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President George W Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on Iran - As Tehran tests new missiles, America believes only a show of force can deter President Ahmadinejad 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 for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support. Nor is it certain that Bush’s amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran’s test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets “It’s really all down to the Israelis,” the Pentagon official added. “This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn’t believe that anything but force will deter Iran.” The official added that Israel had not so far presented Bush with a convincing military proposal. “If there is no solid plan, the amber will never turn to green,” he said. There was also resistance inside the Pentagon from officers concerned about Iranian retaliation. “The uniform people are opposed to the attack plans, mainly because they think it will endanger our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the source said. Complicating the calculations in both Washington and Tel Aviv is the prospect of an incoming Democratic president who has already made it clear that he prefers negotiation to the use of force. Senator Barack Obama’s previous opposition to the war in Iraq, and his apparent doubts about the urgency of the Iranian threat, have intensified pressure on the Israeli hawks to act before November’s US presidential election. “If I were an Israeli I wouldn’t wait,” the Pentagon official added. The latest round of regional tension was sparked by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which fired nine long and medium-range missiles in war game manoeuvres in the Gulf last Wednesday. Iran’s state-run media reported that one of them was a modified Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which has a claimed range of 1,250 miles and could theoretically deliver a one-ton nuclear warhead over Israeli cities. Tel Aviv is about 650 miles from western Iran. General Hossein Salami, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, boasted that “our hands are always on the trigger and our missiles are ready for launch”. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said she saw the launches as “evidence that the missile threat is not an imaginary one”, although the impact of the Iranian stunt was diminished on Thursday when it became clear that a photograph purporting to show the missiles being launched had been faked. The one thing that all sides agree on is that any strike by either Iran or Israel would trigger a catastrophic round of retaliation that would rock global oil markets, send the price of petrol soaring and wreck the progress of the US military effort in Iraq. Abdalla Salem El-Badri, secretary-general of Opec, the oil producers’ consortium, said last week that a military conflict involving Iran would see an “unlimited” rise in prices because any loss of Iranian production — or constriction of shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — could not be replaced. Iran is Opec’s second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia. Equally worrying for Bush would be the impact on the US mission in Iraq, which after years of turmoil has seen gains from the military “surge” of the past few months, and on American operations in the wider region. A senior Iranian official said yesterday that Iran would destroy Israel and 32 American military bases in the Middle East in response to any attack. Yet US officials acknowledge that no American president can afford to remain idle if Israel is threatened. How genuine the Iranian threat is was the subject of intense debate last week, with some analysts arguing that Iran might have a useable nuclear weapon by next spring and others convinced that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is engaged in a dangerous game of bluffing — mainly to impress a domestic Iranian audience that is struggling with economic setbacks and beginning to question his leadership. Among the sceptics is Kenneth Katzman, a former CIA analyst and author of a book on the Revolutionary Guard. “I don’t subscribe to the view that Iran is in a position to inflict devastating damage on anyone,” said Katzman, who is best known for warning shortly before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to attack America. “The Revolutionary Guards have always underperformed militarily,” he said. “Their equipment is quite inaccurate if not outright inoperable. Those missile launches were more like putting up a ‘beware of the dog’ sign. They want everyone to think that if you mess with them, you will get bitten.” A former adviser to Rice noted that Ahmadinejad’s confrontational attitude had earned him powerful enemies among Iran’s religious leadership. Professor Shai Feldman, director of Middle East studies at Brandeis University, said the Iranian government was getting “clobbered” because of global economic strains. “His [Ahmadinejad's] failed policies have made Iran more vulnerable to sanctions and people close to the mullahs have decided he’s a liability,” he said. In Israel, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, has his own domestic problems with a corruption scandal that threatens to unseat him and the media have been rife with speculation that he might order an attack on Iran to distract attention from his difficulties. According to one of his closest friends, Olmert recently warned him that “in three months’ time it will be a different Middle East”. Yet even the most hawkish officials acknowledge that Israel would face what would arguably be the most challenging military mission of its 60-year existence. “No one here is talking about more than delaying the [nuclear] programme,” said the Pentagon source. He added that Israel would need to set back the Iranians by at least five years for an attack to be considered a success. Even that may be beyond Israel’s competence if it has to act alone. Obvious targets would include Iran’s Isfahan plant, where uranium ore is converted into gas, the Natanz complex where this gas is used to enrich uranium in centrifuges and the plutonium-producing Arak heavy water plant. But Iran is known to have scattered other elements of its nuclear programme in underground facilities around the country. Neither US nor Israeli intelligence is certain that it knows where everything is. “Maybe the Israelis could start off the attack and have us finish it off,” Katzman added. “And maybe that has been their intention all along. But in terms of the long-term military campaign that would be needed to permanently suppress Iran’s nuclear programme, only the US is perceived as having that capability right now.”  Source

