As we all know, this is the country with the largest reserves of drinking water in the world. And where is the water? In the Amazon! Read the rest of this entry »
“The Bucharest summit has shown that NATO - or Europe and the West in general, is in more difficulty that it at first appeared. … The well-concealed disagreements about the participation of NATO members in operations in Afghanistan demonstrate the failure of the military Alliance, and its ambiguous position as an accessory to the American war machine.”
Gen. Tommy Franks was off the mark when he called Douglas Feith the dumbest effing guy on the planet. On 60 Minutes last night, Feith showed that stupidity alone is not enough to describe a clueless academic intoxicated by power and willing to stoop to intellectual dishonesty that would shame any used-car salesman
“What we did after 9/11,” he told Steve Kroft, “was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack.”
“So you’re saying,” an incredulous Kroft followed up by asking, “you didn’t think it was that important to go after the people who were responsible for it–more important to go after people who weren’t responsible for it?”
Feith, who helped cook the intelligence to justify the invasion, was pimping his doorstop book that blames everyone else, especially L. Paul Bremer, who ran the Iraq occupation for the first two years, for the ensuing fiasco.
If he had had his way, Feith claims, he would have turned the country over to con man Ahmad Chalabi, who fed him and his Neo-Con rubes $33 million of false information to lie us into the war.
Dumb isn’t enough. Try shameless, arrogant and deceitful. There is at least one like him on most campuses. Just our luck that this specimen ended up in Rumsfeld’s Defense Department.
It will doubtless come as no surprise to readers of the Moderate Voice that people around the world have been outraged by the Bush Administration’s conduct of the Iraq War. But the passing of the fifth anniversary of the war has triggered a particularly strong upwelling of anger, which one can get a sense of by reading this article by Reinaldo Spitaletta of Colombia’s El Espectador.
Spitaletta writes, “Is it worth killing over 450,000 people, mostly civilians? Yes. And destroying a culture thousands of years old? Yes. And as if the matter was of little consequence, torturing prisoners in a jail? Yes, indeed. That’s how the president of the United States, George W. Bush, sees it, now five years after invasion of Iraq.”
As for the Iraqis, Spitaletta writes, “Perhaps it never occurred to the Gringos that their bombers, their infantry, their paraphernalia - yes- of mass destruction, would be unable to overcome an entire people … the Iraqi people, who today are suffering through the most unspeakable criminal invasion, know that never in their history has any foreign occupier triumphed. Neither the Romans nor the British. Today, without jobs, without social security, without tranquility but with the living hope of expelling the invader, they continue their resistance. And for those who have been displaced and mutilated - for the humiliated Iraqis of today - it will all be worth it to reverse the situation and defeat the troops of the superpower.”
By Reinaldo Spitaletta
Translated By Douglas Myles Rasmussen
March 25, 2008
Colombia - El Espectador - Original Article (Spanish)
Is it worth killing over 450,000 people, mostly civilians? Yes. And destroying a culture thousands of years old? Yes. And as if the matter was of little consequence, torturing prisoners in a jail? Yes, Read the rest of this entry »
What can be gleaned from the fact that on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, President George W. Bush and his ‘alter ego’ Osama bin Laden both gave speeches? Patrik Etschmayer writes for Switzerland’s Nachrichten, ‘Bush once again showed how brilliant he is at ignoring the reality of his own mistakes and giving the truth a whole new twist … This speech - which was an absolute denial of reality and self-deception - was not out there on its own for long, but was soon accompanied by one from his alter-ego on the Dark Side, when Osama bin Laden reportedly spoke again … Bin Laden’s message carries more than just a warning for Europe. It also shows that even for bin Laden, Bush is a man whose time has run out. … Both are voices from the crypt - but it seems that it will be bin Laden’s voice that will be heard the longest.’
By Patrik Etschmayer
Translated By Patrik Etschmayer
March 20, 2008
Switzerland - Nachrichten - Home Page (German)
It’s the fifth anniversary of the starting shot of the second Iraq War, and right on cue, two of the undead have chosen to speak. First, George W. Bush gave his speech on the anniversary of this enterprise; and from the other, reports are that Osama Bin Laden too has spoken once again.
Bush went first, however, and once again showed how impressive and brilliant he is at ignoring the reality of his own mistakes and giving the truth a whole new twist.
