Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

THERE is talk of bombing Iran to force a halt to its nuclear weapons program. Certainly, if at all possible, Iran should be stopped from getting nuclear weapons. However, Iran's program is only a symptom of the real problem: the existence of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of eight other nations. Fear of Iran's aspirations should serve not merely as an occasion for reactive measures, but as a wake-up call to the larger menace. What we need to do is to abolish nuclear weapons altogether...............

First, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France) are themselves in violation of the NPT, because they committed themselves to work towards the abolition of nuclear weapons, but are not doing so. There is, therefore a certain hollowness to their insistence that others not develop nuclear weapons. This is why, in the 1990s, India denounced them for what it dubbed "nuclear apartheid" and openly went nuclear in 1998.

Dr Paul Monk is managing director of Austhink Consulting.

While members of the UN Security Council are in violation of the NPT what hope do we have of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons?

Australia has not gone down the nuclear path. We need to put as much pressure as possible on all members of the UN to comply with the NPT.

Still not getting with the program: Putin on Iran.

 The Caspian summit.

Juan Cole - The Iran hawks.

The power of faith - to create a disaster. Tom Engelhardt presents Mark Danner - The Moment Has Come to Get Rid of Saddam.

"Reality? Try our version."

Conn Hallinan on casualties

On Turkey entering Iraq.

All that blood and slaughter and some salivating at the prospect of a bigger and "better" adventure ... So what do you think about the tax cuts? 

"We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel," Mr Bush said at the White House overnight after Russia cautioned against military action against Tehran's suspect atomic program.

"So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," said Mr Bush.

We've got  leaders in the US and Australia who have destroyed Iraq. Now they are threatening to destroy Iran. If we really are interested in avoiding World War III we must get rid of Bush and Howard.

An interview with Gabriel Kolko on the US/Iran issue.

Putin puts out a warning. 

Muhammad Sahimi - Norman Podhoretz's War Prayer.

Paul Craig Roberts on goose and gander genocide resolution.

Or a titfer .. if the cap fits ...

12 former US army captains on getting out.

Pepe Escobar - It's the resistance, stupid.

Norman Solomon on Blackwater as a distraction.

James Madison revisited.

The Israeli right has a peace plan ....

Meanwhile, out in the lobby ...

An interview with M & W. 

Glenn Greenwald on coddled tough guys.

Plenty to read for those not preoccupied with pimples and posteriors.

Scott Ritter - No Legitimate Justification for War with Iran.

Not that questions of legitimacy concern them. As to justifications, well, they can always make stuff up. They have form. Advice - be careful about taking the word of known liars at face value.

Gary Leupp - Response to an Angry Marine. 

More talking Turkey:

Khody Akhavi. 

From DemocracyNow!.

The Turkish military has stepped up attacks against what it says are Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, bases in northern Iraq. The shelling comes just ahead of a vote in the Turkish Parliament on a bill authorizing a ground incursion against Kurdish fighters in Iraq. The military has reportedly amassed 60,000 troops along its border with Iraq. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Turkey to refrain from any major military operation. But Washington's influence over Turkey appears to be waning.

Turkey's top general warned this weekend that US-Turkey relations would "never be the same again" if the United States House votes to declare the World War I-era mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide. Despite President Bush's plea, the House Foreign Affairs committee voted 27-21 Wednesday to call the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks "systematic," "deliberate," and amounting to "genocide." Turkey recalled its ambassador to Washington last week.

Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman visited Ankara on Saturday in an attempt to improve worsening ties. He apologized for the House Committee vote on behalf of the Bush administration.

...

To discuss this, we are now joined by two guests who have been closely following these issues. Zanku Armenian is on the Board of Directors of the Armenian National Committee of America. He joins us from Los Angeles, California. Arman Artuc is the editor of a webzine for Armenians in Turkey. He joins us here in the firehouse studio in New York.

Also from DemocracyNow!, an interview with Dahr Jamail.

US/Iraq negotiate Blackwater expulsion.

Baghdad - U.S. and Iraqi officials are negotiating Baghdad's demand that security company Blackwater USA be expelled from the country within six months, and American diplomats appear to be working on how to fill the security gap if the company is phased out.

    The talks about Blackwater's future in Iraq flow from recommendations in an Iraqi government report on the incident Sept. 16 when, Iraqi officials determined, Blackwater guards opened fire without provocation in Baghdad's Nisoor Square and killed 17 Iraqi citizens.

    The Iraqi investigators issued five recommendations to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has since sent them to the U.S. Embassy as demands for action.

    Point No. 2 in the report says:

    "The Iraqi government should demand that the United States stops using the services of Blackwater in Iraq within six months and replace it with a new, more disciplined organization that would be answerable to Iraqi laws."

    Sami al-Askari, a top aide to al-Maliki, said that point in the Iraqi list of demands was nonnegotiable.

Next for the US expulsion? 

On private contractors - The LA Times asks: What is their status?

