Worst. President. Ever.
How bad has George Bush been for the American economy? Joseph Stiglitz counts the ways

By Andrew Leonard

How the World Works

Rudy's new best friendNow that Giuliani has embraced Pat Robertson's endorsement, the mayor should have to answer for the preacher's extremism and outright loony talkBy Joe Conason November 09, 2007



Welcome to the 700 Club, RudyPat Robertson's endorsement could be both a blessing and a curse for Rudy GiulianiBy Walter Shapiro November 08, 2007

"A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan"Some members of the GOP's largest voting bloc, like Florida preacher Bill Keller, think a Mormon in the White House would mean more souls going to hellBy Michael Scherer November 06, 2007

Stop lying to yourself. You love Dennis KucinichDemocratic primary voters, you agree with him about (almost) everything, and you know itBy Rebecca Traister November 05, 2007

The era of Hillary beginsThe next two months will be all about Hillary Clinton. So will the next year if she wins the Democratic nomination. Can she take it? Can you?By Michael Scherer November 02, 2007

What Hillary won't say about tortureSen. Clinton gives Salon her most detailed answers yet on torture -- but still leaves some wiggle roomBy Mark Benjamin November 02, 2007

The Democratic duel of the raceThe debate in Philly: Edwards and Biden come out swinging, Obama sticks to smooth jazz, and Clinton stands tall but then stumblesBy Walter Shapiro October 31, 2007

Obama: Don't pander to homophobesIn a bid for the black church vote, the candidate is about to tour South Carolina with antigay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin at his side. He doesn't need toBy James Hannaham October 26, 2007

Is Hillary running away with the race?The national polls appear to show a Clinton romp, but when it comes to polls, appearances can be deceivingBy Walter Shapiro October 26, 2007

Why Democrats are afraid to raise taxes on the richCould it have something to do with the recent affection of hedge-fund managers for the Democratic Party?By Robert Reich October 25, 2007

If it is the economy, GOP may be in trouble By Peter Nicholas Any voter backlash over gas prices and the housing slump is expected to punish Republicans vying to replace Bush.

Hillary plays the winning gender card By Susan Faludi Male politicians have always cast themselves as rescuers to women. Clinton's also playing a rescuer -- but as a feminist.

The Bush Administration Plans to Blame You for Iraq

William Astore, Tomdispatch.com

War on Iraq: After holding so few high-level government and military officials accountable for failures in Iraq, Bush needs a scapegoat.

Four More Wars? Candidates' Foreign Policy Advisors Dominated by Hawks

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, The American Conservative

War on Iraq: The 2008 hopefuls promised a change in foreign policy -- and then they hired the old guard.


The Theology of American Empire

Ira Chernus, Foreign Policy in Focus

ForeignPolicy: American foreign policy -- both good and bad -- has always been deeply influenced by Christian theology.

Bush Could Get Access to Private Hillary Files -- Will He Use Them in the Election?

Robert Parry, Consortium News

Hillary Clinton has been subject to regular surveillance by Bush's Executive Branch -- and history suggests that it might be used against her in the coming election.

The Dangerous Rudy Giuliani: George Bush with Brains

Michael Tomasky, Comment Is Free

New York's former mayor is living up to his reputation as someone who will do and say anything for power.

Giuliani Quotes False Stats to Deny America's Health Care Crisis

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

Health and Wellness: Rudy Giuliani has a habit of saying things that are demonstrably untrue. And the American people have a right to know that.


Man From Plains: The Film That Might Make Jimmy Carter a Movie Star

Adam Howard, AlterNet

Movie Mix: Man From Plains is a moving, redemptive portrait of a president and a presidency that has been unfairly maligned and reduced to a punchline for far too long.

Senate Confirms Pro-Torture, Anti-Constitution Mukasey As Attorney General
Howie Klein: This was engineered by Senators Schumer and Feinstein. Whatever Mukasey does wrong should be lain on their doorsteps.

Will Democrats Restore Our Liberties Stolen in the Bush Era?

Ari Melber, AlterNet

Rights and Liberties: Repealing the Patriot Act, ending warrantless wiretapping, restoring habeas corpus -- have Democratic leaders figured out that these are winning issues in the aftermath of Bush's power grab?

Dems Lead in Counterattack to Stop Iran Conflict

Brian Beutler, Media Consortium

War on Iraq: A handful of congressional Democrats including Sen. James Webb are trying to stop the White House from starting a disastrous war with Iran.

Paying for the Wars' Wounded
by Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) The Bureau of the Census has issued a lengthy summary of "facts" about the nation's 23.7 million veterans in time for Veteran's Day. Considering that there are two significant ongoing armed conflicts involving U.S. forces, I expected that there would be some "facts" dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nothing was disaggregated. Well, nearly nothing. Where detail was provided, it rarely was framed by war as opposed to education, age or ethnicity.

One statistic I did expect was the number of troops "wounded in hostile engagements" who had been discharged from service and transferred to veterans' medical care. (According to the Pentagon, total U.S. wounded from enemy action in Iraq is 28,327 and in Afghanistan 1,708.) But this also was not there even though that number – along with projections for future years – has to exist within the Veterans Administration (VA) so its staff can prepare their annual budget request.


Medical Care
Thinking these two items might be linked, I re-read the notice looking for spending just on veterans' medical care. Dead last was total spending by the VA in 2006 and a breakout between medical and non-medical spending for that year.

As a veteran who uses the military medical system, I could not help but wonder if the placement of this information was nothing more than happenstance, a fading echo of the recently revealed mishandling of war wounded and not a harbinger of the how the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan will be regarded in the priorities of future administrations.

Actually, the census report raised more questions than it answered. Looking through the Bush administration's proposed Fiscal Year 2008 Budget submission turned up the following:

• In 2006, the Bush administration's budget request for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) was still less than half ($31.3 billion) the total request ($75.7 billion) for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
• In 2007, the VHA's budget request actually dropped from about 43% of the total Veterans Administration proposed budget to 40%. Congress added $1.8 billion in the 2007 supplemental.
• The White House however, does not seem able to fathom the long-term medical costs of the Iraq War and its Afghanistan operations. Although it appears that VHA will be funded at $37.2 billion for 2008, the administration projects a 2% drop in funding for 2009 and a repeat of this lower level in 2010. That's just incomprehensible given that the wars are not likely to be over by then.

[b]Supporting the Troops[/b]
The public comprehends the principle that if the nation sends its youth to war, it owes those young men and women the best medical care regardless of cost should they be wounded. This distinction is a variation of the classic "support the troops – support the war" dichotomy that scares and scars politicians. In an age of 15-second sound bites, all that need be said is "Senator (or Representative) X voted against funding our troops in the field," letting the silence of the syllogistic "therefore" be completed by the voter: that in refusing to vote for the military's budget request the congressional incumbent doesn't care about either the dead or the living.

