Clinton makes the talk-show rounds
By Jim Puzzanghera
In a rare feat, the Democratic front-runner appears on all five major Sunday
programs, discussing Iraq and her health plan.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBY...Io30G2B0Ixjn0EE

Sarkozy ready to battle the workers
By Geraldine Baum
The president faces a tough fight: France is famously protective of its long
vacations and generous benefits.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBY...Io30G2B0Ixjo0EF

Iraqi official: Blackwater exit not feasible
By Alexandra Zavis
Baghdad would have to pull troops out of the field to fill the void left by the
private security company, the spokesman says.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBY...Io30G2B0Ixjp0EG

Fujimori's return a test for Peru's Garcia
By Patrick J. Mcdonnell
The president must confront competing demands over the extradition and trial of
a polarizing successor.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBY...Io30G2B0Ixjq0EH

Closing Guantanamo lockup looks increasingly unlikely
By Noam N. Levey
As the 2008 elections approach, many in the GOP are seizing on the detention
unit as a get-tough issue.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBY...Io30G2B0Ixjl0EC

Giving up on minority voters
By Gregory Rodriguez
Republicans are running away from the Latinos Bush courted; count on Democrats
to also drop the ball.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBY...Io30G2B0Ixjw0EN

Don't blame the central bankers
By Niall Ferguson
Putting the likes of Fed Chairman Benanke under fire won't solve the global
financial crisis.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBY...Io30G2B0Ixjx0EO

Fewer migrants mean more benefits
By Mark Krikorian
As immigration enforcement takes hold, jobs begin to open up to less-skilled
Americans.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBY...Io30G2B0Ixjy0EP

The Wall of Silence: Justin Raimondo

War and the Constitution: David R. Henderson

Freedom as Theft: Tom Engelhardt

George Bush: President, Dissident, Prophet: Lobe

The Age of Irresponsibility: Michael Hirsh

Giuliani Proposes Endless Wars on Behalf of Israel by Glenn Greenwald

Counting the Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan by Haroon Siddiqui

Let's Make It About You: Can We Stop the Slaughter Now? by Arthur Silber

September 24, 2007 The Wall of Silence
America's Foreign Policy Discourse by Justin Raimondo Editorial note: What follows is the text of a talk given at the 18th annual meeting of the John Randolph Club, Saturday, Sept. 22, at the Hotel Washington, in Washington, D.C.

A note on the origins of this talk: when, after repeated urgings, I failed to respond to the organizers of this conference as to the title of my talk, they simply made one up – "The Wall of Silence: America's Foreign Policy Discourse" – and that's all to the good. It imposed a kind of discipline on me, and made me really think about what that phrase – "the wall of silence" – says about where American foreign policy is today, and how we got here.

Now this word "discourse" is much used, and abused, nowadays: instead of meaning an open, countrywide debate over what course to take in these perilous times, what we have is a discussion on two levels, two narratives that often have little to do with each other.

The elites, centered right here in the Imperial City, are not involved in any sort of real debate over what direction to take – that course, as far as they are concerned, is already set, and it's just a question of how, and under what terms, we steer our way to empire. The "debate," in these circles, is over the methods we use in getting to a universally agreed-upon goal, which is establishing American hegemony over much of the earth. To the Washington elites, we are already an empire in all but name, and that's as it should be: History (capital-H, please!) has so ordained it, and we cannot shirk our "duty" to police the world. To do so would not only signal a military, political, and diplomatic failure on America's part, it would also underscore a personal failure on their part: after all, these people – government officials, think-tank policy wonks, the major media – believe they are uniquely qualified to rule the world. This grandiose idea of themselves lording it over everyone else is intimately linked not only to their statist politics, but to their conception of self: in other words, it is part and parcel of an overweening and irrepressible conceit, which oozes out of their very pores and is the central organizing principle of their personalities and their lives.

To illustrate this point, I refer you to a piece that I have often read and re-read in an effort to get a handle on how and why our old republic went to the dogs: it is the text of a talk given by Professor Claes Ryn at the 40th anniversary meeting of the Philadelphia Society, in which he ruminates on the nature of the new American ruling class whilst watching the scene at a McDonald's in what he describes as "one of the most affluent and pretentious suburbs in America just outside of Washington, D.C." As the screams of demanding children pierce the air, and what Professor Ryn characterizes as "bedlam" is unleashed, a lesson is brought home to the observer.

"I used to take offense," says Professor Ryn, "but the children have only taken their cue from their parents, who took their cue from their parents. The adults, for their part, talk in loud, penetrating voices, some on cell phones, as if no other conversations mattered. The scene exudes self-absorption and lack of self-discipline."

"Yes, this picture has everything to do with U.S. foreign policy. This is the emerging American ruling class, which is made up increasingly of persons used to having the world cater to them. If others challenge their will, they throw a temper tantrum. Call this the imperialistic personality – if 'spoilt brat' sounds too crude."

The "will to power" in our elites – adults as well as children – lies unchecked: for them, there can be no stretch of time between the wish and the fulfillment any longer than a few minutes. The desire for instant gratification – the character flaw that turns their children into monsters, and, later, drug addicts, alcoholics, or neurotics of one sort or another – is what energizes our foreign policy.

Is the "surge" not working? Well, then, by all means let us have more troops, let us have a super-surge – let us do anything but admit to being wrong.