WASHINGTON -- As the Bush administration deals with the fallout from the recent killings of civilians by private security firms in Iraq, some officials are asking whether the contractors could be considered unlawful combatants under international agreements.

Expelled and off to Gitmo? 

Dave Lindorff - The slaughter of the Innocents. 

A lament. 

More concerning known liars - Justin Raimondo on The Dar El Zor Hoax.

The great "mystery" arising out of the recent Israeli strike at Syria – purportedly targeting a nuclear-related site near the town of Dair El Zor in the northern part of the country – has been the subject of much speculation, but its real purposes have been hidden behind the veil of obfuscation deliberately thrown over the affair by the Israelis and their media amen corner. The gale winds of another Israeli propaganda campaign are blowing at full force across the American media landscape, perpetrating a hoax of outrageous proportions: namely, that the Israelis knocked out a nascent nuclear facility. In a replay of the disastrous Judith Miller fabrications, the Times makes it look like the Syrians, with North Korean assistance, had constructed a nuke plant that was just about to go online:

"The attack on the reactor project has echoes of an Israeli raid more than a quarter century ago, in 1981, when Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq shortly before it was to have begun operating. That attack was officially condemned by the Reagan administration, though Israelis consider it among their military's finest moments. In the weeks before the Iraq war, Bush administration officials said they believed that the attack set back Iraq's nuclear ambitions by many years."

What a lot of nonsense. The Iraqis had completed a nuclear facility that was fully operational and could have produced weapons-grade materials. The Syrian project has been going nowhere for 40 years, as Joseph Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons and a senior fellow and director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, informs us:

"It is a basic research program built around a tiny 30 kilowatt reactor that produced a few isotopes and neutrons. It is nowhere near a program for nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel."

Who cares about facts when you've got a perfectly good excuse to run a sensational headline? In any case, "many details remain unclear," as the Times piece puts it, which gives the editors an out. However, I'd trust Laura Rozen before I'd trust the Times, and she relays the following far more plausible account from Intelligence Online:

"In attacking Dair El Zor in Syria on Sept. 6, the Israeli air force wasn't targeting a nuclear site but rather one of the main arms depots in the country.

"Dair El Zor houses a huge underground base where the Syrian army stores the long and medium-range missiles it mostly buys from Iran and North Korea. The attack by the Israeli air force coincided with the arrival of a stock of parts for Syria's 200 Scud B and 60 Scud C weapons."

The moment this story hit the headlines, the alarm on my bullsh*t meter started clanging pretty loudly. But what, one wondered, was the purpose of this elaborate deception?

Read on.

And how has the Iraq war impacted on the GWOT? 

Back in the land of Oz  our chief warmonger offers tax cuts as the frenzy begins over what colour deckchairs are preferred and how they should be arranged. Iceberg? What iceberg?

Syria's hereditary life president has admitted the object of the recent Israeli air strike was indeed a military target. The two countries have been at war for 30 years.

"In his only public comment on the raid, Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, acknowledged this month that Israeli jets dropped bombs on a building that he said was “related to the military” but which he insisted was “not used."

Despite vehement denials from the usual cast of lickspittles, it turns out the target was indeed a North Korean designed nuclear plant in the early stages of construction. And as President Assad II admits, it was a military site.

"Nuclear experts say that North Korea’s main reactor, while small by international standards, is big enough to produce roughly one bomb’s worth of plutonium a year."

The irony.

John Pratt says:

Turkish general warns US over Armenian genocide resolution.

And Mushroom Cloud urges Turkey to show restraint over Iraq.

Oh, the irony.

Yankees go home.

Baghdad - A key Shiite member of Iraq's ruling coalition called Saturday for the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from his country and rejected the possibility of permanent bases.

    Ammar Hakim, a leading figure of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), told a gathering celebrating the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr: "We will work not to have fixed bases for foreign troops on Iraqi lands."

    He also called on American forces to be more careful in their use of force after recent bombings killed civilians in a Shiite village north of Baghdad and in a Sunni area northwest of the Iraqi capital.

    "We are working to enter into a security agreement with the international community to ensure that Iraq retrieves its full sovereignty," he said.

Uri Avnery -  The Mother of all Pretexts.

Chris Floyd - War Without End.

There are actually some quarters where Pentagon honcho Robert Gates is considered a moderate of some kind, one of the few sensible, responsible figures in the Bush Administration able to restrain – or at least moderate – the raging-bull belligerence of Dick Cheney and his crew. This has always been a curious reputation for a man who has spent most of his career hip-deep in militarist skullduggery, as Robert Parry, among others, has amply demonstrated. (Here and here, for example.) But in such desperate and degraded times as these, it's only natural to clutch at the slightest straw of hope that someone, somewhere, will stand between us and the worst excesses of our masters, as we noted here earlier.
 
