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Wednesday, July 23, 2008
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Special Comment
European Union says
it will not support military action against Iran The
Canadian Press reports: “European Union foreign ministers say they will not
support a military strike on Iran but want more talks to try to resolve
worries Tehran might be developing nuclear weapons. British
Foreign Secretary David Miliband says it is now up to Iran to respond to
global powers and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana after talks in Geneva
on Saturday. He
says Britain and others involved in the negotiations with Iran are "100 per
cent focused on a diplomatic resolution" to the Iranian issue. The
ministers discussed with Solana the Saturday meeting, which made little
progress in resolving the standoff. The
U.S. and Israel have not ruled out a military strike on Iran if it does not
give up uranium enrichment and heed United Nations Security Council demands
aimed at dispelling fears over its nuclear plans.” |
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CENTCOM's
Master Plan and U.S. Global Hegemony Robert Higgs comments for LewRockwell.com: “Many people deny that the U.S.
government presides over a global empire. If you speak of U.S. imperialism,
they will fancy that you must be a decrepit Marxist-Leninist who has recently
awakened after spending decades in a coma. Yet the facts cannot be denied, however much people's
ideology may predispose them to distort or obfuscate those facts. How can a government that maintains more than 800 military facilities in more than 140 different foreign countries be anything other
than an imperial power? The hundreds of thousands of troops who operate those bases and conduct operations from them, not
to mention the approximately 125,000 sailors and Marines aboard the U.S.
warships that cruise the oceans, are not going door-to-door selling Girl
Scout cookies. United States of America is the name; intimidation is the
game. Of course, the kingpins who control this massive machinery of
coercion never describe it in such terms. In their lexis, American motives
and actions are invariably noble. Listening to these bigwigs describe what
the U.S. forces abroad are doing, you would never suspect that they seek
anything but ‘regional stability,’ ‘security,’ ‘deterrence of potential
regional aggressors,’ and ‘economic development and cooperation among
nations.’ Inasmuch as hardly anybody favors instability, insecurity,
international aggression, economic retrogression, and mutual strife among
nations, the U.S. objectives, and hence the actions taken in their
furtherance, would appear to be indisputably laudable. Yet, from time to time, a U.S. leader lets slip an expression so
revealing that it warrants a thousand times greater weight than the vague,
mealy-mouthed banalities they routinely dispense. I came across such a
statement recently. In seeking funds in 2007 for construction of a $62
million ammunition storage facility at Bagram Air Base, Admiral William J. Fallon, then the commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM),
referred to Bagram as ‘the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future
access to and operations in Central Asia.’ Pause
to savor this phrase for a moment; let it roll around in your mind: CENTCOM
Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia. What
an intriguing expression! What dramatic images of future U.S. military
actions it evokes! But can those actions be anything other than the very sort
that empires undertake? Ask yourself: why does the U.S. military anticipate
conducting operations in Central Asia, a region that lies thousands of miles
from the United States and comprises countries that lack either the capacity
or the intention to seriously harm Americans who mind their own business in
their own national territory? Indeed, what is the U.S. military doing in
Central Asia in the first place? Have you ever heard of 'the Great Game’? Continue… |
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Adm. Mullen: I'm Fighting
Two Wars, I Don't Need a Third The
Jerusalem Post reports: “The Pentagon's top military officer Adm. Mike
Mullen on Sunday discussed the fallout from a potential attack against Tehran
by either the US or Israel. ‘Right now I'm fighting two wars and I don't need
a third one.’ Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Mullen added, ‘I worry about the
instability in that part of the world and, in fact, the possible unintended
consequences of a strike like that and, in fact, having an impact throughout
the region that would be difficult to both predict exactly what it would be
and then the actions that we would have to take to contain it.’" Continue… |
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Winning Hearts and Minds…US Troops Kill Son of Iraqi Governor in Raid on House The Herald Sun (Australia) reports: “US forces shot dead
the 17-year-old son and another relative of the governor of northern Iraq's
Salahuddin province in a raid today, local officials said. The US military said it shot two armed men and later found out they
were both related to the governor. Governor Hamad al-Qaisi's brother,
Lieutenant-Colonel Saad al-Qaisi, said American troops stormed a family house
in the town of Beiji, where the governor's son Hussam and his cousin were
staying.” Continue… |
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US military jails 'black
holes', say US Attorneys for Afghan reporter A
vast detention camp planned for the main US base in Afghanistan will be a
‘second Guantanamo’ where laws do not apply, they said at a press conference
about an Afghan reporter in US military custody without charge for nine
months. The
US military is holding Jawad Ahmad, who has worked with Canadian Television
