitely the scope will reach the oil issue.”
After this action (of imposing controls on the Gulf waterway), the oil price will rise very considerably,” he said.
Speaking to the Iranian newspaper Jam-e Jam, Jafari differentiated between Iran’s responses to possible American and Israeli attacks.
The oil weapon would be applied in reprisal for the former – “and this is among the factors deterring enemies”, he said, while “Israelis know if they take military action against Iran… the abilities of the Islamic and Shiite world, especially in the region, will deliver fatal blows.”
Jafari noted that Israel was in range of Iranian missiles.
He said Iran’s “allies in the region” could also retaliate, referring to those living in “Lebanon’s heartland of South Lebanon,” without naming Hizballah.
US forces were “more vulnerable than the Israelis” because of their troops in the region. “Iran can in different ways harm American interests, even far away,”
Jafar warned Iran’s neighbors not to let their territory be used.
“If the attack takes place from the soil of another country ... the country attacked has the right to respond to the enemy's military action from where the operation started," he said.
U.S. Escalating Covert Operations Against Iran
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/iran_covert_times/2008/06/29/108324.html
NEW YORK - U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush's funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.
The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine's July 7 and 14 issue, centers around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.
"The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money."
Hersh has written previously about possible administration plans to go to war to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, including an April 2006 article in the New Yorker that suggested regime change in Iran, whether by diplomatic or military means, was Bush's ultimate goal.
Funding for the covert escalation, for which Bush requested up to $400 million, was approved by congressional leaders, according to the article, citing current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources.
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. U.S. Special Operations Forces have been conducting crossborder operations from southern Iraq since last year, the article said.
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 Bush's war on terrorism, who may be captured or killed, according to the article.
But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which include the Central Intelligence Agency, have now been significantly expanded, the article said, citing 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, it said.
Among groups inside Iran benefiting from U.S. support is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People's Resistance Movement, according to former CIA officer Robert Baer. Council on Foreign Relations analyst Vali Nasr described it to Hersh as a vicious organization suspected of links to al Qaeda.
The article said U.S. support for the dissident groups could prompt a violent crackdown by Iran, which could give the Bush administration a reason to intervene.
None of the Democratic leaders in Congress would comment on the finding, the article said. The White House, which has repeatedly denied preparing for military action against Iran, and the CIA also declined comment.
The United States is leading international efforts to rein in Iran's suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, although Washington concedes Iran has the right to develop nuclear power for civilian uses.
Iran sets up 31 martial districts, prepares 320,000 graves for war dead
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5393
Iran has divided the country up into 31 military sectors as part of its stepped up preparations for war, DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report. Sunday, June 29, Brig. Gen. Mir-Faisal Baqerzadeh, head of the Iranian Army’s Foundation for the Remembrance of the Holy Defense and MIAs, said the 320,000 graves were to be dug for enemy forces in case of an attack on Iranian territory.
“We don’t wish the families of enemy soldiers to experience what Americans had to go through in the aftermath of the Vietnam War,” said Baqerzadeh.
Our sources report that it was obvious to the average Iranian that the graves, concentrated in the border regions, were intended for prospective domestic victims of US and Israeli bombardments.
The plan to divide the country into 31 military districts was approved at a top-level consultation at the office of Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week.
Each sector will have its own command center headed by a Revolutionary Guards officer-in command, which in a war contingency will assume control of the district government and keep supplies of food, water, medicines running as well as emergency services for evacuations.
A military force attached to each command will be responsible for maintaining order and responding to problems.
According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, Iran has in effect established a home front command controlled by the Revolutionary Guards and manned by the million- strong Basij volunteer militia, the Guards’ local reserve units. This arrangement guarantees the government regime in Tehran effective control of every part of the country in any war contingency.
Iran Minister: Israel in No Position to Attack
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/iran_israel_mottaki/2008/06/29/108323.html
TEHRAN - Iran's foreign minister said on Sunday he did not believe Israel was in a position to attack the Islamic Republic over its nuclear programme.
"They know full well what the consequences of such an act would be," Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki told reporters.
He was speaking a day after the head of the Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying Iran would impose controls on shipping in the Gulf oil route if Iran was attacked and warned regional states of reprisals if they took part.
Speculation about a possible attack on Iran has risen since a U.S. newspaper reported this month that Israel had practiced such a strike.
Mottaki said Israel was dealing with the consequences of its 2006 war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and was suffering a "crisis of deepening illegitimacy" in the Middle East region.
"That's why we do not see the Zionist regime in a situation in which they would want to engage in such an adventurism," he said when asked about the possibility of an Israeli attack.
Fear of an escalation in the standoff between the West and Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, have been one factor pushing oil prices to record highs. Crude hit a record level on international markets near $143 a barrel on Friday.
Analysts say Iran could use unconventional tactics, such as deploying small craft to attack ships, or using allies in the area to strike at U.S. or Israeli interests.
Iran's Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said reports of a possible strike were part of the "psychological warfare" waged by the West against Iran, aimed at diverting attention from "domestic failures" in the United States and Israel.
The Islamic Republic says its nuclear programme is peaceful and aimed at generating electricity. But the West and Israel fear Iran is seeking to build atomic bombs. Israel is believed to be the only Middle Eastern state with nuclear arms.
Washington has said it wants diplomacy to end the nuclear row but has not ruled out military action should that fail.
No comments:
Post a Comment