Regardless of the precipitating event, once the armed forces are "on the ground," the president of the United States is in the enviable position to blackmail Congress into providing funds for the troops fighting for "God, country, and the American way." It doesn't seem to make any difference which party controls Congress or occupies the White House. The worst political sin is to be susceptible to the charge of "not supporting the troops."

Ironically, even when the wars they wage are as widely unpopular as today's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidents can blackmail the American people the same way – and they get away with it for the same reason: no one wants to be accused of not standing up for the troops or appear to be unwilling to give them the best of everything. This stems from the belief that the United States is always justified in going to war, that God is on "our side" (or at the very least, is not on the "other" side).


The Warriors
In accepting the demise of the conscript army and the emergence of the modern military professional, the American public assigned the responsibility for military defense to a class of people – the Warriors – and in typical fashion, turned their attention elsewhere. This left as the main advocates for post-military service benefits (other than the formal institutions of government) the traditional veterans' advocacy organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), AMVETS, and the American Legion.

In peacetime, this façade of a "caring" nation could be maintained with little more than the ritual appearance by the "commander-in-chief" (and in election years by candidates for president) at veterans' conventions and the odd extra half-billion or billion dollars in additional spending that was never enough to catch up with needed improvements in the military and veterans health systems.

Under pressure from two wars, the "center" could not sustain itself or conceal the dichotomy between excellent medicine and paralyzing administrative requirements.


Walter Reed Effect
Then came what could be termed the "Walter Reed effect": the "fall-out" from investigative reporting by The Washington Post of substandard living arrangements for seriously wounded soldiers, of insufficient numbers of trained case workers for the number of wounded, and the expectation of hospital administrative staff that the wounded could traverse a very convoluted medical bureaucracy without substantial help. All this, together with the seeming indifference of general officers and administrative personnel toward those with psychological trauma or more evident brain injuries, rekindled empathy for the war-wounded among large segments of the U.S. public.

Initially, this renewed concern for the warriors and the question of why their care was so remiss did not cross into questioning the war itself, perhaps because one could, in the early days, talk war without having to talk veterans. And when veterans were mentioned, the traditional veterans groups stepped forward, as they had in the past, and generally supported the president's policy.

It would not be too long, however, before voices of returned soldiers, wounded or not, and of the survivors of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were raised in protest – first singly and then collectively in new groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans Against the Iraq War, and even among the veterans of the Vietnam War.

As the extent of the deficiencies became clearer, as more and more members of Congress visited hospitals and saw first-hand the extensive physical and mental injuries, as they learned of the extensive treatments that would have to last a lifetime, they at last began to fathom the woeful under funding of veteran's health and rehabilitation costs.

The apparent callousness of top Army officials to the status quo did not sit well with the public. This perception of official indifference acted as a catalyst to re-engage the American public on the issue of why these wars with their ever-increasing casualties hadn't ended.


Vets Find Their Voices
Veterans of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan began to find their voice-in-opposition and to take on the issue of inadequate care for the wounded. And since the wounded remain distinctive personalities, because they are not hidden away from society, they cannot be treated as an undifferentiated class – like those who are killed and usually become, other than for their loved ones who remain, more of a statistic than a memory.

Indeed, today's wounded (and today's 3,858 dead in Iraq and 459 in Afghanistan) present the public with an opportunity to start to end the fighting, the dying, and the maiming that seem to be endemic in the "social contract" of modern nation states. How? By bringing face-to-face those who serve with those who first asked them to serve, sent them to "care" for (that is, to fight for) the nation, and in so doing created a moral and even a legal reciprocal obligations to care for the wounded who "cared" for the nation when asked.

While this approach might seem to leave a huge gap through which to drive a tank army, it would strip away the sterile masks that protect those who make war from those who "do" war – at the maker's behest and in the name of the "people" who often have absolutely no say in the decision for war.

It's different today than during the Vietnam War, when even wounded veterans were sometimes reviled and taunted as "baby-killers." Vietnam may have been the tipping point, for that was the first U.S. television war. The horrendous wounds from Iraq and Afghanistan have moved the public beyond the halfway point of transitioning from a warrior mentality and myth to a culture and outlook that celebrate peace.

The challenge is how to keep together the need for adequate appropriations to care for the wounded for as long as necessary with the realization that those who need long-term care once were able-bodied men and women. Still to be traversed is the gap between the recognition of the cost of caring for the wounded and caring about – that is, rejecting – the reasons why politicians opt for war in the first instance.

Meanwhile, the number of mercenaries (politely termed "security contractors" in the mainstream media and political debate) just in Iraq is reportedly between 20,000 and 30,000. That's more than some countries have in their whole armed forces.

So now there is another consideration: will the public, and the Congress, in rebelling against the cost of paying for war and the war-wounded, opt for a fully mercenary force to wage our wars?

That was what Rome did. History records the outcome.

Still Waiting to Cash in on Iraq's Oil

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/co...t_id=1003670200

Memo to Media: I Witnessed 'Waterboarding' -- And, Yes, It is Torture
Four decades ago, as a reporter in Vietnam, I saw what it was like. When you hog-tie a human being, tilt him head down, stuff a rag in his mouth and over his nostrils and pour water onto the rag slowly and steadily to the point where his lungs start to fill with water, that is torture.

By Joseph L. Galloway

(November 08, 2007) -- Did Bill Clinton have sex with that woman? Is Elvis Presley really dead? Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear do his ablutions in the woods? Is waterboarding torture? The answer to all of these questions, put simply, is yes.

All of Judge Michael Mukasey's artful dodging and word play to avoid acknowledging the obvious to the august members of Senate Judiciary Committee does nothing to change the fact.

When you hog-tie a human being, tilt him head down, stuff a rag in his mouth and over his nostrils and pour water onto the rag slowly and steadily to the point where his lungs start to fill with water and he's suffocating and drowning, that is torture.


Four decades ago in the field in Vietnam, I saw a suspected Viet Cong waterboarded by South Vietnamese Army troops. The American Army advisers who were attached to the Vietnamese unit turned their backs and walked away before the torture began. It was then a Vietnamese affair and something they couldn't be associated with.

The victim was taken to the edge of death. His body was wracked with spasms as he fought for air. The soldier holding the five-gallon kerosene tin filled with muddy water from a nearby stream kept pouring it slowly onto the rag, and the victim desperately sucking for even a little air kept inhaling that water instead.

It seemed to go on forever. Did the suspect talk? I'm sure he did. I'm sure he told his torturers whatever he thought they wanted to hear, whether it was true or not. But I didn't see the end of it because one of the American advisers came to me and told me I had to leave; that I couldn't watch this interrogation, if that's what it was, any longer.

That adviser knew that water torture was torture; he knew that it was outlawed by the Geneva Convention; he knew that he couldn't be a party to it; and he knew that he didn't want me to witness such brutality.

Every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee knows that waterboarding is torture, even the majority who voted to send Judge Mukasey's nomination to be attorney general, America's chief law enforcement official, to the floor for a vote.