A wonderful example for his mental somersaults can be found early in the speech, when Bush says the following about the defeated Iraqi army and regime: “When the Iraqi regime was removed, it did not lay down its arms and surrender. Instead, former regime elements took off their uniforms and faded into the countryside to fight the emergence of a free Iraq.”
What he didn’t say was that the army and security forces had in fact surrendered, and then were released by the Americans - with the effect that in the aftermath, hundreds of thousands of unemployed soldiers and police - still armed - were ready to organize resistance to the occupiers.
Of the fact that the U.S. Army also failed to secure huge caches of Iraqi army weapons, which were then cleared out by insurgents in the tremendous power vacuum that existed at the time … not a word was mentioned.
Nor was any mention made of the non-existent weapons of mass destruction (the alleged existence of which was the main reason for the war), the fact that al-Qaeda only appeared in Iraq after the invasion, and that for four years the U.S. administration ignored every voice that criticized its actions in Iraq - and in the case of the generals that dared to speak up - it silenced them.
The perhaps too-late U-turn in Iraq, which in recent times has at least brought a degree of calm, was mentioned this way: “So we reviewed the strategy - and changed course in Iraq.” Four botched-up years of ineptitude rolled up into one sentence, which makes it sound as if some real achievement has been accomplished.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the Iraq War anniversary.
True, the jubilation that has greeted President Bush in Africa is an impressive sight. But as one notes by reading this op-ed article from today’s edition of the Ghanaian Chronicle, not all Africans welcome him as a Great White God. Samuel Okudzeto Ablawa writes, ‘The gullible may believe this PR stunt - but not the majority of people around the world … who will take to the streets in wild jubilation the day President Bush steps down, not only as President of America, but as tormentor-in-chief of our world.’ In regard to the U.S. elections, Ablawa goes on,’Aside from the low approval ratings he suffers in America, the current political season in his country has emphasized one important point - the farther your policies and philosophies are from Bush, the better are your chances.’
By Samuel Okudzeto Ablawa*
February 19, 2008 Ghana - Ghanaian Chronicle - Original Article (English)
As President Bush of the United States of America arrives in Ghana on Tuesday in his on-going tour of Africa, it’s important for the Ghanaian people to be told the pure and simple truth. Read the rest of this entry »
Did it take a thousand untruths to get us into Iraq? Not quite.
According to a new study by two non-profit journalism organizations, “President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials…made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”
The orchestrated campaign has been documented by the staffs of the Fund for Independence in Journalism and the Center for Public Integrity to create a data base of deception.
Some of the highlights:
.On August 26, 2002, Dick Cheney made a speech saying “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” The CIA had no idea of the basis for that claim…
Just under the radar screen of most of the American media, comments and threats from the Russians have set our East European allies on edge. In this somewhat alarming op-ed from Romania’s Ziarul newspaper, the author frets, “The Russian Defense Minister said that to ‘defend the sovereignty of Russia and its allies,’ the Russian state could use nuclear weapons against NATO allies like Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland and Bulgaria. Hello NATO, have you heard this? Hello E.U., have you heard this? Do you understand that Romania is now a Russian nuclear target? BAAAA!!”
By Igor Drag, Translated By Marcel Iliescu, January 22, 2008
Romania - Ziarul - Original Article (Romanian)
While Defense Minister Melescanu talks nonsense about Romania not having enough heart and blood to keep troops in Iraq, and while the same Melescanu walks parade-style walk through the Ministry of Justice’s domain, hindering the release of National Anti-corruption Agency files calling into question the fairness of the trial process, what’s has the world come to?
It’s raining, some would say. It’s raining declarations about how Romania could soon be one of Europe’s most important “mushroom plantations” [a reference to the mushroom clous of a nuclear blast]. Read the rest of this entry »
I actually heard most of this one while I was out running errands. As a Democrat who is dubious of the new NIE, I am not happy with our candidates’ insistence that the military option be “off the table” with Iran. I hope I don’t have to cast my first vote for a Republican presidential candidate in November of 2008.
Satellite image of Iran’s Natanz military nuke site
Monday could have been a rare good day for President Bush. Instead it was yet another embarrassment.
With a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran’s nuclear weapons program had been suspended in 2003, the White House could have plausibly made the case that Iran’s reversal of course was a result of it being intimidated by the U.S. takedown of its arch enemy — the Saddam Hussein regime. Recall that Tehran tried to reach out to Washington back then.