(In fact, I'm so old that I can remember all the way back to the year 2000, when Cheney himself was regarded by the peddlers of conventional wisdom as a sensible, responsible figure, a "safe pair of hands" who would restrain the coltish antics of Young Bush and mitigate the extremist zeal of the GOP "base." That really panned out well, didn't it?)  

But like Colin Powell – that oh-so-moderate, oh-so-mitigating force of Bush's first term – Gates is just a bagman for the global dominance gang. They whistle and he jumps – then whistles the same tune to his own minions. At this stage of the game, after so much death, deceit, and corruption, it is cretinous folly to believe that anyone picked by the Bush Regime for any job would act otherwise. If they were a different sort of person – if they were indeed sensible, responsible, honorable or moral – they would not be there.

Greed, arrogance and hubris ... how much blood? How long will urgent challenges go largely unmet?

Eliot, you ask: "So, what, then John is your opinion of a political movement that sets among its principal objectives the destruction of a member state of the United Nations?

Or of the regimes which fund its activities, support it politically in international forums and call for the destruction of a UN member state?

Would you say they and their apologists should be denounced unequivocally?"

In my humble opinion, the leaders of political movements or nations that support regime change or destruction of a nation by illegal invasion, or any other violent means, should be denounced. The leaders of such organisations or nations should be brought before the International Criminal Courts and charged with terrorism or murder. No nation should invade another nation without sanction from the United Nations.

John Pratt says:

"Eliot, I don't know where you get the idea I support any political regime. I support the United Nations, and hope that one day the place to resolve international disputes will be the UN not the battlefield."

So, what, then John is your opinion of a political movement that sets among its principal objectives the destruction of a member state of the United Nations?

Or of the regimes which fund its activities, support it politically in international forums and call for the destruction of a UN member state?

Would you say they and their apologists should be denounced unequivocally?

If you're looking for historical precedents for this sort of thing, how about the behaviour of those former League of Nations member states which only a few decades ago called for, and acted in order to facilitate the destruction of fellow League member states?

A big issue at the time was ceaseless uncompromising demands of entitlement to alienated 'historical homelands'.

For example, the Sudetanland, which was an ethnic enclave within the otherwise predominantly Slavic-speaking republic of Czechoslovakia?

Or Poland, which was 'stolen' from Russia and anyway had 'no right to exist' according to one viewpoint at the time?

Gordon Prather - Lessons Learned - Or Not.

A reminder:

On March 5, 1970, the United States became a party
to the Treaty on
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which declared, in Article IV, that

"Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also cooperate in
contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations
to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful
purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to
the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of
the world."

On May 15, 1974, Iran entered into a Safeguards
Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – to remain in force
as long as Iran remained a party to the NPT – wherein all Iranian "source
or special fissionable materials" and activities involving them were to be made
subject to IAEA Safeguards "with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy
from peaceful purposes."

The NPT explicitly states that

"The safeguards required by this article shall be implemented in a
manner designed to comply with Article IV of this Treaty, and to avoid hampering
the economic or technological development of the Parties or international cooperation
in the field of peaceful nuclear activities – including the international exchange
of nuclear material and equipment for the processing, use or production of nuclear
material for peaceful purposes – in accordance with the provisions of this article
and the principle of safeguarding set forth in the Preamble of the Treaty."

So, in 1976, pursuant to its NPT commitments, the Ford-Cheney Administration
"endorsed" Iranian ambitious plans to develop a massive nuclear energy
industry, all subject – of course – to IAEA Safeguards.

But then Iran got rod of the Shah ... 

An interview with P W Singer -  Privatizing Terror, Outsourcing Diplomacy.

Stephen Zunes on partitioning Iraq.

A review of James Petras'  Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - Challenging America's Ambitions in Eurasia.

Angela Ryan

Hi Paul, I humbly  apologise.

Naturally persons like you and Jay and Mike would be particularly offended by my comment but I had not meant it personally but more as a collective tendency.

Given I do not hold a belief in nationality; certainly not in the current idea of nation's, there is certainly not anything about this particular subject that should make you feel a personal apology is necessary. How others feel about this matter is something you would have to ask them.

I should have carefully preambled such  but am busy with deadlines and holidays so it came out how I did not mean it to.You are no more racist and sexist and homophobic than Aussies.

This will always be the problem with making hasty generalisations, based on personal traits, such as nationality. There will always be the exception to the rule - not even taking in to consideration; the rule in this case, is based upon a slippery slope argument.

Perhaps I am wrong in my  statement , it was merely a perception. Might you have some  wonderful data to prove Americans are not racist, sexist and anti gay generally I would appreciate it.

My perception is that both your perception, and statement, on this issue are highly doubtful. I do not currently have any data to share about this subject: and I don't feel there is a need for me to find any. My own perception is though, that a racist or sexist could be found on every busy American street. Equally a racist or sexist could be found on every busy street in the world. It is your role to prove that Americans are an exception (as to warrant stand alone post) to this generally accepted rule. That is of course if you are interested in making your perception anything more than a personal perception being shared.