Is Vladimir Putin denying our corporate lords their just due in the oil fields of Siberia? Well, then, he's got to be denounced as the reincarnation of Stalin, and, furthermore, let's give the Poles and the Czechs our missile defenses and restart the Cold War!

Did we allow 19 terrorists into the country on account of our lax immigration laws and our complete lack of awareness that groups such as al-Qaeda were only waiting for the right moment to strike? Well, then, we'll just have to invade and conquer the Middle East – and Afghanistan, to boot – reduce their ancient cities and culture to rubble, and remake the region into Kansas with palm trees. Nothing is beyond our power: we are like gods.

As Professor Ryn points out: "For Christians, the cardinal sin is pride. Before them, the Greeks warned similarly of the great dangers of conceit and arrogance. Hubris, they said, violates the order of the cosmos, and inflicts great suffering on human beings. It invites Nemesis."

That nemesis appeared on Sept. 11, 2001, and when it hit our shocked surprise underscored the motives of our attackers. After having lashed out, continually, over a course of decades, wreaking havoc across several continents – from the ash heaps of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the killing fields of Vietnam and Cambodia, to South and Central America, as well as the Middle East, where we propped up brutal dictators for the benefit of Wall Street, to the Iraq of Saddam Hussein under sanctions, where over a million children and old people died of starvation and easily preventable diseases – we (finally!) felt the sting of our own whip as it ricocheted in our faces And yet we still didn't get it! We were shocked – and bewildered. How could they do this to us? There seemed only one explanation: they must hate us because we're so wonderful. So rich. So powerful. It had to be envy, their innate hatred of freedom, or some other illegitimate and base emotion. They're jealous – yes, that's it! That must be it!

Instead of asking why men who had once been our allies in the great crusade against Communism, whom we had armed and financed and openly encouraged, had struck such a deadly blow against their creators, our response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks was one big temper tantrum. That tantrum still continues to this day, practically unabated – and the toll, in lives, both American and Iraqi, is increasing daily, not to mention the monetary price tag, which could well total close to $2 trillion.

Like spoiled children, our rulers lashed out – at anyone and everyone. It didn't matter that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and that not a single al-Qaeda cadre was on Iraqi soil. Children don't have any sense of justice: they simply strike the nearest and most convenient target, which is precisely what we did in Iraq. We did the same in Afghanistan, where we continue to stumble around in a futile effort to shore up a regime whose authority doesn't extend much beyond the capital city of Kabul.

Such debate as did occur in the run-up to the invasion and conquest of Iraq was not over fundamental questions. Both "liberals" and "conservatives" agreed that Saddam had to go: after all, he had defied the high and mighty warlords of Washington, repeatedly, and our much-vaunted "prestige" was at stake. Surely that was worth more – much more! – than the lives of the million or so Iraqis murdered by sanctions, killed in the 1991 war, and picked off in the decade of bombing raids carried out by successive U.S. presidents. The only difference between the two wings of the American ruling class was over how much more time to give the murderous sanctions before we started dropping the bombs that would do the same grisly monstrous work in a single explosive instant. The "liberals" said "Wait a few years, a few months." The conservatives demanded "Bombs away!" No one questioned our alleged right to determine the fate of the Iraqi people.

That is what this so-called "discourse" is all about: there is no argument, no dissent, and no debate over fundamentals allowed. We all agree that America is not only uniquely suited to play the part of global hegemon but is probably fated to do so: it's not just our moral responsibility but also our manifest destiny to hold the life and death of nations in our ever-so-capable hands. Many are called, but few are chosen, as we have been, to exercise our divine right to global "leadership."

This is an essentially religious conception of our role in the world, one rooted in the theological delusions of Protestant dispensationalists and all sorts of millennialists – some of them militantly secular – that I have neither the time nor the patience to examine in much detail today. Suffice to say that this peculiar fanaticism has distorted our perception not only of ourselves, but of the world, and imbued our foreign policy with a thoroughly obnoxious – and dangerous – self-righteousness, as well as a penchant for unhealthy fixations, which has led us to our present predicament.

Like all delusional systems, this view of the United States as the guarantor of world stability and self-appointed global policeman requires those who suffer from it to ignore large portions of reality. Any sense of limits – economic, political, spiritual – is banished from the self-enclosed universe of Washington warlords, who are committed to believing that America is all-powerful and that it's just a matter of will – the will to power – exercised in the right way. Anything that doesn't fit into the parameters of their shared delusion is ignored: that's how and why we were actually surprised that the Iraqi people, upon waking up one morning to the sight of a full-fledged American occupation, failed to greet us with showers of rose petals and cries of "Hallelujah!" That's why we were shocked – shocked! – at the growth of the Iraqi insurgency, from a few "dead-enders," as Rumsfeld used to call them, to tens of thousands of heavily-armed insurgents who enjoy the support of the Iraqi majority.

Fly blind, and you just may crash into something substantial.

Self-induced blindness is a necessary concomitant of interventionism, for the simple reason that any admission of failure is bound to throw the whole doctrine into question not only in the eyes of the elites, but, God forbid, the common people might begin to see through the elaborate ruse.

