Posts filed under ‘Foreign Policy’
The U.S. Invasion of Iraq, Ten Years On
I don’t know what to say on this, the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. I was against the war before it began and I’ve been against it ever since. I thought we were being lied to all along and it turns out, that’s exactly what was happening.
So much misery.
In my opinion the invasion was one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever seen.
(It’s indicative of the fantasyland George Bush lived in when we’re reminded that Bush gave his “mission accomplished” speech six weeks — SIX WEEKS — after the March 19, 2003 invasion. (The war officially ended on December 15, 2011).)
When the Head of the CIA Doesn’t Believe in Freedom of the Press
It’s pretty unsettling that our new CIA Director, John Brennan, has so little respect for freedom of the press:
(Image via Wikileaks)
In 1980, a 25-year old graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin wrote a master’s thesis called “Human rights, a case study of Egypt.” In it, he argued that the aim of achieving and maintaining political stability justifies human rights violations by apprehensive governments— including crackdowns on unbridled journalists:
Since the press can play such an influential role in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some degree of government censorship. Inflamatory [sic] articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence.
Government censorship usually means not telling the citizenry about the nasty things it’s doing. “Inflamatory” [sic] articles” are usually ones that expose those things. If a government doesn’t want what it’s doing to be exposed, it shouldn’t do whatever it fears exposure of.
Freedom of the press is essential to a democracy. No one should head the CIA – or be a leader in our government — who doesn’t believe that in their heart and soul.
Time For a Little Less “Loyalty” to Israel
First, there’s this headline from the Washington Post today: Biden Seeks to Reassure AIPAC of U.S. Commitment to Israel.
Then there’s this from Middle East expert Juan Cole:
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC], which ought to be a registered foreign agent, opens its annual conference in Washington today. Its three big goals right now are to make sure US government aid to Israel is exempted from the across the board budget cuts of the sequester; to make sure Israel can with impunity go on stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank; and to get permission from Congress for the Israeli Air Force to bomb Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities.
Since Israel is a middle-income country with a nominal per capita income higher than Spain or South Korea, it is mysterious why the US taxpayer should outright give it so much money every year– more especially since the Israelis are breaking international law with their aggressive colonization of the West Bank, which causes no end of trouble for the United States in the Muslim World. Why it should be exempted from the effects of the sequester, when ordinary Americans will not, is further mysterious.
[...]
Former National Security Council staffer and Columbia professor of Political Science Gary Sick notes, “Initiating a war is the gravest step any nation can take. This legislation would effectively entrust that decision to a regional state. Such a decision is an American sovereign responsibility. It cannot be outsourced.”
No kidding! This is outrageous.
The Iraq War: A “Smash and Grab” Robbery of American Taxpayer Dollars
William Rivers Pitt, a real journalist — we need a thousand more like him — on the run up to the Iraq war:
(Image via WithFriendship.com)
Over the last few years, MSNBC refashioned itself as the progressive news alternative to networks like Fox and CNN by giving Keith Olbermann an opportunity to do actual journalism on television for a few years, and by putting people like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz front and center. Even Chris Matthews, the human weathervane, appears to have gotten the memo. But I remember a phone call I got from an MSNBC producer in February of 2003. Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors had not been in Iraq for 100 hours when this woman called me on my cell, told me she’d read my book, and asked me to appear on the network. There was, however, one caveat: she told me I was expected to argue that Blix and the inspectors were doing a terrible job and should be ignored, which just happened to be the exact line being peddled at the time by the Bush administration. I told the producer that I did not agree, that the inspectors needed to be given time to do their jobs, and that undermining them might lead to a devastating war. The MSNBC producer chuffed a cigarette-roughened laugh into my phone and hung up on me.