But the opportunity to make political and diplomatic hay over news that Iran backed down already had been squandered and then some by the Dick Cheney-led cheerleading for a pre-emptive military strike against a target that may not exist. (Why does that sound so familiar?)
There are indications that Cheney tried to suppress the NIE findings, which the White House has known about for at least a month or two as the noise machine shifted into higher gear with “leaked” reports of fleet maneuvers in the Persian Gulf and preparations for military strikes. When the veep was unable to halt release of a summary of the report, he successfully blocked release of key findings that would further embarrass the administration.
And then National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley delivered the coup de grâce by claiming that the report didn’t undercut the administration’s hysterical war-drum beating. Besides which, it wasn’t completed until a few days ago. (Wink, wink. Nod, nod.)
Yesterday’s shocker seems less so when you reread a piece last May in The New Yorker by Seymour Hersh. Money quotes:
“Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans . . . A crucial issue in the military’s dissent, the officers said, is the fact that American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities; the war planners are not sure what to hit. . . . [A] high-ranking general added that the military’s experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. ‘We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq,’ he said.”
Reaction to the NIE was, of course, all over the lot.
Some bloggers praised the administration, while others saw darker motives. I myself remain suspicious of just about everyone, most notably the intelligence community and the Iranian mullahcracy.
America’s spooks have put together a truly pathetic record over the years, ranging from failing to anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 threat to being diddled by Saddam over what turned out to be his nonexistent nukes program, as well as willingly allowing themselves to be used as political pawns.
And so while I would like to share the sense of relief many people seem to feel, I am unable to do so. Besides which, Iran could restart its nuclear weapons program tomorrow — or maybe already did yesterday amid great glee with the release of the intelligence report — since it continues to enrich uranium.
Congress, of course, was dithering while all of this was going on. If there are any good guys, it may be those weapons inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who had it right with Iraq and apparently had it right with Iran, as well. Nevertheless, the agency has been viewed as demon spawn by the U.S., which intercepted dozens of its director general’s phone calls with Iranian diplomats in an unsuccessful effort to have him ousted.
The big lesson from Monday is that while not exactly a law of nature, it is axiomatic that opportunities to occupy the high ground tend to get squandered when politics are put ahead of policy.
So now the White House has effectively undercut itself on what it wanted to be the dominant foreign policy issue of the last year of the Reign of Bush.
The NIE blockbuster is yet another example of an administration so fundamentally disingenuous — and more than occasionally dishonest — that what passes for the high ground is the boiler room and warmongering is the ready substitute for diplomacy.
Karl Rove: Armed & Dangerous
Karl Rove has been trying to rewrite history for years even as he made it himself as a master of dirty tricks and Machiavellian dissembler. But his comments on the Democrats’ pre-Iraq war conduct are not revisionism, they are a gross representation of the facts.
For anyone over 50, today is not only Thanksgiving but the day JFK died 44 years ago. He has been gone now for almost as long as he lived and, in these times of White House infamy, not nearly as much in the national mind as his antagonist, Richard Nixon, whose all-time low approval ratings have just been eclipsed by George W. Bush.
A few years after the assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy wistfully told me that her husband was being remembered too much for how he died rather than what he had lived for. She was right. It was too soon then for Americans to appreciate what they had lost.
In 1960, I had made an unintentional contribution to Kennedy’s election. After my magazine ran a piece by Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Advice to the Next First Lady,” the producers of the “Tonight” show called me to ask Mrs. Roosevelt if she would appear with Jack Paar. To my surprise, she agreed.
On the way to the studio, I asked Mrs. Roosevelt, who had supported Adlai Stevenson during the convention and been visibly cool to JFK, what made her decide to take part in a talk show. “I want to help elect Senator Kennedy,” she said.
On the “Tonight” show, she did just that, comparing Kennedy to FDR during his first campaign in 1932, inspiring voters and responding to their enthusiasm, and predicted he would make a fine President. In Kennedy’s hairline victory, her testimonial may well have been significant, and he didn’t disappoint her.
John F. Kennedy was the last president in memory who was still learning while in office. He admitted mistakes and profited from them.
Despite misgivings, he went ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba after being told Americans would be greeted as liberators and withdrew when he realized he had been misled, accepting “sole responsibility” for the fiasco.
As the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he put that lesson to use by overruling “experts” who wanted to bomb or invade Cuba and trusting his own instincts to avoid disaster.