Anyhow; my post had more to do with easily stated, and offensive, flimsy evidence based generalisations, more than anything else. The data I supplied was in fact a chart grading the world's top 500 Universities. This was for the aid of another poster who had made one particular claim (amongst others) about all Americans standard of education. Obviously the chart proves that particular generalisation to be completely baseless. As such the generalisation if stated again without evidence contradicting that chart (rebuttal) would no longer be a basic generalisation: it would be a race orientated slur.

On incompetence - Gen. Sanchez takes aim at political leadership.

“There has been a glaring, unfortunate
display of incompetence in strategic leadership among our national
leaders,” Sanchez said. “They have unquestionably been derelict in the
performance of their duty. In my profession, these types of leaders
would be immediately relieved or court-martialed.”

Though
Sanchez did not criticize Bush by name, he left little doubt that he
placed most of the blame on the administration’s top leadership,
particularly the National Security Council which is led by the
President and which was under the day-to-day direction of Condoleezza
Rice until her elevation to Secretary of State in 2005.

No revelation to many.

US/Russia missile defence talks fail.

Religion and foreign policy.

Pepe Escobar - General Petraeus in his labyrinth.

Another goose and gander piece.

Glenn Greenwald on what's left.

Part 2 Deregulation: Global war on Labor of Henry C K Liu - Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism.

And now for a bit of fun:

What if the US discovers diplomacy?

And on Al Gore sharing the Nobel Peace Prize.

Enjoy the reading, enjoy the weekend.

John Pratt says:

Eliot Ramsey, yes, I believe when nations get into border disputes, the proper place to determine borders, is the United Nations.

Then is it appropriate in your view to support a political movement which calls for the 'obliteration' of a UN member state, or to call for deliberate extermination of a UN member state's people according to their religious and cultural identity?

You brought up the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee resolution acknowledging the historical reality of the Armenian Holocaust and I refered you to Raphael Lemkin who drafted the UN resolution on Genocide.

His actually coined the term 'genocide' in response to the Armenian Holocaust.

Would it be morally credible for anyone supporting the UN, and calling on its member states to abide by UN resolutions, to then support either a regime or a political movement openly expressing its intention to 'obliterate' a UN member state or to commit genocide?

Joe Conason looks at Wes Clark's new memoir ... and reminds us of a document that was waved at Clark all those years ago:

In "A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country," published by
Palgrave Macmillan last month, the former four-star general recalls two
visits to the Pentagon following the terrorist attacks of September
2001. On the first visit, less than two weeks after Sept. 11, he writes, a "senior general" told him, "We're going to attack Iraq. The decision has basically been made."

Six weeks later, Clark returned to Washington to see the same
general and inquired whether the plan to strike Iraq was still under
consideration. The general's response was stunning:

"'Oh, it's worse than that,' he said, holding up a memo on his desk.
'Here's the paper from the Office of the Secretary of Defense [then
Donald Rumsfeld] outlining the strategy. We're going to take out seven
countries in five years.' And he named them, starting with Iraq and
Syria and ending with Iran."

A change in a main contender? 

The question has been posed - Will the military say to to an Iran attack? Why not a direct appeal? 

10/11/07 "The
Nation" -- --
Sometimes history--and necessity--make strange bedfellows. The
German general staff transported Lenin to Russia to lead a
revolution. Union-buster Ronald Reagan played godfather to the
birth of the Polish Solidarity union. Equally strange--but
perhaps equally necessary--is the addressee of a
new appeal
signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright and many
other leaders of the American peace movement:

"ATTENTION:
Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. Military Personnel: Do not
attack Iran."

The initiative responds to the
growing calls for an attack on Iran from the likes of Norman
Podhoretz and John Bolton, and the reports of growing war
momentum in Washington by reporters like

Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and

Joe Klein of Time. International lawyer Scott Horton
says European diplomats at the recent United Nations General
Assembly gathering in New York "believe that the United States
will launch an air war on Iran, and that it will occur within
the next six to eight months." He puts the likelihood of
conflict at 70 percent.

The initiative also responds to
the recent failure of Congress to pass legislation requiring its
approval before an attack on Iran and the hawk-driven resolution
encouraging the President to act against the Iranian military.
Marcy Winograd, president of Progressive Democrats of Los
Angeles, who originally suggested the petition, told The
Nation:

If we thought
that our lawmakers would restrain the Bush Administration from
further endangering Americans and the rest of the world, we
would concentrate solely on them. If we went to Las Vegas today,
would we find anyone willing to bet on this Congress restraining
Bush? I don't think so.

Because our
soldiers know the horrors of war--severed limbs, blindness,
brain injury--they are loath to romanticize the battlefield or
glorify expansion of the Iraq genocide that has left a million
Iraqis dead and millions others exiled.

