Bomb Iran?

Bomb Iran? By GARETH PORTER

"Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed in the Weekly Standard seeking to justify an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening of the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.

What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.

That has long been the Israeli strategy for Iran, because Israel cannot fight a war with Iran without full U.S. involvement. Israel needs to know that the United States will finish the war that Israel wants to start."

This, again, is what Afghanistan is really all about: a parking lot and staging area to keep our troops in the area pending the Next Big Attack.

The degree of control Israel has over our Congress is spoken of in this article in a matter of fact way that even I find alarming. How could we be so duped?

Also see Iran Under Siege By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

And this article, Sickened Ire By BARRY CRIMMINS talking about our health care system from the standpoint of one of it's victims.


Bill

Who Owns General Petraeus?

Who Owns General Petraeus? by Philip Giraldi

"Petraeus’ apparent close relationship with the neoconservatives and the Israel Lobby is a matter of concern, particularly if he does aspire to be president.

... In May 2010 Petraeus received the Irving Kristol award from the American Enterprise Institute, indicating clearly that the Israel Lobby and the neocon establishment regard him as a favorite son.

... Petraeus’ personal link to the neocons is through Max Boot and the two Kagans, Kimberly and Fred. All three have advised the general and have been cheerleaders for his "surge" policies.

... But maybe the neocons should think twice about their captive general. Many who harbor political ambitions rightly fear the power of the Israel Lobby, but fear is a far remove from affection. Many Congressmen held hostage by the Lobby resent it and long for the time when they would be able to support genuine American interests relating to the Middle East.

... Petraeus surely understands that no one can get nominated by a major party to run for president of the United States if the Israel Lobby and its media supporters say no.

... All America’s friends emphasized that it had become increasingly difficult to generate popular support for US policies in light of the Israeli repression of the Palestinians. The responses were so alarming that Petraeus arranged a briefing for Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a month later. Mullen also was shocked by the depth of the antipathy towards the United States caused by Israeli policies and the report to the Senate was the result."

The End of (Military) History? The United States, Israel, and the Failure of the Western Way of War By Andrew J. Bacevich

"So even as they professed their devotion to peace, civilian and military elites in the United States and Israel prepared obsessively for war. They saw no contradiction between rhetoric and reality."

Bill

Superhighway To Hell

Superhighway To Hell By Stephen Saunders

Read this interesting article to see where the Internet is headed if we don't do something about it.

The core ingredient of this projection - and others like it - is the issue of privacy, something the framers of our Constitution didn't even think about, for good reason, but we now damn sure better be thinking about.

What we need is Constitutionally protected privacy, nothing less. How would it work? If anyone stores information about you, you'll have the right to know exactly what that information is, and you'll have the right to challenge that information from being used or published without your consent.

If you don't own information about you, then you're mince meat for the machine.

I've spent some 40 years programming computers, long aware that these machines are nothing less then a giant two-edged sword. In the simplest of terms, they can be the greatest invention of all time, or the very worst. The key and decisive issue is the matter of privacy. Since we've losing this right without even realizing it, it's now time to wake up and do something before, as Stephen Saunders correctly points out, we find ourselves in a world we don't want to live in.

The cost of war

Click the above link to watch how fast your money flies out of your pocket and into the sink-hole. A million bucks every few minutes.

Do something! Anything! Write letters, blogs, talk with your family, your friends, anyone who will listen. We must stop the loss of our children, our privacy and our bank accounts at the hand of what can only be called evil people.


Bill

Robert Gibbs sounding like an idiot

Document Leak May Hurt Efforts to Build War Support By ERIC SCHMITT and HELENE COOPER

“We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can be planned. That’s why we’re there, and that’s why we’re going to continue to make progress on this relationship.”

It takes a certain kind of idiot to really believe that planning has anything whatsoever to do with geography. But planning sure can be helped by popular support, and that our enemies are winning more so with every civilian killed in our name.

But then "up is down, and down is up". Now it should be clear.

Bill

Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone: 'Jewish-Dominated Media' Prevents Hitler from Being Portrayed 'in Context'

If you look at the reader comments, you'll get a taste for the treatment John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt received after publishing their essay "The Israel Lobby", as described by Stephen Sniegoski here. From this piece:

"The initial reaction to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's essay "The Israel Lobby" consisted of a relentless barrage of vituperative insults, smears, character assassination, misrepresentations, and other inflammatory rhetoric that condemned the essay in toto. In large part, the vicious pillorying of the piece came from members of the Israel lobby denying their own power and even existence. Presumably, the purpose of that approach was to intimidate anyone from ever daring to investigate the subject. But the effect of the venomous verbal bombardment also unintentionally illustrated the absolute correctness of the essay's claim about the lobby's power to suppress."