After November 22, 1963 I wrote an editorial attempting to define the deep grief over his shocking death-—that beyond his attractiveness and intelligence, there was the loss of a leader “who was still growing—-in understanding, in skill, in compassion, in commitment.”
Today’s leading contenders for the Presidency are, for the most part, as cool and rational as Kennedy was when he was running for the office. For all our sakes, we can only hope that whoever wins can attain the stature he did in the thousand days he spent in the White House.
The Musharraf Mess should remind Presidential candidates and voters that we are not living in Bush World any more, where other countries are either allies or enemies, good or bad guys to whom we either send tons of money or bunker-busting bombs.
Belatedly, the Administration is leaking word that they have doubts that Musharraf “can survive in office and have begun discussing what might come next.”
Lesson #1 for the next President: If your foreign-policy people take five years to discover a not-very-subtle military dictator has been blowing smoke about his dedication to democracy and playing us for saps about opposing Islamic extremists, you need a whole new State Department and CIA. Or if they have been doing their jobs and nobody around you has been listening, you are surrounded by the wrong people.
Lesson #2: When an iffy ally like Musharraf is sitting on a stockpile of nuclear weapons, you don’t want to wait until he is on the way out to start finding out where those weapons are, who controls them and reaching out to those who do.
Lesson # 3: Have all the photo ops you want with the Saudis, Iraqi Sunnis and al-Maliki’s mob, but keep a close eye on what they are doing when there are no lights and cameras.
In a world where foreign relations have morphed from checkers to three-dimensional chess, the next White House is going to need a new generation of policy makers and analysts who can see beyond the outdated clichés of the Kissingers, Brzezinskis and Podhoretzes.
Voters should be looking for clues about candidates who understand that.
We’re in recurring nightmare territory here. A Zogby poll shows more than half of voters would support a military strike to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon and believe it likely the U.S. will do so before next year’s election.
On PBS’ News Hour, normally an oasis of rationality in the TV news desert, we have a solemn debate about attacking Iran between Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and Norman Podhoretz, the Neo-Con relic Rudy Giuliani is propping up to prove he is a true conservative.
When Zakaria points out we have used deterrence and containment against nuclear threats from China, the Soviet Union and North Korea, Podhoretz accuses him of “an irresponsible complacency…comparable to the denial in the early ’30s of the intentions of Hitler that led to what Churchill called an unnecessary war involving millions and millions of deaths that might have been averted if the West had acted early enough.”
If Zakaria’s informed rationality and Podhoretz’s apocalyptic drool are given equal weight as two sides of the argument, we may be headed for another Iraq, propelled by the same political and media cowardice of five years ago.
The Senate passes the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment designating the Iranian Revolution Guard as a terrorist organization by a vote of 76 to 22, with Hillary Clinton, among other Democrats, failing to see that the Bush-Cheney Administration will surely use it to justify an attack on Iran without seeking Congressional approval.
Such willful blindness now leads to apparent public approval of what would surely be another act of national insanity, putting American troops in harm’s way in three Muslim countries based on no compelling national interest beyond the loopy theories of a gaggle of armchair warriors in a discredited lame-duck Administration.
To top it all off, we have Rudy Giuliani war-mongering for votes in New Hampshire by accusing Clinton and Obama of wanting to negotiate with bad people and debating whether to invite Ahmadinejad and Osama to “the inauguration or the inaugural ball.”
Why aren’t more politicians and media people speaking out about this recurrence of madness?
The man with the white walrus mustache is back in Washington after a European tour of touting war with Iran. He has a new book to promote and a new cause–rallying Republican Congressmen to oppose the nuclear agreement with North Korea by that left-wing softie, George W. Bush.
Last week he met with 42 GOP members at the invitation of Iowa Rep. Steve King, whose main legislative goal is to abolish the income tax, and argued that “North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons voluntarily, and that it is only a matter of time before their cheating is exposed, at which point one hopes that Bush will repudiate this charade.â€
Bolton’s new book is titled “Surrender Is Not an Option,†reflecting the unyielding bellicosity of the man who calls himself a Goldwater conservative, as opposed to those parvenu Neo-Cons he considers “liberals who’d been mugged by reality.â€
If he had his way, Bolton would solve all our world problems by bombing and invading, in contrast to his youthful aversion to warfare.