I started out by saying that, when it comes to discussions of U.S. foreign policy, there are two levels of discourse. The first occurs on the level of the elites, in the boardrooms, the newsrooms, the think tanks and the editorial columns of elite newspapers, and the second is the popular discourse, which occurs around the office water cooler, over lunch, at family gatherings, and in the streets, where the hoi polloi – when they aren't completely immersed in the mundane details of their own life dramas – wonder what their rulers are up to.

To the ordinary American, in ordinary times, foreign policy is a realm reserved for specialists, the "experts," who pontificate on events in faraway places and whose job it is to explain the arcane mysteries of foreign peoples to the rest of us. Yet these are far from ordinary times. 9/11, we are often told by gloating neocons, "changed everything," by which they mean that the Constitution and the foreign policy advice of the Founders has been repealed. Or so they hope. Well, one thing did indeed change, and that was the average American's interest in foreign affairs. The names of countries no decent American had ever heard of were suddenly on everyone's lips. Suddenly, we are all Middle East experts: the Shi'ites, the Sunnis, the Wahhabis, the Alawites, and the theological and political distinctions between the various factions that hold sway in Lebanon – it's all old hat to us, six years after 9/11.

This heightened awareness and interest is highly problematic for the elites, who must now make sure that the popular discourse doesn't' stray too far from the official, elite discourse. In the past, this was relatively easy to do, since the elites controlled the mass organs of communication and opinion-molding, and, when push came to shove, they could always just jail whatever inconvenient dissidents arose to defy the bipartisan pro-war consensus, as they did Eugene Debs during World War I, or harass and smear the opposition into silence, as they did in the run-up to Pearl Harbor. During the Vietnam era, it took 50,000 American deaths, and many years, before the elites bowed to the popular verdict and got us out of Southeast Asia. What's different about today is, in short, the Internet.

The Internet has abolished the basis of the foreign policy priesthood by making information once readily accessible only to full-time intellectuals almost common knowledge. What's more, the war has increased interest in foreign affairs by several degrees of magnitude. Antiwar.com's readership has increased exponentially since 9/11, until, today, we are rated among the top 10 most popular political Web sites, currently at number seven.

What's happened is that the storytellers have lost control of their own narrative: the gatekeepers, the "experts," the think tankers, and the Washington cocktail party circuit have lost their monopolistic grip on the molding of public opinion.

What this means is that reality is beginning to intrude on the closed-in, monastic world of U.S. policymakers and their partisan entourages, and the discourse is undergoing a radical transformation. Suddenly, it is possible to say things out loud that no "serious" "respectable" person would have dared utter before this new era of glasnost.

The first such inroad was introduced into the popular lexicon by Chalmers Johnson, the foreign policy writer and author of an excellent trilogy on the nature and consequences of American militarism, the first volume of which is titled Blowback. This is a technical term employed by U.S. government analysts to describe the unpleasant consequences of Washington's covert and overt policies, and when Rudolph Giuliani claimed he had never heard of it, and attacked Ron Paul for daring to suggest that the 9/11 attacks were blowback coming from our past interventions in the Middle East, not even the most brain-dead Republican believed him. Of course he had heard it: six years out from the worst terrorist attack in our history, the phrase is on everyone's lips. In the public discourse, however – the one officially recognized by our elites, that is – it is still impermissible to admit the truth. Instead, we are told, the perpetrators of 9/11 attacked us not because of our foreign policy, but because we go shopping too much and don't make our women cover their heads.

On the American street, however, it is quite a different story. As American troops rampage over Iraq and the Israelis bomb Lebanese factories, schools, and churches in their supposed campaign against Hezbollah, Muslim rage seems far less inexplicable or plausibly linked to abstractions like "freedom" and "democracy." The Iraqis we are killing today have sons, fathers, cousins, and friends, all of whom will dream of wreaking vengeance on their murderers – that's the sort of "blowback" ordinary Americans can well understand, if not empathize with. If one day, one of them detonates a nuclear device in a major American city, only our "experts" will be surprised.

There is some evidence, however, that this insight into the dangers of interventionism is slipping into the elite discourse: when Sen. Warner asked Gen. Petraeus if our policies were making us safer, and the general conceded that he honestly didn't know, the cracks in the official narrative began to widen. That snapping sound you heard was the patience of the American people giving way, at last.

The great, yawning divide between popular and elite discourse is dramatically demonstrated in the polls, which show that over 60 percent of the American people now believe the Iraq war wasn't worth starting or fighting. In official Washington, however, the climate of opinion is quite different – or, at least, it started out quite differently, and is now being pulled, kicking and screaming, toward the popular position. The street is way ahead of the aristocracy, on this and other matters of foreign policy import.

There is also the question of how we got into this war, and the nature of the "intelligence" that caused our public officials to get up there and say with certainty that Iraq's possession of "weapons of mass destruction" posed a threat to us and our interests in the region. In official Washington, it's impolite to say the obvious: that we were lied into war. In the rest of America – the real America – it's common knowledge: a CBS/New York Times poll taken this month shows 60 percent of the American people "think members of the Bush administration intentionally misled the public" on the reasons for going to war.