Waterboarding was torture when it was used during the Spanish Inquisition; it was torture when it was used on Filipino rebels during the 1890s; it was torture when the Japanese Army used it on prisoners in World War II; it was torture when it was used by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; and it's torture when CIA officers or others use it on terrorists.

When George W. Bush was the governor of Texas, the state investigated, indicted, convicted and sentenced to prison for 10 years a county sheriff who, with his deputies, had waterboarded a criminal suspect. That sheriff got no pardon from Gov. Bush.

Waterboarding is torture in the eyes of all civilized peoples, no matter how desperately President George W. Bush tries to rewrite the English language, with which he has only a passing familiarity, anyway. No matter how desperately his entire administration tries to redefine the word "torture" to cover the fact that not only have they acquiesced in its use, but they also have ordered its use.

The president, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their cronies and legal mouthpieces such as David Addington, John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales are doing all they can to avoid one day facing the bar of justice, at home or in The Hague, and being called to account for crimes against humanity.

They want a blank check pardon, and they'll continue searching for attorneys general and judges and justices and senators and members of Congress who'll hand them their stay-out-of-jail-free cards.

As they squirm and wriggle and lie and quibble and cut deals with senators, they claim that "harsh interrogation methods" are necessary to prevent another 9/11. But as terrified as they are by terrorists, they also fear that one day they may be treated no better than some fallen South American dictator or Cambodian despot or hapless Texas sheriff; that they might not be able to leave a guarded, gated compounds in Dallas or Crawford, a ranch in New Mexico or the shores of Chesapeake Bay for fear of arrest and extradition.

No more shopping trips to Paris. No vacations on the Costa Brava. No interludes on some billionaire buddy's yacht in the Caribbean. No jetting around the world making speeches to fat cats at $1 million a pop like other former presidents. Even Canada would be off-limits.

Now the Democrats, or some of them, are conspiring with them to seat an attorney general who will help facilitate the ever more frantic search for ex post facto immunity for their crimes. Shame on them! There's such a thing as too loyal an opposition; too cowardly an opposition; too craven an opposition.

Waterboarding is torture. Decent people have acknowledged that for centuries. We sent Japanese war criminals to the gallows for using it. We sent a Texas sheriff to prison for using it. One day, an ex-president and those who helped him and those he ordered to torture fellow human beings may have to plea bargain for their lives and their freedom.
***

Related: Why isn't the media, or the military, seriously probing the shocking number of "noncombat" deaths among U.S. troops in Iraq? Read about it here:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/co...t_id=1003668890

Joseph L. Galloway (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) was one of the leading war correspondents of our time and winner of the Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam. He is co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young" and currently writes a syndicated column on military affairs for McClatchy/Tribune.

When cataloguing George W. Bush's lies – even if you stick just to his fabrications about the Iraq War and the "war on terror" – there are so many to choose from, it's hard to pick a favorite.


There's the one about how before Sept. 11, 2001, Americans thought that "oceans protected us" – although perhaps not from Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, which during the Cold War had school children hiding under desks and homeowners buying bomb shelters.

After taking office in January 2001, Bush was so confident about the protective oceans that he pushed aggressively for a "Star Wars" missile defense system.

Or there's Bush's oft-repeated claim that al-Qaeda terrorists are poised to dominate the world through a caliphate "stretching from Spain to Indonesia," though in reality they are a bunch of crazed misfits forcibly exiled from their own countries and now living in caves along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Bush also insists that Americans must heed what Osama bin Laden says, like when this homicidal maniac supposedly calls Iraq the "central front" in the "war on terror," the American people must keep troops there indefinitely.

But it's never explained why it makes sense for the United States to let bin Laden's public declarations shape Washington's policies.

There's a chance, you see, that bin Laden is either completely nuts or perhaps clever enough to bait Bush into taking actions that actually help al-Qaeda, like getting the United States bogged down in Iraq, alienating the Muslim world and diverting military resources away from where bin Laden is hiding.

Indeed, the evidence from captured (internal rather than public) al-Qaeda communications indicates that bin Laden's high command considers Afghanistan and Pakistan – not Iraq – their central front.

In 2005, for instance, one intercepted letter, purportedly written by al-Qaeda's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, asked fighters in Iraq to send $100,000 to headquarters back on the Afghan-Pakistani border. If Bush were right – and al-Qaeda considered Iraq the "central front" – one might expect that the money would be going in the opposite direction. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Al-Qaeda's Fragile Foothold."]

Personal Favorite

But my personal favorite Bush lie is when he insists that the United States invaded Iraq to enforce a United Nations resolution and that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein "chose war" by barring U.N. weapons inspectors.

Bush dusted off that old canard on Nov. 7 while standing next to French President Nicolas Sarkozy during a press conference at George Washington's estate at Mount Vernon in Virginia.

Responding to a question from a French journalist about Bush's dispute with France over the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. president said:

"We had a difference of opinion with your great country over whether or not I should have used military force to enforce U.N. demands. … I just want to remind you that [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was supported by France and the United States, which clearly said to the dictator, you will disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. Now, I'm the kind of person that when somebody says something, I take them for their word."

Bush has made this same false argument scores of times dating back to July 2003, several months after the invasion when it was becoming clear that Saddam Hussein had told the truth when his government reported to the U.N. in 2002 that Iraq's WMD stockpiles had been eliminated.

Hussein also relented in fall 2002, allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to travel freely around Iraq checking out suspected WMD sites. The U.N. inspectors found nothing and reported growing Iraqi cooperation in the early months of 2003. In other words, Hussein was complying with Resolution 1441.

Nevertheless, Bush was determined to invade Iraq and tried to get the U.N. Security Council to go along. However, France and most other members of the Security Council rebuffed Bush and sought more time for the inspectors.

Then, in defiance of the U.N. – and in violation of the U.N. Charter which prohibits aggressive wars – Bush forced out the U.N. inspectors and launched his "shock and awe" assault. After a bloody three-week campaign, U.S.-led forces toppled Hussein's government, but found no WMD caches.

Instead of admitting the obvious facts – that he had launched an unprovoked war on false pretenses – Bush rewrote the history. Starting at a White House press briefing on July 14, 2003, Bush began insisting that he had no choice but to invade Iraq because Hussein wouldn't let the U.N. inspectors in.

Bush told reporters: "We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."

Bush's Litany

Facing no contradiction from the White House press corps, Bush repeated this lie in varied forms over the next four-plus years as part of his litany defending the invasion.

On Jan. 27, 2004, for example, Bush said, "We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution – 1441 – unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in."

As the years went by, Bush's lie and its unchallenged retelling took on the color of truth.

At a March 21, 2006, news conference, Bush again blamed the war on Hussein's defiance of U.N. demands for unfettered inspections.

"I was hoping to solve this [Iraq] problem diplomatically," Bush said. "The world said, 'Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.' … We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did."

At a press conference on May 24, 2007, Bush offered a short-hand version, even inviting the journalists to remember the invented history.

