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Latest Articles: War, War, War
How They Stole the Bomb From Us: Ahmadinejad Has Screwed Us Again! (URI AVNERY)
Post Date: 2007-12-11 14:44:13 by aristeides
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How They Stole the Bomb From Us Ahmadinejad Has Screwed Us Again! By URI AVNERY It was like an atom bomb falling on Israel. The earth shook. Our political and military leaders were all in shock. The headlines screamed with rage. What happened? A real catastrophe: the American intelligence community, comprising 16 different agencies, reached a unanimous verdict: already in 2003, the Iranians terminated their efforts to produce a nuclear bomb, and they have not resumed them since. Even if they change their mind in the future, they will need at least five years to achieve their aim. SHOULDN'T WE be overjoyed? Shouldn't the masses in Israel be dancing in the streets, as they did ...
Revenge of the Spooks
Post Date: 2007-12-11 14:22:23 by aristeides
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Revenge of the Spooks By Eric Margolis "Merry Christmas, Mr. President" hissed the men in cloaks as they plunged a dagger into George Bush’s back. America’s spooks finally had their revenge. After being forced by the White House in 2002–2003 to concoct a farrago of lies about Iraq, and then get stuck with the blame for the ensuing fiasco there, the 16 US intelligence agencies struck back last week with high drama and devastating effect. US intelligence chief Mike McConnell made public a bombshell National Intelligence Report (NIE) that concluded "with high confidence" Tehran had halted its rudimentary nuclear weapons program in 2003. Even if the ...
Iraq Rejects Permanent U.S. Bases: Adviser
Post Date: 2007-12-11 11:03:21 by Brian S
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq will never allow the United States to have permanent military bases on its soil, the government's national security adviser said, calling the issue a "red line" that cannot be crossed. "We need the United States in our war against terrorism, we need them to guard our border sometimes, we need them for economic support and we need them for diplomatic and political support," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said. "But I say one thing, permanent forces or bases in Iraq for any foreign forces is a red line that cannot be accepted by any nationalist Iraqi," he told Dubai-based al Arabiya television. Rubaie's comments, in an interview first ...
Brit PM to Troops: 'Your Iraq War Is Over'
Post Date: 2007-12-10 17:08:50 by Brian S
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GORDON Brown yesterday delivered a stirring festive message to Our Boys in Iraq: “Happy Christmas – war is over.” The PM was cheered as he praised UK troops and revealed combat operations in Basra will end “within two weeks”. Iraqi forces will take over as the 4,500-strong British force switches from front-line duties to a training role. By early next year, our contingent in Southern Iraq will be cut to 2,500 – and may be withdrawn completely in March. The PM broke the good news in a flying visit to Iraq. He landed at the Army’ s base at Basra airport in darkness in an RAF Hercules transporter plane. Minutes later he spoke to Iraqi PM Nouri ...
A Failure of Intelligence
Post Date: 2007-12-10 14:37:14 by aristeides
7 Comments
A Failure of Intelligence Intelligence failures, intelligence failures. The United States spends more than $40 billion a year on intelligence, but, gosh darn it, we just can't seem to get it right. The latest fiasco, of course, concerns the now infamous National Intelligence Estimate about Iran which concludes that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program more than four years ago. Let me suggest, however, that the real problem is not repeated intelligence failures, as conventional wisdom has it. In fact, I believe we have the opposite problem -- namely, intelligence successes. By that I mean successful disinformation operations, black propaganda operations that have promoted ...
Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR: KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2007-12-10 14:14:05 by aristeides
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Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD Dec. 10, 2007 A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident. Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job. "Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position ...
Army Still Discharging Traumatic Brain Injury Patients Without Benefits
Post Date: 2007-12-10 10:16:22 by Peppa
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www.alternet.org/bloggers...w.groupnewsblog.ne/69997/ This post, written by Jesse Wendel, orignally appeared on Group News Blog Sgt. Darren Mischke got hurt bad in Iraq. A two-tour vet, he was in a wreck tour one, and knocked out. In his second tour, his vehicle was mortared. He has Traumatic Brain Injury. Like many chronic pain, PTSD, and depression patients, he became a different person, a different "I" from the person his family had always known. Happens. But the Army, consistently has been taking the easy way out, and shoving soldiers out any way they can, rather than rate them properly. Colorado Confidential "I told him to get help," Teresa Mischke said. ...
CIA has recruited Iranians to defect
Post Date: 2007-12-09 16:23:59 by Kamala
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CIA has recruited Iranians to defect MANUEL BALCE CENETA / AP Porter J. Goss was the CIA director when the agency launched the defector program in 2005. The secret campaign was launched two years ago to undermine Tehran's nuclear program. It has persuaded a 'handful' of key officials to leave. By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer December 9, 2007 WASHINGTON -- The CIA launched a secret program in 2005 designed to degrade Iran's nuclear weapons program by persuading key officials to defect, an effort that has prompted a "handful" of significant departures, current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation say. The previously ...