Why did we go to war? This is the question that is bothering the average American, if and when the war comes into his consciousness – which is increasingly the case. In the official discourse, this never was much of an issue, since both "sides" agreed on the necessity of going to war, and it really boiled down to a question of timing. The "liberals" wanted to wait Saddam out and delay the attack until it could be done in alliance with the other imperialist powers, under UN auspices – and, perhaps, with a Democrat as commander in chief. The neoconservatives wanted to wade right in, without international authorization or further delay, and, in the end, both wings of the War Party signed on to the neocons' war, including all but one of the present major league presidential contenders.

Reasons for going to war? Evidence of Saddam's weapons and his supposed links to al-Qaeda? Our elites didn't really need any such rationalizations for what was, after all, the pure exercise of the will to power for its own sake.

Just as the extinguishing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki underscored the unipolar moment at the end of World War II, when America was – briefly – an unassailable hegemon that might have used its unmatched power to humble all the nations of the globe at its feet, so, today, our invasion and occupation of Mesopotamia is meant to demonstrate our absolute supremacy, which means our ability to impose our will whenever and wherever we choose. All that guff about the alleged dangers posed by Saddam to our interests in the region and our allies was just window-dressing. The real reasons – chief among them, hubris – weren't admissible, at least in public.

On the street, however, and especially as support for the war sagged, the explanations for why we went to war were less charitable, and, over time, more acerbic. As even Alan Greenspan – surely an insider's insider – has now admitted, access to oil was one big reason, yet anyone could have foreseen that we wouldn't have access to it, on account of the chaos caused by the war in the first place. Paul Wolfowitz told us that income from the Iraqi oil fields would cover the costs of the war. Oh well, he must have been mistaken. Or was he just flat out making it up as he went along, i.e., lying?

The American people realize they were lied into war, even if official Washington has yet to acknowledge it, and now they are asking the intriguing question: Who lied us into war?

A few years ago, I had the astonishing experience of listening to my mailman launch into an extended diatribe against the neoconservatives such as might have been penned in Chronicles magazine in the early 1990s. The idea that a small cabal of neocons pushed their pro-war agenda relentlessly and manipulated the "intelligence" to make Saddam seem like a credible threat is no longer confined to paleoconservative polemics, but has become part of the national zeitgeist. Ten years ago, mention of the word "neocon" might bring, at best, looks of puzzlement. Today, it's shorthand for chickenhawk, and, increasingly, a synonym for a character of pure evil.

This widespread hatred of the neocons began percolating on the Internet, and only later did it spread to the realm of print journalism. Once embedded in the popular consciousness, however, this meme took on more specific forms, and one of these was and is the suspicion that the Israel lobby had much to do with inciting the Iraq war. Now Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have definitively demonstrated the extent of the causal connection, showing that, while there were other factors and pressure groups behind the push for war, certainly we would not be in Iraq today if not for the lobby's efforts.

The entire project of transforming the Middle East into a Jeffersonian republican utopia originated with a small but influential group of administration officials and semi-official advisers, including Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Bernard Lewis, while the lobby's organizational muscle in league with Israeli government leaders campaigned relentlessly for regime change in Iraq. As Mearsheimer and Walt put it:

"Israeli officials were doing everything in their power to make sure that the United States went after Saddam and did not get cold feet at the last moment. They considered Iraq a serious threat and were convinced that Bush would deal with Iran after he finished with Iraq. … [T]heir leaders took to the American airwaves, wrote op-eds, testified before Congress, and worked closely with the neoconservatives in the Pentagon and the vice president's office to shape the intelligence about Iraq and coordinate the drive to war."

All talk of the Israel lobby is banished from the official elite discourse: one is simply not permitted to mention the lobby's existence. To do so is to risk being smeared as an anti-Semite – except now, it's no longer quite true. What was whispered is now being shouted: once again, the wisdom of the street has infiltrated the elite discourse.

Acknowledging the Israel lobby's central role in the internal composition of the War Party is surely going to be one of the last foreign policy taboos to bite the dust. However, the publication of the Mearsheimer-Walt volume, preceded by their piece in the London Review of Books and the controversy that followed, marks the beginning of the end of the lobby's unchallenged power. Another blow – and, perhaps, a mortal one – will fall on the lobby when the trial of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former top officials of the AIPAC lobbying group, begins in January. The AIPAC duo are charged with handing over highly sensitive U.S. intelligence to Israeli embassy officials: this could lead to the federal government actually enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires agents of a foreign power to register as such. Forcing AIPAC to do so would cripple Israel's amen corner in the U.S., and that, along with the unfavorable publicity stemming from the trial, could be the lobby's ultimate undoing.

We can only hope.

The wall of silence – if it doesn't refer to the baleful influence of the lobby, then I don't know what else it could signify. Another meaning is the incredible secrecy in which major policy decisions are made and carried out. We still don't know the provenance of the so-called "intelligence" that lured us into the Iraqi quagmire, and you can bet Congress isn't too eager to look into the matter. Yet even this, the final secret of how we got into this intractable war, may come out in the end, now that the monopoly of the elites on the dissemination of information has been ended.