"As you might remember back then, we tried the diplomatic route: [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was a unanimous vote in the Security Council that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. So the choice was his [Hussein's] to make. And he made a choice that has subsequently caused him to lose his life."

Not only have Washington journalists stayed consistently silent in the face of this false history, some have even adopted Bush's lie as their own. For instance, in a July 2004 interview, ABC's veteran newsman Ted Koppel used it to explain why he – Koppel – thought the invasion of Iraq was justified.

"It did not make logical sense that Saddam Hussein, whose armies had been defeated once before by the United States and the Coalition, would be prepared to lose control over his country if all he had to do was say, 'All right, U.N., come on in, check it out,'" Koppel told Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now."

Of course, Hussein did tell the U.N. to "come on in, check it out." But that was in the real world, not in the faux reality that governs modern Washington.

Bush's Iraq lies are now entering a new political generation, seeping into Campaign 2008. At the Republican debate on June 5, 2007, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney defended Bush's invasion on the grounds that Hussein refused to let U.N. weapons inspectors in to search for WMD.

If Saddam "had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction," the war might have been averted, Romney said.

Not surprisingly, Romney's false statement was no more challenged by the CNN debate moderators than Bush's earlier versions had been. By constant repetition, Bush has transformed his lie into what passes for truth in modern American politics.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/110807.html

Schumer and Feinstein are on the short list of Brookers who have the final say in the tyrannical middle that supercedes Party Lines...

http://www.counterpunch.org/gresh11102007.html
How to Turn a Region Into a Graveyard
Uncle Sam's New Backyard

By ALAIN GRESH

When the US decided that its backyard would in future be a greater Middle East --from Pakistan to Morocco --it imagined that it could rearrange the region to suit itself. The results have been disastrous and will be long-lasting.

The United States undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, said this year: "Ten years ago Europe was the epicentre of American foreign policy. This was how things stood from April 1917, when Woodrow Wilson sent one million American troops to the Western Front, through to President Clinton's intervention in Kosovo in 1999. For the better part of the 20th century, Europe was our primary, vital focus." But, he added, everything had changed and the Middle East was now, for President George Bush and his successors, "the place that Europe once was for the administrations of the 20th century" .

President Bush had said much the same a while earlier: "The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life" .

This broader Middle East is an ill-defined area extending from Pakistan, through the Horn of Africa to Morocco. Since 9/11 it has become the main theatre for the deployment of US military power and the decisive, even the sole, battlefield in what the US sees as a global conflict. The region's oil resources and strategic position, and the presence of Israel, have made it a US priority, particularly since the French and British began to withdraw after 1956. As Philippe Croz-Vincent has pointed out in a subtle analysis of the "American moment", the Middle East has replaced Latin America as the US backyard (Vertiges de la puissance. Le moment américain au Moyen-Orient, La Découverte, Paris, 2007). But with a major difference: Latin America was never a crucial battlefield in a third world war.

The landscape of the Middle East has been redrawn. This was the objective of Pentagon strategists and the neo-conservatives; but it is doubtful whether the results match their dreams of remodelling the region to secure the lasting hold that the French and British established after the first world war.

Western forces are directly involved in ferocious conflicts across the broader Middle East. Afghanistan has collapsed into chaos, dragging US and Nato troops down with it. It will be hard to heal the wounds in Iraq, where religious and ethnic rivalries and resistance to foreign occupation have caused hundreds of thousands of casualties --more, according to some observers, than the Rwandan genocide.

Lebanon is mired in a silent civil war between Fuad Siniora's government and the opposition, centred on Hizbullah and Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement; despite a significant UN presence, the war with Israel could resume at any moment. Colonization and repression have accelerated the geographical and social fragmentation of Palestine, and the possibly irreversible collapse of the national movement. Since Ethiopia's US-backed intervention in December 2006, Somalia has been called the "new front in the war on terror". Then there are Darfur, the tensions in Pakistan, a "terrorist threat" in North Africa and the possibility of a new confrontation between Syria and Israel.

All these conflicts have been subsumed into a US world view that projects a specific meaning on to them. During and after the cold war, the US (like the Soviet Union) viewed any crisis in the light of the East-West conflict. So the issue in Nicaragua during the 1970s and 1980s was not the Sandinista struggle against a brutal dictatorship in an attempt to build a fairer society, but the danger that the country might become part of an "evil empire" . This cost the people of Nicaragua a decade of war and destruction. The US is indifferent to the problems of the Palestinians, the crisis in Somalia or the sectarian conflict in Lebanon; it is fixated on a global confrontation between good and evil. And this discourse feeds al-Qaida's vision of a continuing war against Jews and crusaders.

This dichotomy has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, which local forces have exploited for their own ends. Somalia's transitional federal government --corrupt, incompetent warlords --persuaded the White House that international terrorism was at work. The US responded by encouraging Ethiopian military intervention in an attempt to expel the Union of Islamic Courts forces that had seized Mogadishu six months previously . Global preconceptions eclipsed the real internal situation. Christian Ethiopia's invasion of its Muslim neighbour served only to enhance the credibility of ultra-radical Islamist groups.

Lebanon is a fragile entity that depends upon a subtle sectarian alchemy. By deciding to support one side against the other, the US and France made any internal resolution more difficult. Lebanon has become a battleground where the West and its allies can confront Iran and Syria. And any compromise, however necessary, is in danger of being perceived as a victory for the "forces of evil".

As they have multiplied, the conflicts have become interrelated. Weapons, combatants and skills move across porous frontiers, sometimes in the wake of hundreds of thousands of refugees driven into exile by the fighting. Over the past two years combat techniques pioneered in Iraq have spread to Afghanistan --the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against troop transports, and suicide bombings, which were unknown during the Soviet occupation (and which have now also spread to Algeria).

This summer, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon, hundreds of fighters, many of them foreigners who fought in Iraq, held out for more than three months against the Lebanese army. There are thousands of Arab, Pakistani and central Asian combatants now on the loose, all trained in Iraq. Others, trained by the US and Pakistan to resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, migrated to terrorist groups in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere, as well as into al-Qaida. All these wars have encouraged a profitable trade: weapons handed out to the Iraqi security forces are now in the hands of Turkish criminals.

All this, on top of decades of dictatorship and corruption, has helped weaken states in the region. Some, like Afghanistan, have collapsed. The current break-up of Iraq is not due solely to the present conflict. A 13-year embargo (1990-2003) undermined the state and opened the door to Salafist (Sunni) influence, which filtered in along clandestine routes from Jordan with food, medicine, weapons and radical ideas. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Syria, unable to ignore the instability on their borders, are all directly or indirectly pursuing their own agendas within Iraq. Attempts to rebuild central authority in Lebanon have fizzled out. The Palestinian Authority is dependent upon foreign military and economic aid, and the support of the Israeli government. Areas like Iraqi Kurdistan and Gaza are becoming autonomous and feeding the separatist ambitions of Turkey's Kurds and the Baluch of Iran and Pakistan.