“I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy,” Bolton wrote in the 25th reunion book of his graduation from Yale about his decision to join the National Guard and go to law school. “I considered the war in Vietnam already lost.”
Unlike the war in Iraq today and whatever new ones he can instigate tomorrow.
Is Al Gore’s Nobel Peace prize an indication of failure on the part of the world’s political class? According to this op-ed article from Spain’s ABC Journal, ‘the award has been bestowed on those who dedicate themselves to increasing awareness of the problem because none of the world’s leading decision-makers are doing so.’
“It is a disturbing indication of a vacuum in political life: the award has been bestowed on those who dedicate themselves to increasing awareness of the problem because none of the world’s leading decision-makers are doing so.”
By Irene Lozano
Translated By Carly Gatzert
October 14, 2007
Spain - ABC Journal - Original Article (Spanish)
If one were to read too much into the rivals of Nobel Peace Prize winners, one could draw the most outlandish conclusions. Besides Bush’s climatic nemesis Al Gore, hundreds of scientists that have confirmed the existence of global warming have also won the award. In 2005 the award went to another nemesis of Bush, Mohamed El Baradei - who has as much morale as Alcoyano - for disputing the American thesis on Saddam’s alleged nuclear program. If these two opponents of Bush have contributed to world peace, do we infer that the President of the United States is a threat to world peace? Good God, no. What a leap!
The literal interpretation is the most sensible. Over the past thirty years, the winners have been agents of peace, political activists whose actions were critical to expanding justice, democracy and human rights, such as Nelson Mandela, Oscar Arias, Ann San Suu Kyi or Amnesty International. Lately though, the prize has been bestowed on those who investigate or spread awareness; winners have been associated with knowledge rather than action. Over the past three decades, only two Nobel Peace Prize winners have had a similar focus: In 1985 it went to the Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and in 1995 , to Joseph Rotblat , one of the scientists who signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto against the proliferation of nuclear arms.
October 6th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Today’s MUST READ is on Taylor Marsh’s site: a guest post by Joseph Wilson on Clinton and Iran:
I was pleased to see that last Monday Hillary joined Senator Jim Webb in co-sponsoring a bill that would prohibit the use of funds for military action in Iran without specific authorization from Congress. Last week, Hillary voted to support a non-binding resolution that designates the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. As a former diplomat, I have had considerable experience in the use of such resolutions to bring pressure – diplomatic pressure – to bear on a regime to rein in rogue elements. And make no mistake about it, the Guards are not only in operational control of Iran’s policy toward Iraq and Afghanistan, where Iranian supplied munitions are costing American lives; they are agents of reaction and repression inside Iran. While it is a fact that the Bush administration’s duplicity should give all Americans pause, we cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that we have real enemies in the world, and that we must be prepared to exercise the appropriate levers of power in support of our interests.
In 2002, Andrew Card, then Bush’s Chief of Staff, told the New York Times why the drumbeat for war against Iraq started in September: “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.â€
It’s September again, this year’s product is war against Iran and the sales pitches have started.
“Iran’s pursuit of…nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,†President Bush told war veterans last week. Promising to apply diplomatic pressures first (sound familiar?), he nonetheless vowed, “We will confront this danger before it is too late.â€
In the U.K. Telegraph, a story is planted about war-gaming a blockade of Iran: “”The results were impressive. The policy recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes.”
Ever-faithful John Bolton, our unconfirmable former ambassador to the U.N. is telling Israelis via video hookup that President Bush “has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable.”
Even Gen. Petraeus is not too busy surging in Iraq to observe the “malign involvement of the Iranian Quds force with the militia extremists that have been supported by them, trained, equipped, armed, funded and even in some cases directed.â€
Sen. Bernie Sanders, pointing out that the “Fox propaganda machine†is at work again on the Iran campaign, urges “the mass media not to play the same craven role that they played in Iraq, where they essentially collapsed and became a megaphone for Bush’s policies.”
In five years, it is clear the Bush-Cheney Administration has learned nothing. Have the American people and their media?
Iran develops 900-kg ‘smart bomb’ - official media
Guided bomb developed by specialists within Islamic Republic’s Defense Ministry and is now operational, IRNA news agency reports, adding it could be dropped from F-4 and F-5 jets
![[The Telegraph, U.K.]](http://worldmeets.us/images/condiputinmissilepocket_telegraph.gif)