Oliver Stone: 'Jewish Domination Of The Media' Propagates Holocaust Myths

This Huffington Post article quotes Stone:

"The Jewish domination of the media," he said. "There's a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years."

Again, reader comments talk little about what he actually said.


Bill

The Real U.S. Government

The Real U.S. Government By Glenn Greenwald

"Most of what the U.S. Government does of any significance -- literally -- occurs behind a vast wall of secrecy, completely unknown to the citizenry. . . . Secrecy is the religion of the political class, and the prime enabler of its corruption. That's why whistle blowers are among the most hated heretics. They're one of the very few classes of people able to shed a small amount of light on what actually takes place."

... The NSA sorts a fraction of those [1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of daily collected communications] into 70 separate databases.

... we keep sacrificing our privacy to the always-growing National Security State in exchange for less security."

Scott Horton Interviews Stephen M. Walt by Scott Horton

"Well first of all, the state is explicitly founded as a Jewish state. In fact, though, it is considered by Israelis to be the state of the Jewish people, so in a sense you’ve already declared the Arab population to be second-class citizens. It would be as though the United States said, “We are a Protestant state” or “We are a Christian nation,” and anybody who wasn’t would have to walk around knowing that they somehow didn’t quite fit in.

... I think that early in the Bush administration, certainly about the time that we were going into Iraq, there was a pretty ambitious idea that we were really going to transform the entire region. And first we’d knock off Saddam Hussein, and then we’d turn on Iran or Syria and either threaten them into doing what we wanted or actually engage in more regime change as well. And that particular dream, I think, died in the sands of Iraq.

... I don’t want to overstate Mr. Kristol’s power, but he’s obviously a very influential figure. And the most disturbing thing about the sort of role of neoconservatives is the complete lack of accountability. You would think that the architects of the Iraq War — and neoconservatives really were; they were the first people to talk repeatedly about the need to go to war in Iraq, and this began in the mid to late 1990s. These were the guys who dreamed up this whole idea. And you would think that, given the results of Iraq — a costly, protracted, disastrous war for the United States — you would think that no one would be taking them very seriously at all. But in fact — because there is in fact very little accountability in the sort of inside-the-beltway establishment, they are continuing to be on talk shows and have their journals of opinion and op-ed columns and, you know, forming new organizations, having founded old committees and projects and groups to try and advocate for war with Iraq — we now see the same people, same tactics, being used to try and push the United States into a war with Iran. As I said, you know, a half hour or so ago, they don’t have quite as sympathetic an environment, and certainly the 9/11 attacks certainly helped the cause, although they had to do an awful lot of distortion to exploit that, but nonetheless they’re trying to do the same things now, and it’s really remarkable, given the track record that they’ve had so far.

... We’re now in a position where you can’t even have an honest discussion about it. If President Obama says anything critical about Prime Minister Netanyahu, he immediately gets a storm of criticism and lots of phone calls, things like that.

... Well, and as anybody who saw when first the article and then the book came out, you suffered the brunt of this criticism and every kind of accusation about your character that could be made — you know, congratulations to you for bearing through that and standing by your positions there. So, is there any progress being made? I mean it seems like, geez, well, like you said before, it seems like the neocons really overplayed their hand with Iraq, that would have discredited them. Are we ever going to get to the point where it’s not “anti-Semitic,” quote unquote, to say, “Hey, America’s interests are different than Israel’s and we ought to take care of ourselves. They can take care of themselves fine, especially with all the weapons we already bought them.”


"

Bill

Advice for General Petraeus

Advice for General Petraeus on the Rules of Engagement: It’s Neither/Nor, Not Either/Or by Juan Cole

"It’s time to stop talking about those rules and start talking about the madness of making counterinsurgency the American way of war. It wasn’t always so. Not so long ago, after all, it was considered a scandal that, post-Vietnam, the U.S. military rebuilt its all-volunteer force without rewriting or reconsidering its counterinsurgency manual.

... So, after being buried and disinterred, COIN, as its known, is once again the reigning monarch of American war-fighting doctrines as the Pentagon prepares for one, two, three Iraqs or Afghanistans — and the scandal is that (surprise, surprise!) it’s not working. This should, of course, hardly have been news. The history of counterinsurgency warfare isn’t exactly a success story, or our present COINistas wouldn’t have taken their doctrine largely from failed counterinsurgency wars in Vietnam and Algeria, among other places. It’s not so encouraging, after all, when the main examples you have before you are defeats."

I participated in the USMC Vietnam version of COIN in 67-68. It didn't work. The so-called friends we were making were giving detailed maps of our compounds to the VC, who continued to (savagely) rule the night.

To really understand all this is very, very simple: just imagine foreign soldiers walking your streets. What would you do?


Bill