The unprecedented influence of armed groups makes any negotiation more difficult. They hold the whip hand in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Hizbullah dominates Lebanon; Hamas controls Gaza. They have proved formidably effective against the US in Iraq and against Nato in Afghanistan.

In Lebanon, Hizbullah held out for 33 days against the Israelis and changed the rules of the game: for the first time since 1948-49 a significant number of Israeli civilians were forced to abandon their homes. Despite being holed up in Gaza, Hamas is still capable of launching rockets into Israel. (On October 7 a Katyusha-type missile, more accurate and of longer range than the Qassam, was fired from Gaza into Israel.)

Rudimentary, but effective and easily replaceable, munitions (IEDs, Qassam rockets, anti-tank weapons) define the limits of US and Israeli military power.
The late Ze'ev Schiff, military correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, gave a realistic assessment: "Even if we declare dozens of times that Hamas is under pressure and wants a ceasefire, it will not erase the fact that in the battle for Sderot, Israel has in effect been defeated [it] is experiencing something in Sderot that it has not experienced since the war of independence, if ever: the enemy has silenced an entire city and brought normal life there to a halt" .
The political impasse in Palestine, the fragmentation of states and US military interventions have created a suicidal sense of despair and lend weight to the extremist assertions of al-Qaida.

On August 31, 2006, following the kidnapping in Gaza by an unknown group of two Fox News journalists, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan published an article on the third generation of Islamist militants emerging in Palestine to challenge Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They were described as having no mass support, rejecting any compromise, refusing to play by the rules of the political game, not targeting just Israelis and not limiting their demands to Palestine. The ability of groups claiming allegiance to al-Qaida to develop in Iraq and Afghanistan, to penetrate the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and establish themselves in North Africa and Somalia demonstrates the pressure that ideological extremism is capable of exerting on fragile borders.

The nationalism that has structured the broader Middle East since 1918 is now under threat from the resurgence of ethnic and religious identity --a process encouraged, consciously or not, by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Iraq, who led the 101st Airborne Division that captured Mosul in 2003.

One of his first decisions was to create an elected council to represent the city, with separate polls for Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and Christians. No mention of Iraqis. By reducing the region to a mosaic of minorities, US policy forces everyone to identify with their community, to the detriment of any national or other loyalty. This undermines national cohesion and fosters conflict in Iraq now and possibly in Syria and Iran tomorrow. It encourages outside regional or international parties to intervene, manipulating local factions in pursuit of their own interests. Israel has been particularly guilty of this since the 1980s.

During Bush's first term, the neocons developed the doctrine of "constructive instability" in the Middle East . As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said while Israel was bombing Lebanon in July 2006: "What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growing --the birth pangs of a new Middle East; and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East."

The cynicism of her remarks provoked caustic comments at the time, but she was, in a sense, right: since 9/11 we have witnessed the emergence of a new Middle East that bears no resemblance to anything that US politicians might have envisaged, and which has become a major and lasting destabilising factor in the world.

Alain Gresh is editor of Le Monde diplomatique and a specialist on the Middle East

Translated by Donald Hounam

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair write: This article appears in the November edition of the excellent monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features one or two articles from LMD every month.

For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls

The Last Dead Bull on Wall Street
By MIKE WHITNEY

What a week for the stock market. On Wednesday the market took a 360 point nosedive followed, two days later, by a 220 point belly-flop. By the time it was over, the trading pits looked more like a sausage-packing plant than the world's financial epicenter. After the bell, downcast traders could be seen tiptoeing through the carnage on their way to the local liquor store to load up on "Stoly" and boxes of Franzia---anything that would steady their nerves and put the week behind them.

Everyone could see it coming; the train-wreck. It was mostly carry-over from the night before when Asian stocks took a thumping on reports of slower growth in the US and growing troubles in the credit markets. That put the first domino in motion. Fed chief Bernanke's announcement that the economy will face "a sharp slowdown from the housing market's contraction" and an "inflationary surge from sharply higher oil prices and the weaker dollar", didn't help either. His remarks triggered a blow-off in the currency markets while equities were frog-marched to the chopping-block.

The Shanghai market took the worst hit dropping nearly 5% before the trading-day ended. Taiwan and Hong Kong followed suit, sliding 3.9% and 3.2% respectively. Share prices in Japan fell 2%. The next morning, Wall Street crashed. It was a massacre.

This is a bear market now. The last bull was dragged from the Street on Friday with a harpoon in its chest.

The subprime contagion has now spread beyond the US and Europe to markets in the Far East. No one is fooled by Bernanke's sunny predictions that the economy will bounce back next year with a strong showing in the first quarter. That's baloney and everyone knows it. The economy has stumbled down the elevator shaft and is just waiting to hit bottom. Consumer confidence is flagging, housing is falling, foreign capital is fleeing, and the greenback is one flush away from the sewage-treatment plant. Bernanke's soothing bromides are meaningless.

"I don't see any significant change in the broad holdings of dollars around the world. Dollars remain the dominant reserve asset and I expect that to continue to be the case," Bernanke said to the Congressional Economic Committee.

Really? So why is the greenback plummeting if people aren't dumping it, Ben? What an absurd comment. The dollar has lost 63% against the euro and dropped to record lows against a basket of world currencies. Foreign central banks and investors have been ditching it as fast as they can before it loses more value. The dollar's tumble has been the most dazzling currency-flameout in modern times and Bernanke is acting like he's still asleep at the switch. It's madness.

The greenback is getting clobbered by the Fed's "low-interest" snake oil and the gargantuan current account deficit. If Bernanke clips rates again to bail out the stock market, the dollar will slip into irreversible respiratory failure. Food and oil prices will shoot to the moon overnight and the remains of the greenback will be carted off to the nearest boneyard.

September's trade deficit was another blow to the waning dollar. The Census Bureau reported on Friday that the deficit clocked in at $56.5 billion. That's $684 billion per annum! Bush has been crowing about the "shrinking deficit", but the numbers are nothing to boast about. We're still borrowing more than we're producing. We're still living beyond our means. The lower numbers just reflect the decline in home construction which is import-intensive. The fact is, we're addicted to debt-fueled consumption and forgotten that, eventually, the trillions that we've borrowed from foreign creditors, will have to be repaid. If the dollar is replaced as the world's reserve currency, then we'll have to pay back $9 trillion of outstanding debt. We might as well hang out the "Foreclosed" sign right now and get fitted for Chinese workers-suits.

This is from Bloomberg News:

"As the dollar tumbles, concern is growing that its weakness may augur the end of the U.S. currency's 62-year reign as the world's specie of choice for trade, financial transactions and central-bank reserves..The dollar owes its position as the world's premier international currency to its status as a haven during times of turmoil, the absence of a suitable rival, weak domestic demand in other countries and plain old inertia. Geopolitics also play a role."