Some examples of military objections:

There have been many other hints
of military disaffection from plans to attack Iran--indeed,
military resistance may help explain why, despite years of
rumors about Bush Administration intentions, such an attack has
not yet occurred. A Pentagon consultant told Hersh more than a
year ago, "There is a war about the war going on inside the
building." Hersh also reported that Gen. Peter Pace had forced
Bush and Cheney to remove the "nuclear option" from the plans
for possible conflict with Iran--in the Pentagon it was known as
the April Revolution.

In December, according to
Time correspondent Joe Klein, President Bush met with the
Joint Chiefs of Staff in a secure room known as The Tank. The
President was told that "the U.S. could launch a devastating air
attack on Iran's government and military, wiping out the Iranian
air force, the command and control structure and some of the
more obvious nuclear facilities." But the Joint Chiefs were
"unanimously opposed to taking that course of action," both
because it might not eliminate Iran's nuclear capacity and
because Iran could respond devastatingly in Iraq--and in the
United States.

In an article published by Inter
Press Service, historian and national security policy analyst
Gareth Porter reported that Adm. William Fallon, Bush's
then-nominee to head the Central Command (Centcom), sent the
Defense Department a strongly worded message earlier this year
opposing the plan to send a third carrier strike group into the
Persian Gulf. In another Inter Press analysis, Porter quotes
someone who met with Fallon saying an attack on Iran "will not
happen on my watch." He added, "You know what choices I have.
I'm a professional.... There are several of us trying to put the
crazies back in the box."

One can hope they succeed and nail the lid of the box down very firmly.

More on Turkey and the Kurds:

The Independent. 

The Asia Times. 

Has the Commander been talking about bringing stability to the region? Bushspeak from a planet far, far from reality.

Margo, I'll keep putting material up for consideration. And I note your Howardspeak elsewhere. I agree with your analysis. As to Bushspeak - we can but try to guess what the Commander has merged with.

Achieving the impossible? 

Just
when you thought things could not get any worse in Iraq,
Turkey's prime minister announces that he has authorised a
possible cross-border military operation against Kurdish
guerrillas there.

Just when you thought
things could not get any worse in Iraq, Turkey's
prime minister

announces that he has authorised a possible
cross-border military operation against Kurdish
guerrillas there.

Adding to the strain. 

The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee House
approved Wednseday a resolution recognizing the 1915 massacres of
Armenians as a genocide, brushing aside opposition from President
George W. Bush and Turkey.

On the matter of the genocide - some coverage from the period. Once helped each other out, but now ...

William S Lind - The Iraq Mirage.

Blackwater to be sued - DemocracyNow! covers the issue and more.

Tom Engelhardt presents Nick Turse Slum Wars - a long future of warfare ahead.

Henry C K Liu - Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism, Part 1: A Structural Link.

Part 2 when available.

Margo: Thanks Bob!

 No longer can we tolerate the demands of Israel.

But it's okay to tolerate the demands of Hamas?

These, according to the Hamas Charter, include the "obliteration" of Israel and a call to muslims to kill jews wherever they find them (Article 7)?

Now, what was it you were saying about 'genocide', John?

To paraphrase - "It was the end of times."

 

Utopian
fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer
fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans,
the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new
“Armageddonites,” fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from
forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about.

Most journalists find it difficult to take seriously that tens of
millions of Americans, filled with fantasies of revenge and
empowerment, long to leave a world they despise. These Armageddonites
believe that they alone will get a quick, free pass when they are
“raptured” to paradise, no good deeds necessary, not even a day of
judgment. Ironically, they share this utopian fantasy with a group that
they often castigate, namely fundamentalist Muslims who believe that
dying in battle also means direct access to Heaven. For the
Armageddonites, however, there are no waiting virgins, but they do
agree with Muslims that there will be “no booze, no bars,” in the words
of a popular Gaither Singers song.

These end-timers have great influence over the U.S. government’s
foreign policy. They are thick with the Republican leadership. At a
recent conference in Washington, congressional leader Roy Blunt, for
example, has said that his work is "part of God's plan." At the same meeting, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay glorified “end times” and promoted attacking Iran. Indeed the Bush administration often consults with them on Mideast policies. The organizer of the conference, Rev. John Hagee, is often welcomed at the White House, although his ratings are among the lowest on integrity and transparency by Ministry Watch,
which rates religious broadcasters. He raises millions of dollars from
his campaign supporting Israeli settlements on the West Bank, including much for himself. Erstwhile presidential candidate Gary Bauer is on his Board of Directors. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson also both expressed strong end-times beliefs.

American fundamentalists strongly supported the decision to invade
Iraq in 2003. They consistently support Israel’s hard-line policies.
And they are beating the drums for war against Iran. Thanks to these
end-timers, American foreign policy has turned much of the world
against us, including most Muslims, nearly a quarter of the human race.

 

Read on and ponder the question "Are they crazy enough?"

Meanwhile, Putin's view on Iran's nuclear program. 