I have to say that, in exploring the issue of how the foreign policy discourse is undergoing significant changes, I surprised myself with the optimistic results of my investigation. I didn't expect to be heralding the breakup of the foreign policy priesthood, which has been nearly solidly interventionist, and the beginning of a popular revolt against the mad project of turning our republic into an empire. But there you have it: glad tidings all around!





http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11648

60 Minutes Interview With Iran's President Ahmadinejad

Glenn Greenwald
Friday September 21, 2007 05:14 EST
Giuliani's proposal for endless Middle East wars on behalf of Israel
In London this week, Rudy Giuliani proposed what is probably the single most extremist policy of any major presidential candidate, certainly this year and perhaps in many years:

Rudy Giuliani talked tough on Iran yesterday, proposing to expand NATO to include Israel and warning that if Iran's leaders go ahead with their goal to be a nuclear power "we will prevent it, or we will set them back five or 10 years." . . . . While Giuliani did not explicitly address the implications for Iran of adding Israel to NATO in his speech, his aides later highlighted a 2006 Heritage Foundation paper by Nile Gardiner, a former Thatcher aide who was announced as a new Giuliani adviser yesterday.

That step would "leave the mullahs with no illusions about the West's determination to respond to Iran's strategic threat to the region," Gardiner wrote. "Any nuclear or conventional attack on Israel, be it direct or through proxies such as Hezbollah or other terrorist groups, would be met by a cataclysmic response from the West."

Adding Israel to NATO has been opposed by France and some other European nations in the past, largely because it would entangle the alliance in the Middle East.

Like most countries, Israel deems all of its wars to be defensive wars in response to threats. So Rudy Giuliani, as President, would in essence deem any war in which Israel is involved to be, by definition, a war on the U.S., and would use American resources and lives to become involved in any such war and fight on behalf of Israel. Shouldn't the fact that the leading GOP candidate for President believes such a thing be the source of a bit more discussion? Other than John Edwards' views regarding haircuts, is there any major presidential candidate who has espoused a view anywhere near this radical or controversial? Israel has been involved, and will continue to be involved, in an endless series of wars with its neighbors over matters having nothing to do with U.S. interests. As Matt Yglesias noted, Guiliani's policy would, among many other things, "commit[] the United States to the armed defense of the borders of a country that lacks internationally recognized borders." A Giuliani presidency would mean that we would be almost immediately deemed to be at war with Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. It is hard to imagine a more certain and rapid guarantee of endless American wars in the Middle East than this.

In a rational world, Giuliani's proposal would be a major controversy, and the other presidential candidates -- Republican and Democrat alike -- would be loudly pointing to this extremist view to harm the Giuliani campaign. After all, if Americans are asked: "Do you think the U.S. should fight in any wars that Israel fights?" or "do you believe the U.S. should consider any attack on Israel to be an attack on the U.S.?", is there really any doubt what the views of most Americans would be? Giuliani's desire to commit the U.S. military to fighting in any Israeli wars is obviously a fringe position -- the type that normally harms presidential candidates greatly.

During the Israel-Hezbollah war last summer -- even with virtually no significant political figures criticizing the Bush administration for involving itself so blatantly in supporting Israel's war effort -- the vast majority of Americans wanted the U.S. to stay out of that war. A Washington Post poll found that a plurality (46%) blamed "both sides equally" (Israel and Hezbollah) for the war; a plurality (48%) believed that Israel's claimed "bombing [of] rocket launchers and other Hezbollah targets located in civilian areas" was "not justified"; and a solid majority (54-38%) said Israel "should do more to try to avoid civilian casualties in Lebanon."

More importantly, while large majorities favored the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping forces to Lebanon, a large majority (59-38%) opposed having U.S. troops involved in that force. More significantly still was this finding from an August, 2006 CBS News/New York Times poll:

"Do you think the U.S. has a responsibility to try to resolve the conflict between Israel and other countries in the Middle East, or is that not the U.S.' business?" Has responsibility - 39%

Not the U.S.' business - 56%

Not sure - 5%

That large majority is opposed merely to America's efforts to broker a resolution, let alone to an American commitment, as Giuliani proposes, to fight in every war that Israel fights with its neighbors. A USA Today/Gallup Poll taken at the same time found:

In the current conflict, do you think the United States should take Israel's side, take the side of Hezbollah, or not take either side? Israel's - 31%

Hezbollah's - 0%

Neither - 65%

As always, it is worth underscoring how lopsided American public opinion is on these questions even though there is virtually no significant American politician who was or is willing to criticize Israel's actions in Lebanon, and equally few who were willing to argue that U.S. support for Israel is excessive. With Americans now even more overwhelmingly against ongoing U.S. occupation in Iraq than they were back then, these numbers are almost certainly even more imbalanced against increased U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Plainly, the last thing most Americans want is for the U.S. to expand its involvement in Middle East wars, particularly when doing so is on behalf of the interests not of the U.S., but of another country. Yet here is Giuliani advocating that we do exactly that -- embrace an obviously radical strategy opposed by the overwhelming majority of Americans, likely vehemently opposed -- and the silence is deafening.

Of course, none of Giuliani's extremism on this issue should be surprising, given that his senior foreign policy advisor is Norman Podhoretz, whose life has been devoted to trying to induce the U.S. to wage war against any country hostile to Israel. Podhoretz was one of the signatories on the 2002 PNAC letter to President Bush which declared that "No one should doubt that the United States and Israel share a common enemy" and -- listing Iraq, Iran and Syria, among others -- argued that "Israel is fighting the same war." Podhoretz currently "prays" that the U.S. bomb Iran.