Nonsense. Who believes this rubbish? The dollar is the so-called "international currency" because the Federal Reserve and its well-heeled patrons are the directors of the US-Euro-Japan banking cabal which is at the center of the global Fiat money scam. There's nothing more to it than that. Notice the recent "unilateral" clamp-down on Iran by the US-led banking syndicate. The action was initiated without UN approval for the simple reason that the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and thousands of NGOs are just more of the Central Banks' prime properties. Don't expect the father to ask the child for permission to punish one of his errant children. The banks are the one's who really call the shots and--behind the curtain of feigned respectability---they are the driving force behind the endless wars.

The Fed's plan to "devalue" our way to prosperity appears to have hit a few ill-placed speed-bumps. The stock market is hanging by a thread and consumer confidence is at its lowest ebb since the start of the Iraq War. The falling dollar is expected to put a damper on Christmas spending and knock equities for a loop. That can't be good for economy--especially when 72% of GDP comes from consumer spending.

We're already begun to see the telltale signs that the consumer is loosing ground and about to slip into a debt-induced coma.

According to data from the University of Michigan:

"Consumer confidence reached its lowest level in more than two years this month amid concerns over record-high oil prices, continued trouble in the housing market and higher inflationAlthough consumer attitudes deteriorated across the board, the substantial drop in expectations contributed heavily to the sizeable decline in the overall index."

The average working stiff doesn't put any stock in Bernanke's palavering. He sees what's going on for himself every time he pulls up to the gas pump or goes the grocery store. He doesn't need the University of Michigan to tell him he's getting screwed; he knows it! The economy is sinking, inflation is skyrocketing, and the country is adrift. Every farthing in the public till has been shoveled into a black hole in the Middle East. Does Bernanke really think working people don't know that? Everyone knows that. Everyone knows the economy is on life-support; just like everyone knows the country is collapsing from mismanagement. Even the flag-waving, war-mongering maniacs on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page are starting to shutter from the avalanche of bad news. They see what's going on and they're scared---scared sh**less.

Unfortunately, the sudden shift in consumer sentiment is the hurting retailers who depend on Christmas to carry them through the year. We've already seen the sluggishness in housing and auto sales. Now it's showing up in retail. Abercrombie, American Eagle, Ann Taylor, Chicos, Dillards, The Gap and Nordstrom are all reporting sagging sales. Walmart, Lowes and the other big-box stores are lowering their projections as well. It's going to be a lean Christmas.

The poor US consumer is finally maxed-out and can't tap into his home equity anymore for presto-credit. He's mortgaged "to the hilt" and he's already run up 6 or 7 credit cards to their limit. In fact, credit card debt is a growing concern for the banks, too.

The commercial banks are the victims' of their own success. After years of seductive promotions and saturation mailings the credit card industry is at its zenith leaving consumers with a staggering bill of nearly $1 trillion. ($915 billion) More and more customers are finding themselves unable to make even minimum payments on their balances and defaults are piling up at a record pace. This is the next phase of the subprime fiasco and it has the potential to be nearly as disruptive as the housing meltdown. The problem is complex, too. After all, most credit card debt in the last 6 years has been "securitized" and passed on to investors in the secondary market. (pension funds, hedge funds etc.) That means we can expect more tremors in the stock market as corporate earnings go south after credit card-backed bonds are downgraded. It's just more of the same "structured finance" chicanery; debt stacked on debt, until the whole edifice caves in.

It's looking more and more like Reagan's "shining city on the hill" was erected on a mountain of toxic debt. It's a wonder it hasn't sunk already.

The country is headed for recession and there's nothing that Bernanke can do to stop it. The only question is whether we'll be facing a colossal economy-busting meltdown like 1929 or a milder 5 or 6-year slump. That's up to the Federal Reserve. If the Fed chief decides to pit himself against the falling markets by slashing rates and destroying the currency; then we are likely to be digging-out for years. But if Bernanke steps aside, and lets the chips fall where they may, then the pace of recovery will be quicker.

Whatever choice he makes, there's no avoiding the inevitable downturn. The hammer is poised to strike the anvil. The stock market will fall, the over-extended banks and hedge funds will collapse, and the country will go into a protracted, economic tailspin. That much is certain. Economic fundamentals can only be shrugged off for so long. When markets correct it's like a tidal-surge that sweeps-away the deadwood of bad bets and over-levered investments leaving behind a broad-expanse of empty beach.

Recession is a normal part of the business cycle. It can't be avoided. The economy needs to unwind so debts can get written off and businesses can retool for the future. The upcoming recession is shaping up to be worse than its predecessors---a real doozey.

The damage caused by the Fed's excessive credit has been considerable. It'll take years to mop up the red ink and set the house aright. The markets are in a shambles, investors have been battered and confidence is gone.

Structured finance has been an unmitigated disaster. It needs to be scrapped. We need a new financial system for a new epoch; a system that is heavily regulated and supervised to discourage the crooks and con-artists; a system that it maintains its essential link to the real, productive underlying economy and avoids the galaxy of complex derivatives, "securitized" liabilities, and opaque debt-instruments that have brought on the present crisis; a system that responds to the needs of working people and takes into consideration the looming problems of environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and climate change; a system that reinvests in communities, education and health-care rather than fattening the bottom-line of corporate racketeers and brandy-drooling elites. It's time to remove the rotten scaffolding and rebuild the whole contraption brick by brick.

The system is broken. Maybe Greenspan did us all a favor by blowing it up with his "low interest" dynamite. Good riddance.
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney11102007.html

When Money isn't Worth the Paper It's Printed On

When I wrote back in August that the economy would become the most important issue in the 2008 presidential election, many doubted my prediction.

In that piece I suggested, based on our opinion surveys around the nation, that the sub-prime mortgage problem in the housing market was a much deeper crisis than most recognized.

Remember that during the summer, the stock market was close to all-time highs. Subsequently, many doubted my predictions, including lots of hotshot Wall Street analysts.

Fast-forward just a few months later. I will repeat the very words I wrote in August. Tell me if they don't seem more realistic today. I wrote, "Consumer spending and confidence are about to crash. The stock market is now artificially supported by infusions of federal cash printed so rapidly that the ink hasn't dried."

As we all know, the dollar has been falling rapidly in value. News this week that China, which holds a massive amount of our currency, will be "divesting itself" of the dollar over time, has sent shivers of fear through the financial world. Well, as Gomer Pyle used to say, "Shazam!"

Two weeks ago, I sold every stick of stock I own. That's only the second time I've done that. The last time was in the spring of 2000. I think you can remember what followed — the Internet crash.

I'm not pretending to be a great economist, even though I sometimes "play" one on TV. But when you are polling all across the nation every day and you get data back saying that people feel burdened by debt, or that in what had been the nation's top growth areas, people are scared to death that their house value is plummeting, then you don't have to be Milton Friedman to know something is not quite right.

As my friend and one-time quite worthy opponent James Carville put it back in 1992, "It's the economy stupid."

And what's amazing is that, based on the polls I've seen, the American people realized it long before the financial analysts or the politicians did.