(CTV), at its detention facility at Bagram north of Kabul on allegations he
is an ‘unlawful enemy combatant.’ Ahmad
is among 650 people being held at Bagram without trial, US-based
International Justice Network executive director Tina Monshipour Foster told
reporters. Continue… |
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Britain's PM Backs Obama Plan for Iraq and Afghanistan Jane Merrick, of The
Independent UK: "Although he is refusing to set a detailed timetable for
withdrawal, it is clear Mr Brown is in agreement with the US presidential
candidate Barack Obama on the need for military action in Afghanistan to take
priority. Both appear to be working to a 16-month timetable." Continue… |
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DELUSIONAL? McCain insists he was right, Obama wrong on
Iraq Tom Raum reports for the Associated Press (AP): “Republican John McCain worked
on Monday to wrestle the spotlight from rival Barack Obama's tour of Iraq by
insisting he was right and the Democrat was wrong about the war and releasing
a new critical ad blaming higher gas prices on his opponent. As
Obama toured the war zones trailed by U.S. network TV anchors, McCain
ridiculed him from afar during a visit with the first President George Bush
at his summer home on the Atlantic. At the same time, the Republican
contender released an eyebrow-raising new ad flatly blaming the Illinois
senator for higher gasoline prices.” Continue… |
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35 years of drug war failure -
Belated birthday greetings to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Bill Steigerwald comments for the Pittsburg
Tribune-Review: “The DEA, which Richard Nixon created in 1973 and charged
with the impossible but politically useful mission of winning the ‘all-out
global war on the drug menace,’ turned 35 on July 1. So, how's its track record after 35
years of difficult, often dangerous drug-war-making? If the DEA were a heroin
addict, it would have overdosed on its own incompetence by age 6. Despite its failures and the harm it's done to American
society, however, the DEA has done more than merely survive. It's become a
typically bloated, self-preserving federal bureaucracy whose power, budget
and continuing existence bear no relation to its performance.” Continue… |
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VIDEO: Just for the mean-spirited, hell-of-it, Israeli
soldier shoots Palestinian prisoner
The Guardian (UK) provides this video and
comment: “Man had already been detained, blindfolded and cuffed when he was
shot in the foot with a rubber-coated bullet at close range.” |
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US Official Preparing Scathing Report on Israel's West
Bank Policies Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff of
Haaretz (Israel) report: “The United States security
coordinator for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, retired general James
Jones, is preparing an extremely critical report of Israel's policies in the
territories and its attitude toward the Palestinian Authority's security
services. |
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I Know What Jews Like, and American Jews Hate Neocons
and AIPAC Spencer Ackerman reports for the
Washington Independent: “Actually, J Street knows. The pro-peace/pro-Israel/pro-Palestine Jewish
lobby just released a monster of a poll on American Jewish political
attitudes. The
takeaway: we're liberal as hell; we hate Bush; we know Bush has been a
disaster for Israel; we'll support any peace deal the Israelis make; and the
only thing we're uncomfortable with to that end is giving East Jerusalem back
to the Palestinians. |
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Debunking Churchill: How Good Was
the “Good War”? Christopher Layne comments for
the American Conservative Magazine: “In arguing that Winston Churchill helped
bring on World War II, Pat Buchanan aimed at the wrong target. The
perniciousness of Churchill’s role lies not in his
contribution to the march to war but in the way he shaped historical memory
of the events of that portentous decade. During the 1930s,
Churchill was sidelined politically and had no discernible influence on
British policy. By the time he joined the cabinet in August 1939, the
critical decisions that led Britain into World War II had already been made.
But Churchill painted an infinitely more heroic picture of his role during
the 1930s: that of a modern-day Cassandra. In The Gathering Storm, Churchill alleged that—except
for him—British leaders were willfully blind to the German threat and
failed to meet it by rearming. Had Britain followed a different—Churchillian—policy
during the 1930s, he claimed, the disasters of 1940, and possibly war itself,
might have been avoided. Of course, Churchill
did not aspire to write an objective history. As David Reynolds reminds us in
his splendid In Command of History, Churchill’s
dominant motive was ‘to show that he was
right, or at least as right as it seemed credible to claim.’ With respect to the events of
the 1930s, Churchill wanted to prove that ‘the Second World War broke out
because his policies were not adopted.’ But when the British archives were
opened in the late 1960s, historians realized that Churchill’s
version of events was distorted. British leaders—especially Chamberlain—were not blind to the German threat and rearmed against it by building up the Royal Air Force and Navy. Under Chamberlain’s direction, London adopted a sophisticated strategy that aimed to combine diplomacy and deterrence to avoid war while allowing Britain to retain its empire and hold on to world-power status. Reynolds observes that during the 1930s, ‘Churchill was broadly at one with Chamberlain’ with respect to British strategic priorities. In a real sense, therefore, The Gathering Storm was a work of self-revisionism.” Continue… |