CHINA OPPOSES WEAPONS SPREAD

China on Tuesday said it stands opposed to any spread of weapons of mass destruction.

"The U.S. government has wantonly launched sanctions against Chinese companies without any evidence," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a news briefing in Beijing.

The penalties bar the companies from doing business with the U.S. government and prevent them from obtaining export licenses allowing them to buy controlled technologies from American companies.

The Chinese companies on the penalties list include China Aero-Technology Import Export Corp.; China Great Wall Industry Corp.; and China North Industry Corp., also known as NORINCO.

Also targeted are: Beijing Alite Technologies Company Limited; China's Q.C. Chen; Wha Cheong Tai Co.; and Zibo Chemet Equipment Corp., known as well as Chemet Global Ltd.; Ecoma Enterprise Co. Ltd. of Taiwan; and Paeksan Associated Corp. of North Korea.

Bush has praised China for its help in seeking a diplomatic end to the North Korean nuclear standoff.

Two of the largest companies cited by the administration, China Great Wall Industry and China North Industry, previously have been penalized by the United States. Each is closely linked to the Chinese military.

In December, the State Department imposed similar sanctions on four Chinese companies for selling weapons or arms-related technology, including Liaoning Jiayi Metals and Minerals Co., Wha Cheong Tai Co. Ltd. and Shanghai Triple International Ltd.


Chinese firms penalized for aiding Iran missile program

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Bush administration imposed penalties this month against some of China's largest companies for aiding Iran's efforts to improve its ballistic missiles.

The move is part of an effort by the White House and U.S. intelligence agencies to identify and slow important elements of Iran's weapons programs.

The White House made no public announcement of the penalties. The State Department placed a one-page notice on Page 133 of the Federal Register early this month, listing eight Chinese companies affected. The notice kept classified the nature of the technology they had exported.

President Bush has repeatedly praised China for its help in seeking a diplomatic end to the North Korean nuclear standoff.

Some officials in the administration speculated in the past week that the decision not to publicize the penalties may have been part of an effort not to jeopardize Chinese cooperation at a critical moment in the administration's effort to bring North Korea back to negotiations.

China has repeatedly vowed to curb its sales of missile technology.

But two of the largest companies named in the State Department's list, China Great Wall Industry Corp. and China North Industry Corp., known as Norinco, have been repeatedly penalized for more than a decade. Both are closely linked to the Chinese military.

A third company on the penalties list, the China Aero-Technology Import and Export Corp., is one of the country's largest producers of military aircraft and was accused of diverting to military use sophisticated machine tools bought from McDonnell Douglas.

Bush administration officials, when asked about the penalties over the past week, said nothing was particularly notable about the latest violations and no evidence suggested that China's leadership was aware of the sales.

U.S. officials said that the list of exports to Iran was classified, but they described them as high-performance metals and components that are banned because they could aid Iran's efforts to extend the range of its missiles.

It was unclear whether some of the technology was "dual use," meaning that it could be used for civilian or military purposes.

Iran's efforts to develop longer-distance missiles are increasingly of concern among intelligence officials. U.S. officials have charged that Iran is trying to develop nuclear warheads, which Iran's leadership denies.

Disaster Squared: Iran Is Next

Seymour Hersh’s latest article in The New Yorker entitled “The Coming Wars” makes it clear that Iran is in Bush’s crosshairs.

“I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran,” Hersh writes. And he explains that the preparations are already under way. “The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer,” he writes. “Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids.”

Hersh adds that “the Pentagon’s contingency plans for a broader invasion of Iran are also being updated.”

This is not a total surprise, since Bush placed Iran in the Axis of Evil, and some neoconservatives have been eager to go after Iran for quite a while, as Chris Toensing reports in the February cover story of The Progressive.

As the invasion of Iraq was being planned, some neoconservatives were boasting that “real men want to go to Tehran,” Toensing says. “Many neoconservatives—especially those who remain in orbit around Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney—are itching for a fight.”

But it’s a fight that the United States may wish it never started. The Iranian people are more opposed to a U.S. invasion than the Iraqis were, and the Iranian military is much stronger than Saddam’s.

In the December issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows wrote a story entitled “Will Iraq Be Next?” For that article, he assembled a group of former U.S. security officials to conduct a “war game” about Iran. The result of that war game was ugly: Any military action by the United States or Israel against Iran would create a huge mess. No assault could knock out all of Iran’s weapons, since the regime has dispersed them, and Iran would likely retaliate against U.S. forces in Iraq.

Toensing makes the same point in his article. He quotes a Tehran University political science professor named Hadi Semati, who says the Iranian regime would “make life as miserable as possible for the Americans in Iraq.”

And Gary Sick, who was Jimmy Carter’s Iran expert at the National Security Council, tells Toensing that U.S. troops would face a much fiercer resistance in Iran. “If you like Iraq, you’re going to love Iran,” Sick says, mordantly.

But Bush keeps rattling the sword. Monday on NBC News he said of the Iranian situation: “I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table.”

Now you may ask yourself, why in the world is Bush planning war against Iran when the war against Iraq is going so badly?

The answer is, the Bush folks are so deluded that they think Bush’s reelection was a vote not only for the Iraq War but for the neoconservatives who hatched it, Hersh reports.

And those neoconservatives are in a hurry to accomplish their goals before Bush’s four years are up. “This is the last hurrah,” one former high intelligence official told Hersh.

Delusion plus recklessness plus enormous power is going to equal disaster in Iran, even more so than in Iraq.

Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are dead set on disaster squared.

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