Now we have presidential candidates still making immigration their huge issue — and it is important — while the entire underpinnings of our economy could be washed away.

In order not to seem a complete alarmist, let me share a few glimmers of hope.
First, it is my judgment that our new Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, is far more in touch with reality than was the greatly revered Alan Greenspan — who was never revered by me.

Greenspan raised interest rates too high in reaction to the booming technology-based economy of 2000, and then cut rates too deeply to correct for the recession he created. He was too cute for words with his silly nonsensical statements before Congress, which even he now admits were meant largely to say little or nothing.

The new Fed chair seems a straight shooter. He has cut rates, but not to outrageous levels, and all the while has kept an eye on inflation.

The other reason to limit panic is that neither China nor any other country can afford to "dump" dollars too quickly. Flooding the market too swiftly would hurt their own economies.

Still, the presidential and other candidates this year must begin to address real issues related to our economy. First, how can they promise every new government program in the world or even talk about raising taxes, when those who carry the burden of paying the bulk of the taxes in America are starting to see the value of their homes and that of the money in their bank accounts sink before their very eyes?

And candidates must begin to address a monetary system that can become a virtual hostage to, of all things, the largest communist nation in the world. That's really great: We let China take control of Wall Street thinking. That's a really smooth move.

It's time for this unimpressive cast of presidential candidates to quit playing silly attack games, such as searching for endorsements from televangelists or showing up on "Saturday Night Live," and instead start "feeling our pain." This is a rapidly developing storm, one that some of us could see coming.

Matt Towery served as the chairman of former Speaker Newt Gingrich's political organization from 1992 until Gingrich left Congress. He is a former Georgia state representative, the author of several books and currently heads the polling and political information firm InsiderAdvantage. To find out more about Matthew Towery and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=7301
US Military Weaknesses: Top Pentagon Brass reluctant to wage war on Iran

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, November 10, 2007

While US attack plans against Iran are in an advanced state of readiness, there are growing divisions between the military and the White House regarding these attacks.

"U.S. defense officials have signaled that up-to-date attack plans are available if needed in the escalating crisis over Iran's nuclear aims, although no strike appears imminent.... Among the possible targets, in addition to nuclear installations like the centrifuge plant at Natanz: Iran's ballistic missile sites, Republican Guard bases, and naval warfare assets that Tehran could use in a retaliatory closure of the Straits of Hormuz, a vital artery for the flow of Gulf oil." (AP, November 8, 2007)

These ongoing war preparations are consistent with official statements and political threats directed against Iran by the US president and vice president. On October 12, President Bush dropped a bombshell by intimating that the confrontation with Iran could lead to a "World War III". In a recent TV interview Bush clarified that the reason he mentioned World War III was "because this is a country [Iran] that has defied the IAEA..." This statement is a barefaced lie by the US head of State. The IAEA confirmed in an August report the civilian nature of Iran's nuclear program.

Vice President Dick Cheney stated on Oct. 21 that the United States that Iran would face "serious consequences" if it did not conform to US demands regarding its nuclear program. Cheney is still committed to triggering a pretext, including a "Second 911" or a "catatrophic emergency" in the US, which would provide a justification for waging war on Iran.

Meanwhile, presidential candidates Republican Rudi Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton have tacitly endorsed the administration's stance on Iran.

These aggressive White House statements are in contrast with those emanating from the US military.

The new chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, who took office in early October, while broadly supportive of the White House, has acknowledged US military weaknesses. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "may have undermined the military's ability to fight wars against major adversaries - including Iran." ( quoted in Haaretz, October 22, 2007).

"...the risks could be very, very high.... We're in a conflict in two countries out there right now... We have to be incredibly thoughtful about the potential of in fact getting into a conflict with a third country in that part of the world."

In an interview with the New York Times, Mullen stated :

“We have to be incredibly thoughtful about ... getting into a conflict with a third country [Iran] in that part of the world.”

Mullen's hesitations to wage war on Iran are not based on a divergent political stance but on a realistic assessment of US military capabilities. Admiral Mullen recognizes that the US military is overstretched and that in relation to Iraq, the US military is facing serious problems in military recruitment.

Moreover, tacitly acknowledged by the Pentagon, US and coalition forces are facing fierce resistance in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Adm. William Fallon, Commander of US Central Command (USCENTCOM) and a staunch supporter of Bush-Cheney war plans, has also played down the possibility of a war with Iran. “We are not going to do Iran on my watch.” Fallon is acutely aware of Iran's ability to retaliate militarily and inflict significant losses to US and coalition forces.

On the Diplomatic Front

Meanwhile, the White House is pressuring Germany and France to impose tough economic sanctions on Iran.

President Sarkozy expressed his unbending support of the US president in his speech to the US Congress. Bush and Sarkozy presented at a November 7 Press Conference, in what was described by political analysts as a "joint front" calling for the imposition of tough economic sanctions against Iran.

On Saturday November 10, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived at Bush's Texas ranch for talks with president Bush. Merkel stated that : "if Iran does not give way, [Germany] is prepared for further and tougher sanctions."

What is now emerging are efforts on the part of Washington to isolate Iran. Through ongoing negotiations with Germany and France, Washington is pushing for the imposition of an economic sanctions regime (under European Union auspices) directed against Tehran. What is at stake are European business interests, including EU oil companies, in Iran. Vice President Cheney has threatened European multinationals in a November 8 statement, that if they remain in Iran they will have trouble doing business in the US. (Guardian, November 9, 2007)

Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky

How Cheney Cooked the Intelligence on Iran
by Gareth Porter
Global Research, November 10, 2007 Huffington Post - 2007-11-09


As I reported for Inter Press Service this week, Dick Cheney has been trying to pressure intelligence analysts who have not drunk the neocon kool-aid on Iran to go along with his line on the issues at stake in a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that the White House has been holding up for more than a year. Think Progress immediately noted the parallel between the Cheney's effort to get an Iran NIE that is more to his liking and the way he pushed intelligence analysts to accept the fabrications the neocons were pushing in on Iraq in 2002.

The similarities between Cheney's efforts to cook the intelligence on Iraq and on Iran are worth noting, but so are the differences. Cheney may have had a bigger impact in shaping the intelligence estimate on Iran to fit the policy he is pursuing than was the case on Iraq in 2002.

The Washington Post reported in June 2003 that Cheney and his chief of staff Scooter Libby had visited CIA analysts several times in 2002 to get them to reexamine their skeptical analysis on the WMD issue. But equally important, the Post quoted a "senior agency official" as saying that speeches by Cheney in August 2002 charging Saddam with having a nuclear weapons program "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here."

The effect was achieved despite the fact that the October 2002 NIE on Iraqi WMD was done very quickly, because it had been forced on the White House in September by the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Bob Graham. The White House had only just begun to roll out its propaganda campaign on the fictive Iraqi nuclear weapons program at that point.