That happened – I remember the details not only because of how gruesome the conversation was, but because when she hung up on me, I almost lost control of my car and nearly wound up in the Charles River – and the fact of it tells you everything you need to know about MSNBC and the rest of the alphabet-soup cohort that is America’s “mainstream” news media. I did not do what that MSNBC producer asked me to, but you can bet all the money you have that she found someone who would a few phone calls later. You might have even seen it on TV.
[...]
The war against Iraq, in the end, was nothing more or less than a massive money-laundering operation that took American taxpayer dollars, soaked them in blood, and redirected them to Certain Friends In High Places. It was, as I said years ago, a smash-and-grab robbery[*] writ large, aided and abetted by an American “news” media which had its own profit motive, and which made a nifty sum off the whole deal. Even better for them, today they get to enjoy the ratings and advertising dollars to come when they broadcast their somber “documentaries” about how terrible it all was, how many lies were told, how many mistakes were made, and all without ever looking inward at their own enormous complicity.
* Halliburton, KBR, United Defense, the Carlyle Group, independent military contractors like Blackwater and a crowd of American oil companies are still counting the riches they earned from their participation in the carnage.
I’m proud to say I was one of the millions of people around the world who demonstrated (more than once) against the war. It has turned out pretty much exactly as I feared.
The United States Bows to its Corporatocracy; Falls Way Behind Energy-Wise
There’s this:
(Image via Wikipedia)
On a windy night in September, whilst most people were sleeping, wind power reached a record of 64.2% of Spain’s electricity demand.
The vast majority of Spain’s power that night came not from fossil fuels but clean, renewable energy generated by wind turbines on the Spanish hills.
And what couldn’t be used in Spain wasn’t wasted.
Some was exported via giant cables linking Spain to the rest of Europe and some was used to pump water uphill so it could be allowed to flow back down later, when demand was higher.
Pumped storage and interconnectors are just two of the way Spain has found to make sure wind works.
And there’s this:
Germany Widens Global Solar Lead (September 24, 2012):
Germany continues to outstrip the rest of the world in solar power capacity, and is adding new solar faster than any other country as well.
The US energy corporatocracy wants to believe that drilling for oil, fracking and transnational pipelines are the key to energy independence. Believe that at your children’s and your grandchildren’s peril.
Countries like Germany and Spain (despite their financial difficulties) are moving ahead with clean energy yet the US is held hostage by companies who wouldn’t mind destroying the entire planet to make a profit.
Romney Generating Awful Headlines Overseas
America, do we really want to elect someone who inspires headlines like this? Romney says Middle East Peace ‘Unthinkable’
Fareed Zakaria Lauds Bush’s “Freedom Agenda”
Paul Wolfowitz was a guest on Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN yesterday. Yes, CNN. You know, that raving liberal station.
So undoubtedly Zakaria and Wolfowitz, international war criminal, had a frank and honest discussion, right?
Not exactly:
Since when do we look back and think of Bush’s wars of choice that have killed untold hundreds of thousands as his — or our – “freedom agenda” and one of the major players who lied us into those wars as “the brain?”
Huh?
Huh?
Yo. Fareed. I’m looking at you.
The Butterfly Effect
Juan Cole over at Informed Comment is, as usual, the go-to guy for understanding what’s going on in the Middle East. This is the best I could do to (hopefully) convey his main points, cut from a very long article:
Romney Jumps the Shark: Libya, Egypt and the Butterfly Effect
[...]
So the Associated Press did a careful investigation of the ‘Sam Bacile’ who supposedly directed the hate film, ‘The Innocence of Muslims.’ And AP found that probably he does not exist, but is a persona used by a convicted Coptic Egyptian fraudster, Nakoula Bassely Nakoula.
But the story gets more complex. Nakoula had Coptic and evangelical associates in the shooting of the film, including Steve Klein, a former Marine and current extremist Christian who has helped train militiamen in California churches and has led “protests outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques.” My guess is that most of the Egyptian Copts involved are converts to American-style fundamentalism.
The Egyptian Coptic church has roundly condemned the hateful film they made smearing the Prophet Muhammad.