This idea of Israel joining NATO is even a fringe idea in Israel, where it has been pushed primarily by Israeli super-hawk, Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, consistent with his own self-described mission: "Our first task is to convince Western countries to adopt a tough approach to the Iranian problem." And by "tough approach," he does not mean diplomacy: "The dialogue with Iran will be a 100-percent failure, just like it was with North Korea."

In some sense, one can welcome Giuliani's explicit advocacy that we view all of Israel's enemies as, by definition, enemies of the U.S. Virtually all of the swirling war dances towards Iran are rooted in this belief, but advocates of war with Iran are too dishonest to acknowledge it openly. In his Washington Post column this morning, for instance, Charles Krauthammer -- long an advocate of war with Iran -- listed the four specific crimes that allegedly demonstrate that Iran is our Enemy ("our" meaning the United States):

(1) Hamas launching rockets into Israeli towns and villages across the border from the Gaza Strip. Its intention is to invite an Israeli reaction, preferably a bloody and telegenic ground assault. (2) Hezbollah heavily rearmed with Iranian rockets transshipped through Syria and preparing for the next round of fighting with Israel. The third Lebanon war, now inevitable, awaits only Tehran's order.

(3) Syria, Iran's only Arab client state, building up forces across the Golan Heights frontier with Israel. And on Wednesday, yet another anti-Syrian member of Lebanon's parliament was killed in a massive car bombing.

(4) The al-Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard training and equipping Shiite extremist militias in the use of the deadliest IEDs and rocketry against American and Iraqi troops. Iran is similarly helping the Taliban attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Of the four crimes in the Bill of Particulars against Iran, only one has anything even ostensibly to do with the U.S., and that is composed of highly dubious claims (arming the Taliban) and ones which hardly demonstrate its Evil (they are interfering in a neighboring country of theirs which we invaded and are occupying with 160,000 soldiers). As Krauthammer's column illuminates, for those salivating for an American war with Iran, the case is grounded overwhelmingly in the Giuliani View -- that the U.S. should use its resources and lives to wage war against any country hostile to Israel. Why do Giuliani and Krauthammer and friends feel so free to advocate a plainly fringe position of Endless War on behalf of Israel? Usually, political advocates, and particularly presidential candidates, avoid such positions like the plague. Here, it is because no political figure can possibly oppose this view, at least not explicitly. Is it even possible to imagine a presidential candidate objecting to the view that the U.S. should consider Israel's enemies to be enemies of the U.S., even though vast majorities of Americans share that objection?

As is true for Iraq, it is so striking how little public opinion matters when it comes to formulating American policy. What accounts for the complete unwillingess of any presidential candidate to seize on Giuliani's extremist and fringe position? The neoconservative New York Sun -- not Mearsheimer and Walt in their important, richly documented and now NYT-Best-Selling new book, but The New York Sun -- provided an answer recently:

It [an AIPAC dinner] is also an important illustration of just how much stock all of the presidential candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, will put in the pro-Israel community, particularly for campaign dollars. . . . . A Democratic political consultant who worked on President Clinton's re-election campaign, Hank Sheinkopf, noted that the Aipac dinner always draws a parade of politicians.

"New York is the ATM for American politicians. Large amounts of money come from the Jewish community," he said. "If you're running for president and you want dollars from that group, you need to show that you're interested in the issue that matters most to them."

And, of course, mentioning any of this subjects one to a cascade of predictable and transparently exploitive though still nasty accusations of anti-semitism, and what presidential candidate would possibly want that? And thus Rudy Giuliani can propose a policy that is incomparably dangerous and intensely unpopular, yet know that his doing so will result in no political price being paid. Now that we are occupying two Middle Eastern countries, with a broken military, and are threatening imminent war with at least another one, isn't it long past time to have the discussion about the extent to which the U.S. is willing to wage war on behalf of Israel's interests? Do Americans really think that Iranian hostility towards Israel or its support for "terrorists groups" that are hostile to Israel are grounds for declaring Iran to be our Enemy or waging war against them? If so, then let proponents of war with Iran make that case expressly. And for the rest of the presidential campaign, shouldn't Giuliani's desire to involve the U.S. military in every war Israel fights be a rather central feature in discussions of his potential presidency?

Freedom as Theft by Tom Engelhardt

How Bush Became the New Saddam by Patrick Graham

George W. Bush: President, Dissident, Prophet by Jim Lobe

Reconstruction

Iraq Sets the Stage for Possible U.S. War with Iran

Peter Galbraith, The New York Review of Books and TomDispatch

War on Iraq: The contest of control over Iraq between the U.S. and Iran is the largest potential crucible of disaster for the planet between now and January 2009.


Fred Thompson: Desperate Republicans Cheer for a Reagan Wannabe

Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com

In Fred Thompson's fantasy world, all you have to do to be president is pretend you're the Gipper and act tough on TV.

Why Does Everyone Bow Down to the Health Insurance Industry?

Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com

Health and Wellness: After facing down the Third Reich, the Japanese Empire, the U.S.S.R., Saddam Hussein, the United States has met an enemy it dares not confront -- the American private health insurance industry.

Ahmadinejad's Speech at Columbia University Is as American as Apple Pie

Rebecca Evans, Brandon Hammer, AlterNet

Rights and Liberties: Columbia's invitation to Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not only shows the world the importance of free speech, but also demonstrates what free speech means.


