Rumsfeld
July 26, 2008
Here are two in depth interviews with Andrew Cockburn based on his excellent book on Rumsfeld. It is one of the best political biographies to have come out in the past year, and I hope to post my own review here soon.
Andrew Cockburn, author of Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy, discusses Donald Rumsfeld’s flawed personality, and history of intrigue, naked ambition, torture and war.
Antiwar Radio Exclusive: Revealed by Andrew Cockburn April 18, 2007: When Secretary of State Madeline Albright announced, on March 26, 1997, that Iraqi sanctions would stay in place despite the UN inspectors success it was an effort to preempt UN inspection chief Ralf Ekeus’s pending announcement that Iraq was to be certified “free” of “weapons of mass destruction.” (at 22:40)
This, as Cockburn explains, led Saddam to decide there was no further point in allowing the inspectors access to his palaces. (Former UN inspector Scott Ritter has maintained, including to this radio host, that the only purpose for the inspections after 1996 was to allow American spies the opportunity to assassinate Saddam Hussein.) This allowed Bill Clinton to falsely claim that Saddam had kicked them out of the country, launch his “Operation Desert Fox” bombing campaign (on the day the full House of Representatives were to begin debating Articles of Impeachment against him), and for the War Party to claim to this day that there must have been weapons there.
Also: Cockburn and General Anthony Zinni’s belief that the neocons’ plan B after installing Chalabi as dictator fell through was to deliberately destroy Iraq (that is, all this “failure” is on purpose), the suffering of the Iraq people, Rumfeld’s bogus “transformation” of the military and more…
Andrew Cockburn is a writer and lecturer on defense and national affairs, and is also the author of five nonfiction books. He has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, Playboy, Vanity Fair, and National Geographic, among other publications. He currently lives in Washington, D.C.
Christian Zionists target Iran
July 26, 2008
Lieberman attends conference of man McCain renounced
More here.
The Epiphany of Rev. Thomas Are
July 25, 2008
‘Are You Ready to Face the Facts About Israel?’, Paul Craig Roberts asks.
“On October 21 (1948 ) the Government of Israel took a decision that was to have a lasting and divisive effect on the rights and status of those Arabs who lived within its borders: the official establishment of military government in the areas where most of the inhabitants were Arabs.” — Martin Gilbert, Israel: a History
I had given up on finding an American with a moral conscience and the courage to go with it and was on the verge of retiring my keyboard when I met the Rev. Thomas L. Are.
Rev. Are is a Presbyterian pastor who used to tell his Atlanta, Georgia, congregation: “I am a Zionist.” Like most Americans, Rev. Are had been seduced by Israeli propaganda and helped to spread the propaganda among his congregation.
Around 1990 Rev. Are had an awakening for which he credits the Christian Canon of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem and author Marc Ellis, co-editor of the book, Beyond Occupation.
Realizing that his ignorance of the situation on the ground had made him complicit in great crimes, Rev. Are wrote a book hoping to save others from his mistake and perhaps in part to make amends, Israeli Peace Palestinian Justice, published in Canada in 1994.
What Obama missed in the Middle East
July 23, 2008
‘Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and Palestine this week seemed designed to appease pro-Israel groups in the US’, writes Ali Abunimah.
When I and other Palestinian-Americans first knew Barack Obama in Chicago in the 1990s, he grasped the oppression faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He understood that an honest broker cannot simultaneously be the main cheerleader, financier and arms supplier for one side in a conflict. He often attended Palestinian-American community events and heard about the Palestinian experience from perspectives stifled in mainstream discussion.
In recent months, Obama has sought to allay persistent concerns from pro-Israel groups by recasting himself as a stalwart backer of Israel and tacking ever closer to positions espoused by the powerful, hard-line pro-Israel lobby Aipac. He distanced himself from mainstream advisers because pro-Israel groups objected to their calls for even-handedness.
Like his Republican rival, senator John McCain, Obama gave staunch backing to Israel’s 2006 bombing of Lebanon, which killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the blockade and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, calling them “self defence”.
No U-Turn
July 22, 2008
‘Obama’s Stance on Iraq Is Chillingly Consistent,’ writes Sami Ramadani.
As November’s American presidential elections approach, Barack Obama’s message on Iraq is being widely interpreted as “flip-flopping” and a “retreat” from a previously unequivocal stance of fully withdrawing the US occupation forces. This is to misunderstand Obama, who is not someone who shoots from the hip. There is much more to his words than cursory reading could unravel.
His remarks before the 2003 invasion resonated well within the American antiwar movement. His scathing references to the Bush administration’s folly and his demands for “ending the war” were probably decisive in winning him the Democratic party nomination against Hillary Clinton, whose vote for war in 2003 ultimately crippled her credibility as the commander-in-chief who would bring it to an end.