Anyway, the bigotry of the edited film, directed at Muslims, is part of a movement of religious prejudice that also targets . . . Mormons.
[...]
Then it turns out that the film was shot in such a way that there was originally no mention of the Prophet Muhammad in the script, and the cast had no idea what they were getting themselves into, and then the name of Muhammad was clumsily dubbed into the final edit.
So, the film was from the beginning a fraud. It was directed by a fraud. It was promoted by a militia trainer. And Nakoula marketed it fraudulently as the work of a fictitious Israeli-American Jewish real estate agent, ‘Sam Bacile,’ and falsely said it had been funded by “a hundred Jewish donors.”
The group behind the film, in other words, managed to evoke all the classic themes of anti-Semitism as a way of disguising the Coptic and evangelical network out of which the ‘film’ came. When they weren’t busy picketing Mormons and defaming Muslims they were trying to get Jews killed for their own smears of Islam!
Of course, given the strident hatred of Muslims promoted by a handful of Jewish American extremists such as Pamela Geller, David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes and others, in which they gleefully join with white supremacists and Christian fundamentalists, it was only a matter of time before their partners in hate turned on them and used them.
The bad, dubbed ‘film’ only had one theater showing in some dowdy place in LA. Then in July the group had the trailer for it dubbed into Arabic with subtitles as well, and put it on Youtube, where it was found by strident Egyptian Muslim fundamentalist Sheikh Khaled Abdallah, who had it shown on al-Nas television and caused the sensation that led to Tuesday’s demonstrations in Cairo and Benghazi. As I argued yesterday, the vigilante extremists or ‘jihadis’ have been left on the garbage pile of history by the democratic elections in Egypt and Libya, and are whipping up the issue of this film in a desperate attempt to remain relevant.
Aware of the building sensation about the film, an employee of the US embassy in Cairo condemned it as hate speech before the rally began outside its premises.
In other words, this is a non-film and a non-story, a fraud, promoted by the worst people in each culture.
[...]
In the end, the violence and extremism of the hardliners on both sides is a phantasm of the past, not a harbinger of the future. The wave of democratic politics sweeping the region has left the haters behind, reducing them to desperate and senseless acts of violence that will gain them no good will, no popularity, no political credibility.
(Emphasis added.)
The term “Coptic Egyptian” is new to me. Here is the Wikipedia page for that group.
Ecuador Grants Political Asylum to Julian Assange
Wow. Just wow. This is huge. Ecuador just gave the United States, Britain, Sweden and Australia the finger. Bravo!
Ecuador has granted political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The decision comes almost two months after the world-famous whistleblower came to the country’s embassy in London seeking protection.
“We have decided to grant political asylum to Mr. Assange,” said Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino. “We can state that he can be politically prosecuted.”
The announcement was met with celebrations outside the Ecuadorian embassy as the WikiLeaks founder’s supporters began chanting “Hands off Ecuador” and “Assange freedom fighter.“
Patino admitted that Julian Assange’s rights are endangered, as he is at high risk of extradition from Sweden to the US. Moreover, Assange’s home country will not provide him with adequate legal protection, he said.
“We think [Assange’s] extradition is viable to a country outside the EU,” said Patino. “If this happens, he will not get a fair trial and his rights won’t be respected. Most probably he will face a military court in the US.”
Now Britain is threatening the “storm” the Ecuadorian embassy to get Assange.
Watch Reuter’s live feed from outside the embassy here.
Will the Media Call Romney “Presumptuous” For his Overseas Trip?
As Mitt Romney heads to London, Israel and Poland, will the “liberal media” call him “presumptuous” like it did when candidate Obama went to Europe? (Hint: No.)