Billy Joel's Christmas in Fallujah benefits Homes for Our Troops
Post Date: 2007-12-09 12:48:14 by Zipporah
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Christmas in Fallujah: YahooNews:Billy Joel has released a new pop single, the anti-war “Christmas in Fallujah.” Just don’t expect to hear his voice on it. At 58, Joel felt he was too old to sing the song, which was inspired by letters the Piano Man received from soldiers in Iraq. So he gave it to Cass Dillon, a 21-year-old singer-songwriter from Long Island. “I thought it should be somebody young, about a soldier’s age,” Joel said in a statement on his Web site. “I wanted to help somebody else’s career. I’ve had plenty of hits. I’ve had plenty of airplay. I’ve had my time in the sun. I think it’s time for somebody else, maybe, ...
Christmas in the Trenches
Post Date: 2007-12-09 09:59:13 by kiki
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The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
Post Date: 2007-12-08 23:30:29 by tom007
11 Comments
I have just finished one of the Best Books I Have Ever Read. Easily the most critical to understanding our sad times. Its not a lark to read, at a thousand plus pages it is a commitment. But a richly deserved commitment. A commitment that is deserved to us that want to understand what is happening in our government and world. I heartily commend this Magus Opus to all here, the amazing absolutely comprehensive and wholly eye opening account of Robert Frisk in his thirty year sojourn into the bowels of the Middle East wars and political disasters. He sat on Saddam Hussan's velvet throne in his Palace and months later sat in his "spider hole" where Saddam was arrested, to be ...
Slogans of War
Post Date: 2007-12-08 10:28:43 by Peppa
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The Iraq conflict has given rise to some peculiar turns of phrase. A guide to strategic linguistics—and what it tells about the U.S. military message. By Rod Nordland Newsweek Web Exclusive Updated: 5:15 PM ET Nov 30, 2007 If war is the continuation of politics by other means, the language of war is the continuation of thought by other means. In Iraq you can pretty well track the progress of the conflict by the catch phrases and jargon you hear from U.S. military commanders. Early on it was robust and muscular. "Shock and awe" set the tone; verbs were strong, simple and always in the active voice. But as the situation worsened, there was much less talk about "victory ...
Now and Forever
Post Date: 2007-12-08 00:40:33 by richard9151
3 Comments
12/07/07 "New York Times" --- -- Most of the time we pretend it’s not there: The staggering financial cost of the war in Iraq, which continues to soar, unchecked, like a rocket headed toward the moon and beyond. Early last year, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the “true” cost of the war would ultimately exceed $1 trillion, and maybe even $2 trillion. Incredibly, that estimate may have been low. A report prepared for the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate warns that without a significant change of course in Iraq, the long-term cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could head into the ...
Gates Leaves Iraq Encouraged
Post Date: 2007-12-07 22:10:09 by tom007
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MANAMA, Bahrain, Dec. 6 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday that security progress in Iraq was significant yet still fragile, an assessment echoed by the senior American commander in Baghdad, who strongly cautioned against a premature declaration of victory. Skip to next paragraph Related The Lede: Globe-Trotting With Gates in Bahrain Completing his sixth visit to Iraq as defense secretary, Mr. Gates met Wednesday and Thursday with commanders in Mosul and in Baghdad, as well as with senior Iraqi officials. He said he left Iraq “encouraged.” “I came away from all of it feeling very good about the direction of things in the security arena, about what is ...
Attacks in Iraq Kill 25 People
Post Date: 2007-12-07 22:08:40 by tom007
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Attacks in Iraq Kill 25 People * Sign In to E-Mail or Save This * Print * Reprints * Share o Del.icio.us o Digg o Facebook o Newsvine o Permalink Article Tools Sponsored By By CARA BUCKLEY Published: December 8, 2007 BAGHDAD, Dec. 7 — Twenty-five people were killed Friday in the tumultuous Iraqi province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, when a suicide attacker detonated a bomb near the headquarters of a local committee of former insurgents working with American forces and a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint in Baquba. Fifteen people were killed and 20 wounded in the suicide attack in the town of Muqdadiya. It was not clear whether the bomber was a man or a woman because two heads ...
That NIE Thing is No Biggie, Really!
Post Date: 2007-12-07 20:32:47 by Zipporah
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That NIE Thing is No Biggie, Really! newVideoPlayer("NIE_Snapper.flv", 475, 376); The Bush Administration created this video to help explain why we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about the NIE and those silly reports that Iran stopped trying to make nukes and stuff. It stars a pussy named Mr. Big Stick and an Intelligence Official named Cherry (for reasons I’m sure will be explained to me in the comments). Yay war!
Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday: When One's World Turns Upside Down
Post Date: 2007-12-07 17:17:11 by aristeides
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Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday When One's World Turns Upside Down By Col. DAN SMITH Today is the anniversary of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy. For the individuals who died, for their families, it was a day in which the personal worlds of thousands were suddenly turned upside down. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war, the entire country’s political, economic, and social worlds turned upside down as 12 million men and women donned uniforms and women entered new jobs on the home front. As I write this Thursday morning, December 6, it has been about 100 hours since excerpts from the ...