Obama himself has reacted angrily to claims of a policy U-turn: “For me to say I’m going to refine my policies is I don’t think in any way inconsistent with prior statements and doesn’t change my strategic view that this war has to end and that I’m going to end it as president.” Earlier this month he resorted to an op-ed article in the New York Times to emphatically state: “On my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.”
A Brazen Evil
July 22, 2008
Benny Morris argues for nuclear genocide against Iran.
Once Zionism tried to hide its original ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Then Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris uncovered and published the facts. For men of integrity such as Pappe, these facts made it impossible to identify with the Zionist narrative. For men of no integrity, on the other hand — men such as Benny Morris — the facts made it necessary to justify ethnic cleansing, if committed by Jews. In A Brazen Evil Justin Raimondo condemns the further moral degeneration of Morris as he calls for an American attack on Iran.
Evil usually hides its face, because the sight of it repulses all but the depraved. However, in the case of Benny Morris, writing in Friday’s New York Times, we see something new: a proud evil, glorying in pure malevolence. His piece is a cold, calculated attempt to simultaneously shock and intimidate, one that succeeds at the former but fails miserably at the latter.
Here’s the shocker, really a double jolt: “Israel,” he avers, “will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months.” Either that, he writes, or else Israel will eventually have to launch “a preemptive nuclear strike.” His message to the West: take out Iran, or we’ll nuke ‘em!
The Israelis have been threatening to strike for the past six months, so nothing new there, except for the tone of certainty. Morris is no fringe nut-job flailing away on his obscure blog; he’s a prominent Israeli historian writing on the most noted opinion page of them all, a veritable bulletin board for governing elites worldwide. As such, he is almost certainly speaking with some insight into Israeli government plans. It is, in any case, almost inconceivable that he wrote his piece without the foreknowledge and consent of Israeli government officials.
Hope, Change, and the US Foreign Policy
July 20, 2008
Ali Abunimah, Ivan Eland on Riz Khan.
Riz Khan looks at what a change in the White House will do to America’s foreign policy with voices from different sides of the American political spectrum.
Candidates Punt on Iraq-Israel
July 19, 2008
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern discusses his recent article on the probable Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran, Israel’s need for new war in Iran to keep the U.S. military in the Mideast due to the failure in Iraq, the outspokenness of the military brass against an attack on Iran, AIPAC’s drafting of the new Iran war resolutions, Bush and Cheney’s loyalty to Israel, the never-ending conflicts created by the Israel occupation of Palestine, the need for the American people and Congress to understand the catastrophe that would ensue from attacking Iran and the urgency of impeachment.
Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years – from the John F. Kennedy administration to that of George H. W. Bush and is a co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Friends of Israel Blind to the Truth
July 19, 2008
Stuart Littlewood looks at the British ‘Friends of Israel’ groups and exposes their disregard for justice, human rights and basic norms of civilised behaviour.
The real Zionist vision does not recognise any maps. It is a vision of a state without borders – a state that expands at all times according to its demographic, military and political power. This warning by the respected Israeli journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery should be impressed on every friend of Israel in the West.
They are so gullible. The Jewish Chronicle last week reported how a group of intrepid Conservative MPs on a “Friends of Israel” junket experienced a “gunfire exchange” in Sderot. One of them said:
”We couldn’t see the gunfire, but could hear that it was close by.” The exchange illustrated the “effects on quality of life that people in the south of Israel suffer on a daily basis. It shows that it is not a sustainable position for these areas to be constantly subject to rocket attacks and that Israel has the right to take appropriate actions to defend its citizens.” Urging Britons to visit Israel, he argued: “It’s very important to show their support for the only democracy in the area. I feel we have a duty and obligation to support Israel.”
War Crimes Paradox
July 18, 2008
Ah, the irony! The ICC for the first time moves to indict a sitting head of state for war crimes and it isn’t George Bush, Ehud Olmert or Tony Blair, but the president of Sudan! As is their wont, ‘Little Crimes Get Punished, Big Ones Don’t‘, writes Paul Craig Roberts in this excellent piece. (thanks Ali)
National Public Radio has been spending much news time on Darfur in Western Sudan where a great deal of human suffering and death are occurring. The military conflict has been brought on in part by climate change, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Drought is forcing nomads in search of water into areas occupied by other claimants. No doubt the conflict is tribal and racial as well. The entire catastrophe is overseen by a government with few resources other than bullets.
Now an International Criminal Court prosecutor wants to bring charges against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
I have no sympathy for people who make others suffer. Nevertheless, I wonder at the International Criminal Court’s pick from the assortment of war criminals? Why al-Bashir?
Is it because Sudan is a powerless state, and the International Criminal Court hasn’t the courage to name George W. Bush and Tony Blair as war criminals?
