Weapons Not Made in Iran After All

There's an interesting update on this weapons story at the Inter Press Service (IPS) by Gareth Porter, an historian and national security policy analyst whose most recent book is "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam".

It begins with: "WASHINGTON, May 14 (IPS) - Early this month, the George W. Bush administration's plan to create a new crescendo of accusations against Iran for allegedly smuggling arms to Shiite militias in Iraq encountered not just one but two setbacks.

"The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to endorse U.S. charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army...." [the 2nd setback was the dud of a press conference that we've already discussed here-BP]

"The Bush administration and top Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus had plotted a sequence of events that would build domestic U.S. political support for a possible strike against Iran over its "meddling" in Iraq and especially its alleged export of arms to Shiite militias.

"The plan was keyed to a briefing document to be prepared by Petraeus on the alleged Iranian role in arming and training Shiite militias that would be surfaced publicly after the al-Maliki government had endorsed it and it used to accuse Iran publicly."

But the al-Maliki government refused to endorse Petraeus' document.

Details are at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42373: "Senior U.S. military officials were clearly furious with al-Maliki for backtracking on the issue. 'We were blindsided by this,' one of them told Zavis" [an LA Times reporter].

Petraeus again comes across as a political general who's willing to shape the facts to suit his boss.

Gareth Porter also goes into more of the background and significance of the press conference about the Karbala weapons.

He also confirms the almost total news blackout of the affair: "The cancellation of the planned display was a significant story, in light of the well-known intention of the U.S. command to convict Iran on the arms smuggling charge. Nevertheless, it went completely unreported in the world's news media. A report on the Los Angeles Times' Blog 'Babylon & Beyond' by Baghdad correspondent Tina Susman was the only small crack in the media blackout."

Bill

(I just updated this to correct the glaring typo in the headline: I had written "Iraq" instead of "Iran".)

Did you know that you can trade 'stock' to bet on an Israeli or US airstrike against Iran?

There's an Irish site called Intrade, which sets up markets in everything from weather to war to OJ Simpson's trial outcome..

For an attack on Iran by June 30, the market has a wide spread: bid at $6.10, offered at $13.90, with a last sale of $6.10. (Each nominal penny actually represents a dime, so mulltiply everything by 10.) The high since trading started on Oct. 2, 2007 was $36.90 and the low was a dime. If there's an attack, the settling price is $100. If no attack, the final price is, naturally, zero. 2,871 shares are outstanding. Not a lot of action, but 100 shares are being bid for at $6 even (or 6,000 bucks worth).

So, roughly, the odds if you buy now at the offer are 7.2-1. If you pick it up on the bid, it's 16.7-1. If you're confident that there'll be no attack, you can sell at $6 (that is, $60) and risk paying out $100 (actually $1,000, for a total loss of $940).

For an end of September target date, the bid is $15.00, the offer is $24.90, with a last sale of 15. The price range since trading started in late October is $8 low and $42 high. with the high occurring in November. It bounced up to $30 in early April when there were lots of rumors. Odds for the buyer, at $15, are 6.67-1. If you're eager and buy at the offer, you're taking a bit over 4-1 odds. A mere 1974 shares are in existence.

If we give Bush a last chance until December 31, the expectations are a bit higher. The bid is up to $20.00 with the offer at $24.90, same as for September. That's a fairly close market, with 101 shares being bid for at $20.00. Only 1 is offered at $24.90, but 25 are offered at $25. So if you're eager to buy, your odds are 4-1. At the bid, they're 5-1. Only 2,054 shares are outstanding, with a low of $10 and a high of $50. The high was hit in November, March, and early April, and again, almost, in mid April. So there have been several bursts of high expectations for what we would deem a disaster.

Right now, the markets are quiet and at their recent lows. I hope that's a good sign for humanity.

For comparison, for the Democratic nomination, right now Obama is trading at just over $90, unchanged on the day, while Clinton is about $8.50, off from $9 yesterday. That race has had some action. There are 457,882 Obama shares and 644,180 Clinton shares. Those markets began in Nov. 2004! Big Hillary action early. No Obama action to amount to anything until late 06. And currently those Obama shares have an aggregate price of more than $41 million, on their way to settling at almost $46 million.

For President, McCain is near his highs - he's at $38, up a bit today. (For the Republican nomination, he's at $94.60.) His presidential range since July 2006 is $1 to $41.40. Players have created almost 195,000 shares. (Clinton-to-win-the-presidency has almost 280,000 shares outstanding but she's down to $6.50, off .50 for the day and down from an all-time high of $50.20 in October 2007. Obama-to-win-the-presidency is at $55.50, below his early March high of $64, with 150,000 shares.)

Clear? And at the betting parlors in the UK, the current odds at Ladbrokes have the Democrats as "odds on favorites" at 8/15 to win the Presidency, while the Republicans are at 11/8.

If you want to follow these bouncing odds, go to www.intrade.com and make your selections of markets from the menu on the left, labeled "Prediction Markets". There are many weird bets one can follow, though most markets are "thin" -- they don't have a lot of activity or sizable bids and offers. But there's occasionally some interesting information about expectations. There's been some trading in Bird-Flu-coming-to-the-USA and in the US boycotting the Olympics. There's even a little trading in the suspension of the Federal Gasoline Tax by May 31. But none of the markets are big enough to provide significant hedging opportunities for serious investors. Evidently they're for people who'd rather bet than pray and take action.

Bill

Amy Goodman ran a story on it on "Democracy Now",too.

If one watches, listens and reads MSM long enough , a method to their madness reveals itself. For instance if in the span of a few days, you manage to catch Laura Ingham , Rush limbaugh, Glenn Beck,Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck and glean the words that they all said almost excatly alike, you will have the latest talking points coming right out of the White House.Many of these prophets of the new world order frequently get invited to the White House for strategy reviews.

As a veteran who went to college on the G.I. bill and went hungry doing it, I am watching with interest as a bi-partisan bill to include an adequate GI Bill similar to the one like returning soldiers got in WWII, is threatened with veto by Bush. It was co-sponsored by Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel.Secretary of Defense Bill Gates said it was too generous, that it would encourage military personnel to leave the military and go to college rather than stay in the service. Yet there is next to nothing about this story on MSM. Can you imagine if Obama or Hillary voted against something like this, what the endless attacking would look like? Or if they opposed the military pay raise that Bush opposed not long ago? The airwaves would be clicking with propaganda.

I think it's noteworthy that I've been able to find only one article as the source for the report on Maj. Gen. Bergner's failure in his press conference to deliver the expected identification of the Karbala and Basra weapons caches as coming from Iran. And that article is a blog by Tina Susman at the LA Times. The LA Times itself didn't run the story, though CBS News picked it up.

A mention of the General's press conference by the International Herald Tribune noted that while he didn't outrightly blame Iran, he hinted at it by saying that the Iraqi insurgent groups "could not do what they are doing without foreign support. That includes weapons, training to deploy those weapons, funding. The evidence is unequivocal that those extremist groups depend on those foreign sources."

Given his insistence on these "facts", his failure to identify Iran as the source of this particular collection of weapons is significant.

Happily, Keith Olbermann featured the story last night. And many bloggers have picked it up. I searched the NY Times and found nothing at all on Gen. Bergner's press conference. You'd think that with all the hyping of Iran as a source of weapons in Iraq, the NYT would have written something, particularly as Gen. Bergner, as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Multinational Force, has been blaming Iran since at least last July.

Bill