(Image via MSNBC)
Obama’s Berlin Campaign Rally too Presumptuous
No Virginia, the United States Isn’t the Greatest Country on Earth Anymore
In case you missed it, the United States isn’t the greatest country in the world anymore. Here’s why:
Beginning scene of the new HBO series The Newsroom explaining why America’s Not the Greatest Country Any Longer… But It Can Be.
(Via.)
How Many al Qaeda No. 2 Are There?
So, exactly how many Al Qaeda No. 2 are there? 48? 72? 325?
Abu Yahya al-Libi. (Photo: AFP)
US Strike Targets al-Qaeda No. 2
AL-QAEDA’S second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi was the target of a US drone strike that killed 15 people in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
US officials confirmed that al-Libi had been the target of the missile attack in North Waziristan on Monday, a Taliban and al-Qaeda stronghold along the Afghan border, but could not say whether he had survived.
Is Hillary Clinton Going to Sweden to Negotiate Julian Assange’s Extradition?
Something to think about and be aware of:
Via the U.S. State Department:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey from May 31-June 7.
[...]
On June 3, Secretary Clinton will travel to Stockholm, Sweden, for meetings with senior Swedish officials to discuss a range of issues, including green energy, Internet freedom, Afghanistan and the Middle East. In Stockholm she will also participate in a Climate and Clean Air Coalition event on short-lived climate pollutants.
Via Wikileaks:
Israeli Settlers Set Fire to Olive Trees Belonging to Palestinians
When I see images like this, I remember that I am ashamed at the U.S.’s unconditional support of Israel:
Throughout the day (Saturday, May 26, 2012), there were reports of settlers from Yitzhar trying to set fire to Palestinian olive groves near the village of Urif, south of Nablus in the West Bank. The entire area is know for its frequent confrontations between settlers and local farmers. A team from B’Tselem who arrived at the spot caught one of the attacks on camera; Sarit Michaeli, spokesperson for B’Tselem who filmed the video, told me she had a very clear view of the settlers torching the field.
According to Palestinian and Israeli sources, the settlers also opened fire on several Palestinians who tried to protect their field. At least one person was injured, and the Palestinian and Israeli media is reporting that his condition is grave. You can hear (but not see) the shots at the beginning of this video, before the camerawoman runs away. According to Michaeli, she later saw an entire group of armed settlers on the hill.
So, Israeli settlers move into olive groves belonging to Palestinians and set the trees on fire and when a Palestinian is shot, well, we’ll see what happens. If history is any guide, nothing will.
That’s wrong. It’s just wrong and I don’t support the U.S. supporting the Israelis in that.
Waiting for Slash-the-Budget Righties to Have a Fit About This
Hey, I have an idea. Let’s cut food stamps, unemployment benefits, Social Security, education, environmental protections, funds for road and bridge repair, food safety programs and shit like that so we can spend a trilling dollars on new toys for the military. (BTW, I thought drones were the new new thing. Do we need fighter jets anymore?)
The F-35 Aircraft
(Image via ForeignPolicy.com)
The Jet That Ate the Pentagon
The F-35 is a boondoggle. It’s time to throw it in the trash bin.
The United States is making a gigantic investment in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, billed by its advocates as the next — by their count the fifth — generation of air-to-air and air-to-ground combat aircraft. Claimed to be near invisible to radar and able to dominate any future battlefield, the F-35 will replace most of the air-combat aircraft in the inventories of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and at least nine foreign allies, and it will be in those inventories for the next 55 years. It’s no secret, however, that the program — the most expensive in American history — is a calamity.
This month, we learned that the Pentagon has increased the price tag for the F-35 by another $289 million — just the latest in a long string of cost increases — and that the program is expected to account for a whopping 38 percent of Pentagon procurement for defense programs, assuming its cost will grow no more.
[...]
First, with regard to cost — a particularly important factor in what politicians keep saying is an austere defense budget environment — the F-35 is simply unaffordable. Although the plane was originally billed as a low-cost solution, major cost increases have plagued the program throughout the last decade. Last year, Pentagon leadership told Congress the acquisition price had increased another 16 percent, from $328.3 billion to $379.4 billion for the 2,457 aircraft to be bought. Not to worry, however — they pledged to finally reverse the growth.