 Moscow - President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday there is no proof Iran is
seeking to build nuclear weapons, but emphasized that Tehran must be encouraged
to make its nuclear program fully transparent.

    "We are sharing our partners' concern about making all Iranian programs
transparent," Putin said at a news conference after talks with visiting
French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "We agreed yesterday, and the president
confirmed it, that Iran is making certain steps toward the international community
to achieve that."

Might make sense to those not in a rush to meet their Maker.

Jimmy Carter and US torture - and a question that by now surely does not need to be asked. Transcript and short video. 

Former president Jimmy Carter isn't just suspicious that the US is
using torture to extract intelligence from detainees -- he's absolutely
convinced.

Asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if, by Carter's definition of the word,
the United States had used torture during the Bush administration, the
Nobel Peace Prize winner was adamant:

"I don't think it, I know it," he said. "Certainly."

Here's the question:

Pressed by Blitzer on whether that meant that President Bush was lying, Carter was equally clear.

"The president is self-def[i]ning what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners," said Carter."Yes."

"Self-defining". Not presidential to say "He's lying his tits off."

 Col. Douglas MacGregor (Ret.) - Circling the Wagons.

The human and material cost of America's
occupation of Iraq is reaching a climax. The ongoing "surge"
of ground combat troops into Baghdad and its surroundings is
producing higher U.S. casualties, exacerbating intersectarian
violence and draining the last reserves of American patience.

Like the French Army in Algeria
and the British Army in Ireland, the generals in Baghdad are
discovering that soldiers and Marines in Iraq control only what
they stand on, and when they no longer stand on it, they don't
control it. Meanwhile, the Army grinds itself to pieces while
the national military leadership stands by watching, clinging
to the promise of more troops for a larger ground force in the
future--a promise that is irrelevant to the challenge we now
face: getting out of Iraq.

Like so many tragic events
in human history, the occupation of Iraq could have been avoided
if military and political leaders in Washington had recognized
the tectonic shift in international relations created by decolonization
after World War II. This shift made any occupation, with the
exception of very brief American or European military triumphs
over non-Europeans, especially Muslim Arabs, impossible. But
the decision to occupy and govern Iraq with American military
power was driven by ideology, not strategy. And, when ideology
masquerades as strategy, disaster is inevitable.

Glenn Greenwald has a piece on those who claim "We are winning". 

Stephen Zunes on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war resolution. 

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Congressional vote
granting President George W. Bush unprecedented war-making authority to
invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing. Had a
majority of either the Republican-controlled House or the
Democratic-controlled Senate voted against the resolution or had they
passed an alternative resolution conditioning such authority on an
authorization from the United Nations Security Council, all the tragic
events that have unfolded as a consequence of the March 2003 invasion
would have never occurred. As a result, the responsibility for the
deaths of nearly 4000 American soldiers, the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Iraqi civilians, the waste of over a half trillion dollars
of our national treasury, and the rise of terrorism and Islamist
extremism that has come as a result of the invasion and occupation of
Iraq rests as much in the hands of the members in Congress who
authorized the invasion as it does with the administration that
requested it.

Those who express surprise at the refusal of today’s Democratic
majority in Congress to stop funding the war should remember this: the
October 2002 resolution authorizing the invasion had the support of the
majority of Democratic senators as well as the support of the
Democratic Party leadership in both the House and the Senate.

Seven of the 77 senators who voted to authorize the invasion - Fred
Thompson (R-TN), John McCain (R-AZ), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Hillary
Clinton (D-NY), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Joseph Biden (D-DE), and John
Edwards (D-NC) are now running for president. While the Republicans
candidates remain unapologetic, the Democratic candidates have sought
to distance themselves from their vote, arguing that what is important
in choosing a president is not how they voted in the past, but what
s/he would do now.

Such efforts to avoid responsibility should be rejected out of hand.
While I personally support a full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq
as soon as logistically feasible, there is considerable debate among
knowledgeable, ethical, and intelligent people - including those who
also opposed the invasion - as to what to do now. No reasonable person,
however, could have supported the resolution authorizing the invasion
five years ago.

Enough to get one down. So a change of pace - Al Gore is favourite for the Nobel Peace Prize.  There is no truth in the rumour that the Commander has threatened to bomb Stockholm of they don't give it to him instead.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a resolution late this afternoon that designates the killing of more than a million Armenians during World War I as genocide, despite warnings from the Bush administration that its passage could seriously jeopardise the delicate relationship with Turkey.

If the killing of over a million, men, women and children is not genocide I don't know what is. Would we deny the Jewish genocide ,if it was to effect our relationship with Germany?

EVERYONE wants to see "peace" between Israel and the Arabs. It has now dawned on most people that the terrorist attacks on America and Europe, the al-Qaeda rhetoric about the suffering of fellow Muslims, and the instability in the Middle East are connected with the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict................