Massachussetts plans expansion of 'gay' weddings' - Change would allow out-of-state duos to 'marry' From: WorldNetDaily Lawmakers in Massachusetts are resurrecting a once-abandoned bill that would allow out-of-state duos to visit, obtain a Massachusetts "marriage" and then return home and create "havoc" with it, according to a pro-family organization. "This bill would destabilize the Massachusetts marriage laws," wrote Brian Camenker in his Mass Resistance alert on the issue. "Currently no out-of-state couple can get 'married' in Massachusetts if that marriage would not be legal in their home state. This would overturn that law." Massachusetts was the first state to allow same-sex duos to obtain a "marriage" license, several years ago. The action followed orders from state officials that county clerks must start issuing those certificates to duos other than the traditional one-man, one-woman couples. That in turn followed a Massachusetts Supreme Court opinion that said such couples could be recognized as "married." "Earlier this year, MassResistance successfully lobbied against this bill, despite the push by the 'gay' movement. We gave very hard-hitting testimony at the public hearing, and warned the Judiciary Committee it would be vigorously opposed from all over America. As a result, on May 1 the committee 'killed' it by putting it into a 'study,'" Camenker's announcement said. "But the recent events in California have apparently energized the homosexual lobby. They apparently persuaded Sen. Robert Creedon (D-Brockton), Senate chairman of the judiciary committee, to take the unusual step of resurrecting it from the study to be voted on. Creedon, normally a pro-life, moderately pro-family senator, isn't running for re-election this fall. According to press reports, Sen. Diane Wilkerson (D-Mattapan), who led the charge to push for huge taxpayer-funding for homosexual programs in the schools, is the major force behind this also," he wrote. What happened in California was that that state's Supreme Court, by a single vote like Massachusetts, voted to find within the state Constitution a "right" for homosexuals to be "married." In that state the procedure also has been implemented by state officials without the Legislature's actually changing the laws that define marriage as being between one man and one woman. Officials there simply crossed out "man" and "woman" or "husband" and "bride" references and substituted "party 1" and "party 2." Those "marriages," however, have an uncertain future, since a proposed constitutional amendment promoted by the ProtectMarriage.com organization already has been approved for this November's election ballot. The amendment reads: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." And one of the followup questions would be: What happens to the "marriages" performed for same-sex couples between the time of the Supreme Court's opinion, and the possible veto of that opinion by the people of California. In fact, homosexual groups now are actively trying to prevent the California vote, saying the five majority justices on the state Supreme Court simply can change the definition of a traditional social institution by vote, but the people cannot vote to protect it. In Massachusetts, the mandate for same-sex "marriages" does not face that same uncertain future. "This … would allow any homosexual couple in America to get 'married' here (in Massachusetts) – and cause havoc in their home states," Mass Resistance said. Such "couples" then would demand (using court challenges) that their home states legally recognize those marriages because of the US Constitution's 'full faith and credit' clause." That would set up huge conflicts, because already 27 states have adopted into their own state constitutions a definition that marriage is only between one man and one woman, many with specific instructions that out-of-state same-sex "marriages" shall not be recognized. The "gay" lobby has argued that Massachusetts' historic refusal to perform drive-in weddings for people who could not legally get married in their home state is "unfair," Mass Resistance said. "But under that logic it's also 'unfair' to brothers and sisters, 13-year-olds," the organization wrote. Mass Resistance warned that the state Senate plans a vote on the plan as early as Tuesday, and the House could consider it later in the week. "Make some phone calls. Send them some e-mails. Read them the riot act. EVEN IF YOU LIVE OUTSIDE OF MASSACHUSETTS, let them hear from you – because this will affect you, too!!" Mass Resistance said. "This would make Massachusetts a sort of Mecca for gay weddings, and there will be instability around the country," Camenker told WND. "Homosexuals are doing this to destabilize the country." Homosexual activists, meanwhile, are desperately trying to clamp down on those who would do exactly as pro-family organizations fear in order to establish a nationwide strategy for an ultimate victory in their war on traditional marriage. That report came from Baptist Press, whose writer Michael Foust recently revealed the existence of a six-page statement from organizations including the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders and American Civil Liberties Union. Called "Make Change, Not Lawsuits," the statement encourages homosexuals to avoid filing lawsuits in their home states or in federal court once they return from California with their "marriage" license. "The reason? Losses in such lawsuits could set the 'gay marriage' movement back for years," the Baptist Pres report said. The strategy apparently is intended to help homosexual activists avoid a rerun of the 2005 case in Florida in which a federal judge threw out a lawsuit against the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and the 2003 decision by an Arizona state court to refuse to legalize "gay marriage," the Baptist Press report said. The new battle plan says: "The fastest way to win the freedom to marry throughout America is by getting marriage through state courts (to show that fairness requires it) and state legislatures (to show that people support it). "We need to start with states where we have the best odds of winning. When we've won in a critical mass of states, we can turn to Congress and the federal courts. At that point, we'll ask that the U.S. government treat all marriages equally. And we'll ask that all states give equal treatment to all marriages and civil unions that are celebrated in other states," it says. "But one thing couples shouldn't do is just sue the federal government or, if they are from other states, go sue their home state or their employer to recognize their marriage or open up the health plan. Pushing the federal government before we have a critical mass of states recognizing same-sex relationships or suing in states where the courts aren't ready is likely to get us bad rulings. Bad rulings will make it much more difficult for us to win marriage, and will certainly make it take much longer," the strategy document says. The issue of widely implemented same-sex marriage isn't even the worst of the coming problems for traditional families, the May 15 California Supreme Court opinion suggested. In a dissent by Justice Marvin Baxter, he said the same logic used by the majority could be used to support other alternative sexual lifestyle choices. "The bans on incestuous and polygamous marriages are ancient and deeprooted, and, as the majority suggests, they are supported by strong considerations of social policy," he wrote. "Our society abhors such relationships, and the notion that our laws could not forever prohibit them seems preposterous. Yet here, the majority overturns, in abrupt fashion, an initiative statute confirming the equally deeprooted assumption that marriage is a union of partners of the opposite sex. The majority does so by relying on its own assessment of contemporary community values, and by inserting in our Constitution an expanded definition of the right to marry that contravenes express statutory law. "Who can say that, in 10, 15 or 20 years, an activist court might not rely on the majority's analysis to conclude, on the basis of a perceived evolution in community values, that the laws prohibiting polygamous and incestuous marriages were no longer constitutionally justified?" Baxter said.  Source

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