BY BRIAN BOGART
DATELINE: Information Clearinghouse 09/11/07 to whom we are indebted.

The Unwarranted Influence of America’s Global “Defense” Corporation

You know your country’s “democratic” leadership and rationale for war are in trouble when the anointed most-evil enemy makes more sense than they do.

Although for all we know Bin Laden’s “annual message to Americans” originated below Dick Cheney’s office where Bin Laden is living in luxury chained to a pool table, its contents ring with refreshing logic relative to what usually passes for truth in and around the White House. Read the rest of this entry »

Flight carrying badly injured soldiers out of Iraq.

BY SHAYNE NELSON

The Iraq War’s “hidden casualties” is yet another scandalous instance of media malfunction which somehow favors the warmongers amongst us. This post challenges the accuracy of the official tallies. What would the world do without citizens’ journalism?

Back in the Seventies a French journalist told me a not-so-hard-to-believe tale of the Vietnam war, from his days as a war correspondent in Vietnam for the French newspaper Le Monde. He said that every evening during that conflict, a huge jet full of dying soldiers took off from Saigon, headed to Japan. He said that war correspondents in Saigon called it ‘The Flying Coffin,’ since most of the soldiers aboard the plane, though still alive, were so badly injured that most of them would soon be dead. Read the rest of this entry »

BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS Dateline: September 5, 2007

Embattled Rabbi Eric Yoffe—being antiwar and liberal he’s catching hell from the Neocons and the Israeli Lobby.

President Jimmy Carter was demonized for pointing out in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that there are actually two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Distinguished American scholars, such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have suffered the same fate for documenting the excessive influence the Israel Lobby has on US foreign policy. Read the rest of this entry »

The debate about whether Americans should stay or leave Iraq after four years of brutal occupation is surreal because it continues to be underwritten by enormous lies. Plain and simple, the US elites invaded Iraq to rob that nation at gunpoint of its major resource, oil, and all the current foot-dragging is simply to accommodate stateside politics to the ensuing debacle, while clinging to some “solution” that might provide a fig leaf for an indefinite US military presence in that region. The essay we reproduce below is an excellent dissection of the principal lies feeding the confusion, as usual with ample complicity on the part of the corporate media, which through shoddy work, or cynical collaboration, effectively prolongs the agony of Iraq. The evidence that the mass media are not doing their job is everywhere. Just consider for a moment the following astonishing facts—astonishing in their sheer obscenity when put in the context of so much want and misery in the world, and that most Americans never heard of them— collected by Doug Henwood for one of his remarkable essays, and published back in 2003:

“LIGHTNESS”

In the early days of the war, when things weren’t going so well for the “coalition,” it was said that the force was too light. But after the sandstorm cleared and the snipers were mowed down, that alleged lightness became a widely praised virtue. But that force was light only by American standards: 300,000 troops; an endless rain of Tomahawks, JDAMs, and MOABs; thousands of vehicles, from Humvees to Abrams tanks; hundreds of aircraft, from Apaches to B-1s; several flotillas of naval support - and enormous quantities of expensive petroleum products. It takes five gallons of fuel just to start an Abrams tank, and after that it gets a mile per gallon. And filling one up is no bargain. Though the military buys fuel at a wholesale price of 84¢ a gallon, after all the expenses of getting it to the front lines are added in, the final cost is about $150 a gallon. That’s a steal compared to Afghanistan, where fuel is helicoptered in, pushing the cost to $600/gallon. Rummy’s “lightness” is of the sort that only a $10 trillion economy can afford.

Wrap your mind around those little facts before you read the rest of the indictment.—Eds.
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BY JOHN TIRMAN, AlterNet
Posted on November 28, 2006, Printed on September 6, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/44771/ Read the rest of this entry »

CYRANO TOPICAL RESEARCH ASSISTANT: Auveline Robinson

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the perfect foil for a global system of fearmongering with the plutocracy as the only winner. (Wanted poster distributed by U.S. Army.)

BY ANDREW TIGHMAN Dateline: Sep 6, 2007

Fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is the last big argument for keeping U.S.
troops in the country. But the military’s estimation of the threat is
alarmingly wrong. Meanwhile, as this report shows, the Bush administration continues to cynically play this hand, as it has turned the word “al-Qaeda” into a priceless propaganda asset.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fanatical Jewish settlers in disputed territories are forcibly removed by Israeli police.

BY JOHN MEARSHEIMER AND STEPHEN M. WALT
Dateline: September 2, 2007
Reviewed by Max Hastings/ Timesonline

Five years ago, Atlantic Monthly commissioned two academics, John Mearsheimer of Chicago University and Stephen Walt of Harvard, to write a significant article about the influence of the Israeli lobby on American foreign policy. When the piece was at last completed, the magazine declined to publish, deeming it too hot for delicate American palates. It eventually appeared in 2005, in the London Review of Books, provoking one of the most bitter media and academic rows of recent times. The authors were accused of antisemitism, and attacked with stunning venom by some prominent US commentators. Mearsheimer and Walt obviously like a fight, however, for they have now expanded their thesis into a book. Read the rest of this entry »

BY “ANONYMOUS” | Topical research associate: Auveline Robinson
As published on 8.17.07 by fraternal site, Truthdig


Bloodbath is not a metaphor in Iraq, thanks to the Cheney/Bush war.

Editor’s Note: The author of this article is a contractor who has lived and worked in Baghdad. His identity is known to Truthdig’s editors, but he has written anonymously in order to offer an uncensored account.

I have been living and working in Baghdad for the past 16 months and will be leaving next week for good. I am one of those overpaid Department of Defense contractors, or, as some would call me, a “war profiteer.” Yes, I have profited. I am out of debt and have money saved. But it has cost me. I am a changed man. I have become hardened. I almost feel like a zombie. Read the rest of this entry »

BY REGIS DEBRAY
Palestine: a policy of deliberate blindness

Last year President Jacques Chirac asked Régis Debray to study the situation in the Middle East. On 15 January 2007 Debray sent the French authorities the following document on Palestine. It is an important key to understanding a long policy drift whose results are now obvious.

Dennis Ross, formerly the United States envoy to the Middle East, admitted back in 2000 that mistakes had been made in the 1978 Camp David accords: the diplomatic process had not taken enough account of developments on the ground, especially the settlements. The number of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories doubled from 1994 to 2000. As many Israelis have settled in the West Bank since the Oslo accords of 1993 as in the previous 25 years. With an international conference again being discussed, it would be a mistake to continue to ignore the real state of affairs. There is no need for a committee of inquiry. The report has already been drawn up, many times over. No conflict in the world is as well documented, mapped and recorded. Read the rest of this entry »

BY NOAM CHOMSKY Dateline: July 29th, 2007

If the Bush-Cheney/Neocon manufactured war against Iran becomes a reality, Tehran could quickly end up in a heap of radioactive rubble.
Published on Saturday, July 28, 2007 by Zmag.org

The following is an excerpt from Noam Chomsky’s new book Interventions published by City Lights Books.

In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington’s basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important.

As was the norm during the Cold War, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq-a country otherwise free from any foreign interference, on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world. Read the rest of this entry »

BY CHARLEY REESE

Many Jews oppose Zionism, including some belonging to highly orthodox religious groups, such as Neturei Karta, who are well noted for their valor in protesting Israeli policies.

One of the myths created by the Israeli lobby is that Jews around the world are unanimous in their support of Israel, regardless of what it does. That’s not true and never has been true. Read the rest of this entry »