All these manoeuvrings are ostensibly about solving the conflict. But in reality, they substitute process for substance. Finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is not the problem. The parameters have been clear for decades: Israel's withdrawal from the 1967-occupied territories, the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the right of return of refugees. These are also the components of the 2002 Saudi plan and offer Israel full normalisation of relations with the Arab states in exchange.

The plan is in line with international law and has the support of the Western powers. Yet it has no chance of succeeding, nor has any other peace proposal not to Israel's liking.

As the wars in the Middle East continue to kill and maim it is time for the  West to support the peace process with vigour. No longer can we tolerate the demands of Israel. Too many people have suffered already we must resolve this issue. 

There is not a serious military analyst in the world who does not believe Musharraf's military has co-operated in recent months with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Most military analysts believe it will be impossible to finally defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan while they continue to have havens and logistical and other support in Pakistan. This is an acute and urgent matter for Australia, because our soldiers are risking their lives daily in Afghanistan.

I can understand the need for a mealy-mouthed response to Musharraf's countless crimes and deceptions because he may be less awful than the alternative. But when our soldiers are dying on a battlefield made infinitely more dangerous by Musharraf's deceptions, the case for the mealy-mouthed response becomes much weaker.

While the Taliban gets support from  Pakistan and Iran, we cannot win the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. The longer we have troops in the danger zones, we will likely suffer more casualties, and we risk war with Iran and Pakistan.  It is time we had a serious rethink of our Middle East policies, it may be wiser to withdraw and let the forces in the Middle East resolve the issues in their own way.

Andrew, it is good to see you drop by and with such a worthy piece to offer. The great game, the world as a chess board ... but when a main player seems to have trouble telling one piece from another and the game keeps changing and empires come and go. New players  enter the game and there are new approaches yet some hold tightly to the old - the final paragraph of the article captures this so well.

"The sheer venality...", yes indeed. And was that spoof I linked that far wrong? There's a worrying mentality at work and there is a need for new approaches to meet the challenges we face.

Time's a wasting.

...and your points are? 

Bob, I just read an excellent article in Le Monde Diplomatique arguing that the Iraq adventure was a step too far in the great game that the US (and Britain to a far lesser extent) have been playing for the past 60 years.  I've always felt that the sheer venality of the Bush/Cheney cabal would be their undoing and it seems that some fairly important players are now worried about the same thing.

From the opening:

The disastrous outcome of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused a crisis in the power elite of the United States deeper than that resulting from defeat in Vietnam 30 years ago. Ironically, it is the very coalition of ultra-nationalists and neo-conservatives that coalesced in the 1970s, seeking to reverse the Vietnam syndrome, restore US power and revive “the will to victory”, that has caused the present crisis.

There has been no sustained popular mass protest as there was during the Vietnam war, probably because of the underclass sociology of the US’s volunteer army and the fact that the war is being funded by foreign financial flows (although no one knows how long that can continue). However, at the elite level the war has fractured the national security establishment that has run the US for six decades. The unprecedented public critique in 2006 by several retired senior officers over the conduct of the war (1), plus recurrent signs of dissent in the intelligence agencies and the State Department, reflects a much wider trend in elite opinion and key state institutions.

Not all critics are as forthright as retired General William Odom, who tirelessly repeats that the invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history” (2), or Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, who denounced a “blunder of historic proportions” and has recently suggested impeaching the president (3), or former National Security Council head Zbigniew Brzezinski who called the war and occupation a “historic, strategic and moral calamity” (4).

Most public critiques from within the institutions of state focus on the way the war and occupation have been mismanaged rather than the more fundamental issue of the invasion itself. Yet discord is wide and deep: government departments are trading blame, accusing each other of the “loss of Iraq” (5). In private, former senior officials express incandescent anger, denounce shadowy cabals and have deep contempt for the White House. A former official of the National Security Council compared the president and his staff to the Corleone mafia family in The Godfather. A senior foreign policy expert said: “Due to an incompetent, arrogant and corrupt clique we are about to lose our hegemonic position in the Middle East and Gulf.” “The White House has broken the army and trampled its honour,” added a Republican senator and former Vietnam veteran.

Eliot Ramsey, Ah yes, gross generalizations...........

On that chart people may have noticed the number one University world-wide is Harvard. Yep, you guessed it the Harvard President is female.

And come to think of it, Paul, another thing the pan-German, ultra-right was prone to do was 'explain' contemporary events with reference to long lists of historical 'wrongs' done to them going back decades and centuries.

These formed a vast repertory of paranoid 'hurts' which were held in reserve and trundled out when needed to justify whichever current outrage they were planning.

Scott Ritter has a good article on the root causes of friction between the US and Iran.

Yet more members of the crazy gang. 

Jason Miller on the mind set of Bush supporters. 

Paul W Schroeder on ending the Iraq war. 

That might not suit some, including those who seem intent on starting another war. 

Paul Morrella, hi.