What Is Iraq Costing You?

Larry Beinhart, AlterNet

War on Iraq: The War in Iraq has cost about $453 billion to date. That's pretty hard to grasp. Especially on my income and probably on yours. Let's bring that home and make it a little more understandable.

Iran, Israel ratchet up tensions

After France took the lead in verbally attacking Iran, Israel has now taken up the mantle as the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions spirals further out of control. Israel's hostility toward Iran is nothing new, but it does raise fears echoed in a report this week that US Vice President Dick Cheney mulled Israeli strikes against Iran in the hope that Tehran would strike back, giving the US an excuse to attack. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Sep 24, '07)

How Iraq won its 'freedom'
In a single document, former US viceroy in Iraq L Paul Bremer granted Blackwater USA and other private security firms that provide hired guns to the military immunity from prosecution. This turned the global clock back at least a century, establishing a special kind of freedom in Iraq. It was, in essence, a get-out-of-jail-free card in perpetuity. - Tom Engelhardt (Sep 24, '07)

The funds are flowing
The US Federal Reserve's aggressive rate cuts last week only exacerbate what is becoming an untenable outward flow of dollar liquidity from the US financial system to the rest of world (that must, at a price, be "recycled" back into US assets). Doug Noland wraps up the previous week's developments in this new Monday column.

The year of unmitigated gloom
For the US, which has staked its geopolitical prestige on fighting a "global war on terrorism", this year has been dominated by setback after setback, according to a British security think-tank. "The threat from Islamist terrorism remains as high as ever and looks set to get worse," says the report. - David Isenberg (Sep 24, '07)

China joins UN peacekeepers in Sudan
Beijing's decision to send 315 soldiers to join a United Nations peacekeeping group in Sudan is its latest export to the troubled Darfur region, where it has been strongly criticized by other international powers demanding sanctions against the Khartoum regime. But the tide may be turning in China's favor with even US officials now praising Beijing for its "constructive" role. (Sep 24, '07)

China, US delicately juggle Taiwan
While the United Nations has rejected Taiwan's bid for membership, it's not the end of President Chen Shui-bian's efforts to push the issue. Both he and the rival Kuomintang party are calling for referendums on the matter - actions that disturb Beijing and present Washington with distractions it doesn't need or want. Restraint is paramount, especially where Beijing is concerned. - Jing-dong Yuan (Sep 24, '07)

The making of Vietnam's oil giant
Vietnam's largest state oil-and-gas group, PetroVietnam, is building an international reputation with templates from China's oil giants and Malaysia's Petronas and by using Hanoi's relationships with old communist ideological kin such as Cuba and more recent anti-US foes such as Venezuela. It's a unique blend that is also giving birth to an emerging, non-aligned energy alliance that will give the Western energy majors a run for their money and resources. - Andrew Symon

FOREX COMMENTARY
The dollar continues to edge closer to the cliff. The Fed is banking on low core inflation as justification for additional rate cuts. Something may not wash here. - Jack Crooks

Prepping the Media Battlefield, Part 3 by Jed Babbin MoveOn.org has Hillary cornered and the NYT is sinking slowly on Wall Street. Will Republicans seize the opportunity?

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...icle%2FShowFull

No red lines at Columbia

Ahmadinejad@Columbia
DAVID J. FEITH & JORDAN C. HIRSCH: Columbia has given a tyrant a powerful propaganda tool. “Aid and Comfort by Any Other Name” 09/23 11:10 AM

THE EDITORS: The young men and women of Morningside Heights aren’t being asked to risk their lives for their country, but they should be expected to stand in solidarity with those who bravely do. “Monday Mission for Columbia Students” 09/21 4:25 PM

MARK GOLDBLATT: Ahmadinejad has no business fouling the hallowed sidewalk near Ground Zero. “It’s One War” 09/21 5:00 AM

FLASHBACK: “ Being Lee Bollinger” 09/21 3:18 PM

Iran's President Ahmadinejad: No war at hand - Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon and does not want a war

V.P. Cheney considered luring Iran into war with Israel

Iran makes radar-evading drones

Ahmadinejad meets Iranian nationals in New York City

Iranian president marks US visit surrounded by controversy

"Iranian madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad walks among us": New York Daily News

U.S. Targets Iran-Backed Militants

Militant video claims 'execution' of five captured Iraqi soldiers

Betrayal by Blackwater

Blackwater remains in Iraq for now: Killed 11 civilians a week ago

Baghdad seeks wider UN role in Iraq

U.N. is assured of a safer Baghdad

It was about oil after all

Eleven (11) Iraqis arrested over killing of Pro-West tribal chief

Iraq war jeopardizes Marines' core mission: Editorial by George Will

Amnesty International accuses world of turning a blind eye to displaced Iraqis

Bush Wields Vetoes to Block Democrats

Senator Obama Brings Poker Traits to Candidacy

Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana will endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid on Monday

President Bush hints at Clinton victory: Bush has expressed admiration for her tenacity in the campaign

Sen. Clinton Can't Pledge Troop Withdrawal: 'We Don't Know What We're Going to Inherit'

Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report [b]By Alan Miller <h2>Seven CIA veterans have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and have called for a new investigation.</h2> [/b]