White House Quietly Admits Bush Lied About When He Learned That Iran Had Suspended Its Nuclear Program
Post Date: 2007-12-06 17:45:19 by aristeides
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White House Quietly Admits Bush Lied About When He Learned That Iran Had Suspended Its Nuclear Program Admission Was Reported by ABC News But Has Largely Been Ignored by Corporate Media Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review. The White House has quietly admitted that George Bush lied to reporters at a news conference on Tuesday when he said he was not informed by intelligence officials that Iran's nuclear weapons program had been suspended in 2003. On Tuesday, Bush denied he knew the program had been disbanded when he warned the American people in October that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons could unleash World War III. Now, as we reported last night at Pensito Review, ...
The Iran Charade: So They Lied Again
Post Date: 2007-12-06 17:21:22 by aristeides
3 Comments
The Iran Charade So They Lied Again ByRON JACOBS So they lied again. And again. Despite the fact that the Bush administration knew quite well that its very own intelligence estimate stated quite clearly that the Iranian government had halted its work on building nuclear weaponry, Mr. Bush told the world not more than two months ago that Iran was risking World War Three if it continued said work. On Monday, December 3, 2007, an report from Mr. Bush's own government said quite clearly that its intelligence proved that Iran halted nuclear arms work four years ago. Despite this knowledge, the Bush administration and its enablers in Congress have continued to move the United States closer ...
Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, Bush's Losing Iranian Hand
Post Date: 2007-12-06 16:49:44 by aristeides
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Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, Bush's Losing Iranian Hand posted December 06, 2007 10:56 am Whatever else the release of the 16-agency National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian bomb may be, it is certainly a reasonable measure of inside-the-Beltway Bush administration decline. Whether that release represented "a pre-emptive strike against the White House by intelligence agencies and military chiefs," an intelligence "mini-coup" against the administration, part of a longer-term set of moves meant to undermine plans for air strikes against Iran that involved a potential resignation threat from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and a "near mutiny" by the ...
The Zero-Sum Fiasco: Bush in a Humiliating Zero-Sum Iranian Game of His Own Making
Post Date: 2007-12-06 16:08:11 by aristeides
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The Zero-Sum Fiasco Bush in a Humiliating Zero-Sum Iranian Game of His Own Making By Dilip Hiro Bush's woefully misguided invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, carried out under false pretences, has not only drained the United States treasury, but reduced Washington's standing in the Middle East in a way not yet fully grasped by most commentators. Whereas Washington once played off Tehran against Baghdad, while involved in a superpower zero-sum game with the Soviet Union, the Bush administration is now engaged in a zero-sum game, as a virtual equal, with Iran. That is, America's loss has become Iran's automatic gain, and vice-versa. To grasp the steepness of ...
$1B In Military Equipment Missing In Iraq
Post Date: 2007-12-06 15:57:41 by robin
19 Comments
Exclusive: Report Shows Vehicles, Machine Guns And More Meant For Iraqi Forces Unaccounted For
(CBS) This story was written and reported by Laura Strickler of the CBS News Investigative Unit.
Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades are just a sampling of more than $1 billion in unaccounted for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces, according to a new report issued today by the Pentagon Inspector General and obtained exclusively by the CBS News investigative unit. Auditors for the Inspector General reviewed equipment contracts totaling $643 million but could only find an audit trail for $83 ...
IRAN: MAYBEE A GOOD IDEA TO HOLD OFF BOMBING THEM
Post Date: 2007-12-06 10:46:39 by christine
19 Comments
"In defense of the world order...U.S. soldiers would have to kill and die," Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Foreign Affairs, July-August 1995 "What is at stake is more than one small country [Kuwait], it is a big idea - a new world order..." -- George H.W. Bush "You know, in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the earth. That would be the sane thing to do." Bill O'Reilly, March 8, 2006 July 19, 2007: "[Bill] Kristol Suggests People of Iran Would Embrace U.S. Attack, Triggering Regime Change. “We can try diplomacy. I'm not very hopeful about that. We have to be ready to use force.” Kristol claimed ...
U.S. In No-Win Situations
Post Date: 2007-12-06 09:32:40 by richard9151
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12/05/07 "ICH " --- - No doubt about it, the U.S. is in a no-win situation in Afghanistan, much like the Russians of a few decades back. It's too bad America didn't learn its lesson from the Russians in Afghanistan and the French in Viet Nam, but we didn't; we went ahead as if we were the "good guys" who wore the white hats and could not lose because God was on our side. As it turns out, God is not on our side, and we have gone into a country that is not accustomed to allowing others, or their puppets as is Karzai, to take over their country. The Afghans know the mountains of their country, they know all the terrain, the caves, the resources and they have ...
Former CIA Officials: Bush Iran Claims "Preposterous"
Post Date: 2007-12-05 22:51:39 by kiki
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Four former CIA officials who provided intelligence information to past presidents described as preposterous President Bush's claim that he was unaware until very recently that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. "It's unbelievable," said Melvin Goodman, who worked for the CIA from 1966 to 1990 and now is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Goodman's assessment of Bush's assertions were very similar to those of Larry C. Johnson, who worked at the CIA from 1985 to 1989 and from 1989 to 1993 served as Deputy Director in the U.S. State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism; Ray McGovern, a former CIA official who gave ...
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