The political significance of hysterical ethnic generalisations continually directed at a single people are best understood in terms of an observation made by a prominent mid-century statesman, as follows:

"...one should, on purely psychological grounds, never show the masses two or more opponents, since this leads to the total disintegration of their fighting power."

- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, p117

Trevor Kerr asks:

"But how would they know if, in fact, there ever was a workshop making EFPs, after all the evidence has been destroyed? "

Seeing as the largest ex-pat Persian population in the world is in Los Angeles, they'd probably know almost as soon as, if not sooner than, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself.

That was the real significane of Irangate

Angela Ryan

I wonder why the Dems are wasting so much time with lame ducks in such a racist sexist society. Talk to them, they talk the talk but would never vote for a black or a woman for President, especially the more, ahem, bible Belt/type education level areas.

You really gotta to love a comment such as this. Nearly as good as the fella calling all American's; obese, dumb, slothful idiots.  http://www.arwu.org/rank/2005/ARWU2005_Top100.htm.

Would you have a credible link to these assertions?

Yes, of course.

 
Here's an item reported by UPI quoting Professor Seth G. Jones, an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.

 
His observations relate to signs that Iran may have shipped some arms and other materials to the Taliban via the Quds Force.

 
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a former member of, and is closely politically allied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps resulting in them becoming one of the most powerful political forces inside Iran.

Now, do you have any evidence of an 85 per cent probability of an Israeli or US "attack" on Iran within the next six months? Or is it just a hunch?

 
And what scale or form would the attack take, do you think?

Richard Tonkin

I can foresee this death being used as Aussie vindication for support of the attack on Iran that you and Paul Morella don't think will occur, but without which the governing parties of the US, UK and Australia are unlikely to survive elections.

Rather than save governments any such attack would only hasten their demise. Seriously, how popular is the current Iraq war? Another reason is it would seriously damage all economies, and the object of starting a war is winning something from any such war. The chances of that happening in Iran are slime to none, and slime just died on the operating table.

The idea of people talking up such an attack is to put fear into the average voter. Vote for us or your kids will be in a war zone, that sort of thing. The next US election by the way will be fought on economics, economics, and more economics. That is my prediction. If there is a large world-wide 2008 correction the Middle East will be the least of people's concerns eyeing off their funds. The guy or gal strongest on economics, and all that money stuff will be the next President of the United States.

Angela Ryan says:

"Do you really find an interest in whether I personally predict a US invasion of Iran?"

Yes, I do.

Angela Ryan says:  "Currently there is an 85% chance of attack from US/Israel in the next 6 months, and this has slightly fallen after this week's activities." 

Actually, Richard, if you read the statement Nelson made, he doesn't blame Iran. He says this:

The improvised explosive device that killed an Australian soldier and injured another in Afghanistan yesterday may have come into the country from Iran, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson says.

But he admitted the Australian Defence Force had no proof about the source of the device, which was detonated in a roadside bombing in Oruzgan Province in Afghanistan.

Which is stating the bleeding obvious. There are growing signs that Iran may have shipped some arms and other materials to the Taliban.

However, it should be stated that the Taliban and Tehran haven't had a good relationship, whereas the government in Kabul does have quite a good relationship with Tehran.

Weapons have gone through Iran to Afghanistan, but the connection between Iran and the Taliban is nothing of the order of the relationship between Iran and, say, Hezbolla, which it practically owns.

Paul Morrella, you have accused accused me of being selective with the following:

However,
when people make such comments such as "a lot of his expressions of
religious faith ..." they infer that they have a basis, that is, an
awareness of those expressions.

What he actually wrote was:

I'm no fan of Bush but I also think a lot of his professions of religious faith are intended merely to placate his supporter base of southern
right wing religious dumbf**ks.

The attempt of selective quoting of
course changes the context of his point. Your attempt to quote out of
context should disqualify you from making any further argument;
however, I digress.

Yesterday I reposted Mike Lyver's post in its entirety. So your claim in that regard is wrong. I suggest you apply your own standards, as expressed above, to yourself. Perhaps you could better spend your time reading the material I provide.

David, Trevor's second link has this:

The attack will also increase fears that the Taliban are getting military help from Iran's government.

And this:

Claims that the vehicle might have been destroyed by a "shaped charge"
IED, a weapon perfected by Iraqi insurgents with Iranian help, have
been dismissed by the Ministry of Defence as speculation.

The repeating of unproven allegations is far too common in the MSM. I recently took issue with the ABC over an example in one of its news reports. You might recall the comment from a UK government adviser from a post of mine yesterday:

Mercer, who last month accepted a post as an adviser to the Brown government, said: 'All that I heard when I was in Iran was British authorities saying "be careful about what you hear from America". I'm not saying for one moment that it is necessarily wrong, but it's got to be taken with a pinch of salt. Is it American rhetoric, propaganda or fact?'

The attempt to implicate Iran in both Iraq and Afghanistan has been well documented here. The lack of a sense of irony from the main perpetrators has regularly remarked upon.