The result? This February, the price increased another 4 percent to $395.7 billion and then even further in April. Don’t expect the cost overruns to end there: The test program is only 20 percent complete, the Government Accountability Office has reported, and the toughest tests are yet to come. Overall, the program’s cost has grown 75 percent from its original 2001 estimate of $226.5 billion — and that was for a larger buy of 2,866 aircraft.
[...]
A final note on expense: The F-35 will actually cost multiples of the $395.7 billion cited above. That is the current estimate only to acquire it, not the full life-cycle cost to operate it. The current appraisal for operations and support is $1.1 trillion — making for a grand total of $1.5 trillion, or more than the annual GDP of Spain.
I crack myself up when I say I’m waiting for slash-the-budget righties to have a fit about this because that’ll never happen. The boys who are building this thing are their buddies. What’s going on here is basically another TARP program under the guise of “keeping us safe;” a trillion dollars for something we don’t know works. Who does that?
USA! USA! USA!
Romney Foreign Policy Adviser Not All That Good at Foreign Stuff
This morning the Romney campaign “organized a conference call today with three of Romney’s foreign policy advisers… During the call, Romney adviser Ambassador Pierre Prosper attacked President Obama for dealing with Russia…”
The United States has become a spectator on issues of national security. We’ve also been embarrassed by North Korea where again it continues to be a conciliatory leaning forward approach and yet the North Koreans will launch a missile surprising the United States by violating their agreement.
You now Russia is another example where we give and Russia gets and we get nothing in return. The United States abandoned its missile defense sites in Poland and Czechoslovakia, yet Russia does nothing but obstruct us, or efforts in Iran and Syria.
Oops.
From Wikipedia:
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia[1] (Czech and Slovak: Československo, Česko-Slovensko[2]) was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992. From 1939 to 1945, the state did not de facto exist because of its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, but the Czechoslovak government-in-exile nevertheless continued to exist during this period. In 1945, the eastern part of Carpathian Ruthenia was taken over by the Soviet Union. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Not a good sign.
I Give Richard Grenell Six Weeks
Why the Romney campaign would hire someone who has a habit of firing off nasty, seemingly-impetuous tweets as its national security and foreign policy “spokesman” is beyond me. My idea of a spokesman is someone who chooses his or her words carefully and deliberately.
(Image via The Huffington Post)
Richard Grenell, a former Bush administration official who joined the Romney campaign Thursday as national security and foreign policy spokesman, appears to have deleted more than 800 of his past tweets following scrutiny over numerous swipes aimed at the media, prominent Democratic women and the Gingriches. Grenell also apparently took down his personal site, which featured writing on politics, foreign affairs and the media.
[...]
On Friday afternoon, Grenell still featured a link to his personal site (http://www.richardgrenell.com) on his Twitter profile, which then showed that he had tweeted 7,577 times, according to a screenshot taken Friday by The Huffington Post. By Sunday morning, Grenell’s Twitter feed only listed 6,759 tweets and his personal site is no longer available.
[...]
ThinkProgress noted Grenell’s tendency to make cutting remarks about the appearances of prominent women in media and politics, including his tweet advising MSNBC host Rachel Maddow “to take a breath and put on a necklace,” and another suggesting she resembled a Justin Bieber.
In another tweet, Grenell wrote that “Hillary is starting to look liek Madeline [sic] Albright.” He discussed First Lady Michelle Obama working out and “sweating on the East Room carpet.” He also asked whether Callista Gingrich’s “hair snaps on,” and on another occasion, commented how Gingrich’s third wife “stands there like she is wife #1.” Politico flagged more examples and noted Grenell’s “old pastime” of “ridiculing the Gingriches.”
And there’s so much more. Find the whole article here.