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_al..._veterans_c.htm

September 23, 2007

Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report

By Alan Miller

Official Account of 9/11 a “Joke” and a “Cover-up”

September 23, 2007 – Seven CIA veterans have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and have called for a new investigation. “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke,” said Raymond McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates during the seventies. “There are a whole bunch of unanswered questions. And the reason they’re unanswered is because this administration will not answer the questions,” he said. McGovern, who is also the founder of VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), is one of many signers of a petition to reinvestigate 9/11.[1]




Raymond McGovern

During his 27-year CIA career, McGovern personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials. Upon retirement in 1990, McGovern was awarded the CIA’s Intelligence Commendation Medallion and received a letter of appreciation from then President George H. W. Bush. However, McGovern returned the award[2] in 2006 in protest of the current George W. Bush Administration’s advocacy and use of torture.





In his blurb for 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out,” edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, McGovern wrote[3]: “It has long been clear that the Bush-Cheney administration cynically exploited the attacks of 9/11 to promote its imperial designs. But the present volume confronts us with evidence for an even more disturbing conclusion: that the 9/11 attacks were themselves orchestrated by this administration precisely so they could be thus exploited. If this is true, it is not merely the case, as the Downing Street memos show, that the stated reason for attacking Iraq was a lie. It is also the case that the whole “war on terror” was based on a prior deception. This book hence confronts the American people---indeed the people of the world as a whole---with an issue second to none in importance and urgency. I give this book, which in no way can be dismissed as the ravings of ‘paranoid conspiracy theorists,’ my highest possible recommendation.”



William Christison, a 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis also describes the 9/11 Commission Report as a “joke” and offers even more outspoken criticism. In a 2006 audio interview[4] he said, "We very seriously need an entirely new very high level and truly independent investigation of the events of 9/11. I think you almost have to look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a joke and not a serious piece of analysis at all.”




William Christison

Earlier this year, in an endorsement of David Ray Griffin’s book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Christison wrote[5], “[There’s] a strong body of evidence showing the official U.S. Government story of what happened on September 11, 2001 to be almost certainly a monstrous series of lies.” And in an online essay[6] in late 2006, he wrote, “I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. … An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. … The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them.”



Prior to his retirement from the CIA in 1979, Christison served as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, overseeing 200 analysts who collected intelligence and provided analysis on all regions and every country in the world. Prior to that, he served as one of only a handful of NIO’s in the intelligence community. NIO’s are responsible for the intelligence community efforts in a particular area and are the principal advisors to the Director of Central Intelligence. Christison was NIO for Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa.



Melvin Goodman, PhD, is another former senior CIA official who calls the 9/11 Commission Report a “coverup” and who signed the petition to reinvestigate 9/11.[7] Goodman was the Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs and served as Senior Analyst from 1966 - 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 - 2004.




Melvin Goodman, PhD

In testimony before a 2005 Congressional briefing on the 9/11 Commission Report[8], Goodman said, “I want to talk about the [9/11] Commission itself, about the flawed process of the Commission and finally about the conflict of interest within the Commission that is extremely important to understand the failure of the Commission. … The final report is ultimately a coverup. I don't know how else to describe it." Goodman is currently Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and Adjunct Professor of Government at Johns Hopkins University.

Robert Baer is another well known CIA veteran who has questioned the official account of 9/11. A 21-year CIA veteran and specialist in the Middle East, Baer was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal upon his retirement in 1997. After retirement, he wrote two best-selling non-fiction books about the CIA, See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil, the former of which was the basis for the Academy Award-winning movie Syriana, starring George Clooney. Baer was also the writer and on-camera commentator for the Emmy Award-nominated documentary Cult of the Suicide Bomber.




Robert Baer

Baer has repeatedly questioned whether al-Qaida could have accomplished 9/11 alone. The 9/11 Commission Report categorically found al-Qaida to be entirely responsible for 9/11, stating, "Similarly, we have seen no evidence that any foreign government -- or government official -- supplied any funding." However, this 9/11 Commission finding directly contradicts the earlier finding of the Joint House-Senate Select Intelligence Committee's 2002 Report[9] (p.415) of "sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers.”



In a 2002 essay[10] for The Guardian, Baer wrote, "Did bin Laden act alone, through his own al-Qaida network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more certain and emphatic: no." In subsequent interviews, Baer has suggested that support for the attacks could have come from Saudi Arabia and Iran.



In 2006, during an interview by Thom Hartmann[11], Baer, after commenting on the financial profits being made from 9/11, was asked: “What about political profit? There are those who suggest that ... someone in that chain of command ... had pretty good knowledge that 9/11 was going to happen -- and really didn't do much to stop it -- or even obstructed efforts to stop it because they thought it would lend legitimacy to Bush's ... failing presidency.” Baer replied: “Absolutely.” Hartmann then asked, “So you are personally of the opinion ... that there was an aspect of 'inside job' to 9/11 within the U.S. government?" To which Baer replied, "There is that possibility, the evidence points at it." When Hartmann continued, "And why is it not being investigated?” Baer replied, "Why isn't the WMD story being investigated? Why hasn't anybody been held accountable for 9/11? We held people accountable after Pearl Harbor. Why has there been no change in command? Why have there been no political repercussions? Why has there been no -- any sort of exposure on this? It really makes you wonder."