Grenell’s a bomb waiting to go off. I give him six weeks.
No “Liberal Media,” Ahmadinejad Did Not Threaten To Wipe Israel Off the Map
Okay folks, let’s put this lie to bed once and for all:
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor acknowledged on Al Jazeera English (4/14/12) that Iranian leaders have never called for Israel to be “wiped” off the map.
Meridor agreed with interviewer Teymoor Nabili’s suggestion that the supposed remarks were never actually made; Iranian leaders, Meridor said,
come basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say “we’ll wipe it out,” you are right, but [that] it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor, it should be removed.
Hostile words, to be sure, but not the menacing threat endlessly reported in corporate U.S. media in recent years. (Iran, Israel and “wiped off the map” occur together more than 8,500 times in the Nexis news database in the last seven years.)
This has been a case of the U.S. media terrorizing its own citizens. So I’m sure we’ll be seeing corrections all over the place any minute now, you know, like all those corrections we saw after it turned out Iraq didn’t have any “weapons of mass destruction.” (Yeah, right.)
A Perfect Example of How the “Liberal” American Media Brainwashes Us
Wow. Here we have a perfect example of how the “liberal” American media brainwashes us into fearing or hating groups that those in power decide we should ah, fear or hate. This example is from today’s Washington Post.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has delivered a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that calls for a resumption of peace negotiations.
Got that? Palestinian Authority President Abbas wants to resume peace negotiations, but the Israeli lobby wants us to hate and fear the Palestinians (nobody bucks the Israeli lobby), so check out the photo the WaPo used to illustrate the article:
(Via.)
Amazing.
No Doubt the “Liberal Media” Will Be All Over This
That title is total sarcasm. Chances are this will get little to no coverage in the American corporate media because, after all, (1) it isn’t liberal and (2) one thing it does really well is protect our dear leaders:
(Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.
“Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi’s lies used to justify the Iraq war.
He tries to defend his actions: “My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime’s oppression.”
The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as “facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence” by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.
But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him “we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie”, he simply replies: “Yes.”
Karl Rove: Any President Would Have Killed Osama bin Laden
Karl Rove is trying to rewrite history while simultaneously making President Obama look like an empty suit:
As for the killing of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama did what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation. Even President Bill Clinton says in the film “that’s the call I would have made.” For this to be portrayed as the epic achievement of the first term tells you how bare the White House cupboards are.
Excuse me. George W. Bush was president for eight years while bin Laden was on the run and he didn’t get him. As a matter of fact, Bush blew a huge chance to do so:
(Via.)
And that’s the one big chance Bush blew to catch or kill bin Laden that we know of. There could have been many others over the course of Bush’s two terms.
So again, for Rove to claim “any president” would have done what Obama did — when his guy had eight years to do so but didn’t — is just typical Rove slime.
Get to Know Joseph Kony (Kony 2012)
UPDATED below.
Until I watched this now-viral (1,845,000 views in two days), devastating video about the world’s #1 war criminal, Joseph Kony, I didn’t know who Joseph Kony was. (Thanks American “news” media.)
Now I do and now I’m fighting mad. We’ve got to get him.
(Via.)
UPDATE (@6:29 p.m. ET March 8, 2012)
Over the last several days, much has been written about this video and about the video’s producer, Invisible Children. I get the controversy but I agree with the last paragraph of this “Viewpoint” post from Think Progress:
So, instead of continuing to debate the strengths and weakness of the Kony2012 video, or attack Invisible Children for their lack of financial transparency, let’s figure out how to turn this momentum into a constructive opportunity that can result in smart policies that will have a positive, real-time impact in the affected areas of central Africa. Let’s harness this energy and turn it into something productive that ensures we’re telling the right stories, inspiring well-informed advocacy, and working together across governments, academia, grassroots activists, and local populations to help bring this chapter of the LRA — and the impact in affected areas — to a close.
Imagine Rick Santorum’s Foreign Policy
This would be my Tweet of the Day:
No kidding. What a disaster.
32 Senators Formally Clear Way for War on Iran
My God:
A group of 32 senators from both parties unveiled a new Senate resolution Thursday that would establish the sense of the Congress that containing a nuclear Iran is not an option.
The resolution, which will be formally introduced later today, “strongly supports U.S. policy to prevent the Iranian government from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and rejects any policy that would rely on efforts to ‘contain’ a nuclear weapons capable Iran,” and “urges the president to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and oppose any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Lieberman emphasized that he doesn’t want to foreclose diplomatic options, but said that if Obama decided to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, he would have strong bipartisan support in Congress.
I hear the Israeli lobby and the military industrial complex speaking through these Senators. Never mind what the American people want. Just yesterday CNN released a poll showing that 82% of Americans think diplomacy or “no action” is the way to go:
Americans Favor Diplomacy Against Iran
CNN/ORC International poll released Wednesday indicates that only 17% of the public wants the U.S. to use force, with 60% saying diplomatic or economic action against Iran is the right response, and 22% saying no action should be taken at this time.
Haiti: Two Years After the Quake, the 99% and the 1%
Yesterday (January 12, 2012) marked the two-year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti.
USAToday put together a slideshow marking the anniversary. Here it is: For Haitian Earthquake Victims, Recovery is Very Slow.
This is the first photo in the series:
Photo: Dieu Nalio Chery, AP
Foreign Policy magazine put a slideshow together too. Here it is: Haiti’s One Percent.
This is the first photo in that series:
Photo: Paolo Woods/Institute
There are no words.
Those Muslim Extremists What To Kill Us!
Imagine a high ranking Muslim cleric saying this:
“On occasion scientists working on the nuclear program in
Iranthe United States turn up dead. I think that’s a wonderful thing, candidly.”“I think we should send a very clear message that if you are a scientist from
Russia, North Korea, or from Iranthe United States, and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a bombfor Iran, you are not safe.”
In fact, that’s a quote from Rick Santorum.
The Cop Who Stopped LA Arsonist Is a Volunteer, From Iran (Yikes!)
So, all those “illegals” are killing people, raping our women and wrecking our country huh?
Get a load of this:
The reserve sheriff’s deputy who captured a man suspected of being the city’s most dangerous arsonist is a volunteer who earns $1 a year and only recently qualified to patrol alone, authorities said Tuesday.
Shervin Lalezary,
a 30-year-old Beverly Hills real estate attorney, was patrolling at 3 a.m. Monday — three hours after the official end of his 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift — when he pulled over a Dodge van in Hollywood.
[...]
“He believes in the community service aspects of the reserve deputy,” Whitmore said. “This is part of the job for him and he doesn’t want to talk about himself because he believes he’s part and parcel of a larger effort.”
Lalezary was born in Tehran and moved with his family to America about 25 years ago.
[...]
“This is one of the most significant arrests anyone can make — regular or reserve,” the sheriff said Monday. “And this will follow him for the rest of his life.”
So, “they” say we should bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran but woohah, they have real people there.
Now what?
Is Iran Exaggerating its Missile Capability?
A friend sent me a link to this interesting tidbit about Iran possibly exaggerating its ballistic missile capabilities. It seems to me this is something we should bear in mind while listening to the fear mongering about nuclear this and that coming from Washington and Jerusalem. And this is from Fox no less:
At first, Iran claimed it had launched three long range missiles; a pronouncement at the end of ten days of war games in the Strait of Hormuz designed to test the patience of western nations as they weigh how to sanction Iran’s oil exports.
“We are able to announce that our shore-to-sea missile systems are so powerful that we can hit any target, any time, if it’s necessary” announced Habibulah Sayari, Iranian Navy Commander.
Seyyed Mahmoud Moussavi, Iranian Military Drills Spokesman, stated “Both missiles hit the intended targets successfully.”
It turned out the missiles weren’t that long range after all.
The Qhader missile, introduced in September, has a range of just 124 miles. The U.S. Navy’s fifth fleet in Bahrain is 150 miles from Iran. Israel is four times farther.
“We’ve seen that they’ve photoshopped, for example, photographs of missile tests before to make it look more impressive than it actually is, so I would take all this with a grain of salt. I think this is mainly posturing. It’s gamesmanship. And it’s again meant to send a message that the Iranians aren’t simply going to sit back while their oil is sanctioned,” said Michael Singh, Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Read more and see a video here.
(H/t Beth.)
How We Got Into Iraq — One Lie After Another
The good folks over at Mother Jones have put together a timeline of the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq — from August, 1992 through March, 2003.
I found it rather upsetting to be reminded of the lies and deceit but it is interesting nonetheless. How we got there and the web our Dear Leaders wove in order to convince us an invasion was necessary is something we should never forget, lest it happen again.
For example, this is the second to last entry, dated March 18, 2003:
Washington Post article headlined “Bush Clings to Dubious Allegations About Iraq” notes, “As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that have been challenged—and in some cases disproved—by the United Nations, European governments and even U.S. intelligence reports.” Story is buried on Page A13.
Makes my heart ache.
Baghdad -- March 19, 2003
Anyway, here it is if you’re interested.
(Photo via.)
Oh, and P.S. — Al Jazeera has a post up (video) titled: US Post-Iraq Legacy: The War is Finally Declared Over After Nine Years , but What are the Experiences and Lessons Learned by US Soldiers. I haven’t watched it yet but here’s a link, FYI.
Foreign Policy “News” as Reported in the U.S. By Mindless Stenographers
This is the truest article I’ve read in days:
The Language of Empire
“Mr. Obama and his senior national security advisers have sought to reassure allies and answer critics, including many Republicans, that the United States will not abandon its commitments in the Persian Gulf even as it winds down the war in Iraq and looks ahead to doing the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.”
[...]
The paragraph, one of many that could have been plucked for study and put under the microscope of outrage, is from a story just before Halloween, by Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers, informing us that, while the United States will be pulling troops out of Iraq at the end of the year, the regional war is anything but over: The U.S. military will be massing troops in Kuwait, sending more warships to the region and tightening its military alliance with the six nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain), in order to develop “a new security architecture” in the Gulf and establish its “post-Iraq footprint.”
Or in the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “We will have a robust continuing presence throughout the region.” And this, she explains, “is proof of our ongoing commitment to Iraq and to the future of that region,” which we care about because it “holds such promise” — oh God, the compassion is killing me — “and should be freed from outside interference to continue on a pathway to democracy.”
What’s striking, first of all, is that the “news” is presented to us, under the guise of objective reporting, as a fait accompli: Our supreme leaders have the following plans, the cursory details of which they are nice enough to let us in on.
There is no countertide present in reporting that emanates from the national defense beat — no acknowledgement of a rising national disgust at war or our enormous military failures of the past decade, which the plans the Times story outlines merely continue. There’s no acknowledgment even of obvious contradictions or hypocrisies, such as the fact that our presence in the Gulf arguably constitutes the very “outside interference” from which, according to Mrs. Clinton, the region should be freed.
And certainly there isn’t the least irreverence: no suggestion, for instance, that we have an interest in this oil-rich region beyond a deep love for the people and their democratic aspirations; or that our partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council are autocrats who brutally repress dissent and, ahem, democracy.
The story reads, instead, like interlocking blocks of propaganda dropped into place, not so much disseminating information as protecting the security state planners from questions and challenges. This is the news of empire.
Read the whole thing here.
A few years ago I heard someone (Noam Chomsky? Robert Fisk?) say that the gist of foreign policy reporting in the United States is, “The government said. The government said. The government said.” And that’s exactly right.