Now flash forward to autumn 2006. Cheney had a draft NIE on Iraq that he didn't like. The intelligence community had already issued an NIE on Iran in spring 2005 that had concluded Iran's nuclear program would not progress to the point of having the capability to produce a nuclear weapon until sometime between 2010 and 2015. The new draft Iran estimate was still reportedly offering a similar analysis. Cheney wanted it to endorse the neocons' alarmist view that Iran could acquire the knowledge with which to make nuclear weapons much sooner than that.

Furthermore, Cheney needed an NIE that would support the policy of attacking Iran over its alleged role in Iraq and seizing supposed Iranian "Quds force" personnel there. He wanted it to endorse the charge that Iran is supplying armor-piercing weapons to Shiites in Iraq who were killing American troops. But the draft NIE didn't do that, according to former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi.

So part of Cheney's strategy was to keep sending the draft back for further work while he was creating a new political atmosphere on Iran's role in Iraq. He began in early 2007 to use the U.S. military command in Iraq to wage an intensive propaganda campaign on how the Iranians were supplying EFPs to anti-U.S. Shiite guerrillas through the Quds force. Ignoring intelligence available to the military that EFPs were being manufactured in machine shops in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus and his subordinates formulated a new narrative that would dominate media coverage and political discourse on the issue of Iran and Iraq.

That Iranian EFP narrative has now been repeated without any alternative view being reflected in the media for ten months. The complete dominance of that narrative in the society for so long has certainly had its effect on the NIE process. As a former CIA intelligence officer told me, "Look, most of the intelligence analysts are young guys with less than ten years of experience. A lot of them are willing to give the administration line on Iran the benefit of the doubt."

My sources suggest that the analysts ready to go along with the new narrative are now the majority. Nevertheless, some intelligence analysts on Iran are reportedly still refusing to say that there is concrete evidence to support the official line that the Iranian regime is exporting EFPs to Iraq. They are insisting on including their dissenting views on the issue in the NIE.

That is why the new Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, under orders from Cheney, has refused to circulate the NIE until all dissenting views on the issue have been removed.

There has been no comparable administration propaganda campaign over Iran's nuclear program, so Cheney's tactics were more direct. Last April the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Thomas Fingar, who presides over the NIEs, was made to go on National Public Radio and declare that the intelligence community was reevaluating whether its judgment on how soon Iran might produce a nuclear weapon needed to be revised. Fingar said the estimate "might change" and vowed that the analysts were "serious about reexamining old evidence". He even revealed the fact that the NIE on Iran was being delayed because of the reexamination.

Although he didn't say so explicitly, Fingar's statement left little doubt that the White House had forced the reexamination of the analysts' judgment on the Iranian nuclear program by holding the NIE hostage. How successful that hardball tactic has been in getting language more acceptable to Cheney is still not known, but there were still differences of view on the issue in the draft NIE as of last month, according to my sources.

These approaches to cooking the intelligence on Iran are even more nefarious than Cheney's direct approach on Iraq in 2002. They will certainly give Cheney language supporting his belligerent policy that he can leak to the press and use to keep Congress in line. Hopefully responsible officials with access to whatever dissenting views remain will leak those to anti-war Democrats,

Pay It off Later: Debt Is the New American Dream

Dee Hon, Adbusters

The U.S. addicted to debt -- and the country and millions of its citizens are at the brink of bankruptcy.

Joel S. Hirschhorn: The Grand Delusion Keith Olbermann was praised when he called the Bush presidency a criminal conspiracy. That missed the larger truth. The whole two-party political system is a criminal conspiracy hiding behind illusion induced delusion. Virtually everything that Bush correctly gets condemnation for could have been prevented or negated by Democrats, if they had had courage, conviction and commitment to maintaining the rule of law.

Michael Bailey: The real "face" of Republican "Support the Troops" BS

David Swanson: *Understanding the Next War Money Vote I pledge to vote No on any bill, and to vote No on bringing to the floor for a vote any bill, that includes any funding to extend the occupation of Iraq. This pledge does not prevent me from voting for funding for a withdrawal, although such funding is clearly not needed by the Pentagon. It does not prevent me from voting for funding for veterans' services or for the reconstruction of Iraq by Iraqis, or for relief for...

Lieberman hits out at ‘paranoid’ Democrats The 2008 Democratic candidates are beholden to a “hyper-partisan, politically paranoid” liberal base that could endanger the final nominee’s chances of winning next year’s presidential election, Joe Lieberman, the former vice-presidential Democratic candidate, said. “The Democrats’ guiding principle is distrust and disdain for Republicans in general and for Mr Bush in particular.”

Buchanan: Is a Vote for Rudy a Vote for War? Rudy called for NATO expansion to include Japan, India, Australia, Singapore and Israel. Has Rudy thought this through? Why should the United States commit to war for India, which has territorial conflicts and has fought wars with China and Pakistan? What vital interest is it of ours who holds Kashmir? As for Israel, are American boys now to fight Hezbollah and Hamas?

Why voters don't like Congress
Republicans obstruct, Democrats flail, and Bush gets his way. What's to like?

By Joan Walsh

Dianne Feinstein -- Bush's key ally in the Senate -- to support telecom amnesty
The Democratic Senator from California is single-handedly enabling one extreme Bush policy after the next

By Glenn Greenwald

Opinion

The New York Times:
Veterans Without Health Care

Who Is 'John Doe #7?': Giuliani, Kerik, and the Selling of America's National Security
Posted by Justin Raimondo on November 10, 2007 The idea that the indictment of Bernie Kerik on 14 counts of fraud, tax evasion, and influence-peddling is “old news” – which is how Team Giuliani is somewhat pathetically trying … [Read More]

Rev. Robertson Sells His Soul
Posted by Kevin Michael Derby on November 09, 2007 Despite the televangelist being increasingly marginalized and ridiculed, Robertson’s endorsement of Giuliani did make a splash. The media played up Robertson’s well known opposition to homosexuality and abortion and how he might provide political cover for other social conservatives looking to support Giuliani who has been a vocal supporter of abortion rights, gay marriage, and a variety of other policies which lean much more Rockefeller than Reagan. [Read More]

The Compleat Kerik
TPM's Ultimate Bernie Kerick Scandal List — a rundown of all the criminality and ridiculousness NYC's former top cop and Rudy pal has to offer.

VIDEO: Feds Call Kerik "Repugnant"<li>Kerik: I'm Bush's "Eyes And Ears" In Iraq<li>Kerik Web Site Still Features Bush, Rudy Pics<li>Memo to Pundits: Kerik Should Devastate Rudy's Candidacy

<h3 class="blog_title">Hillary Team Planted Question At Event</h3>

Clinton Camp Caught Planting Questions At Iowa Event


Quick Read

Obama and the Dream of a Color-Blind America - Jon Kaufman, WSJ
Hillary's Powerful Gender Appeal - John Dickerson, Slate
McCain and Edwards Try to Stay Relevant - Blake Dvorak, RealClearPolitics
Edwards on the Outside - Derrick Jackson, Boston Globe
Mitt Romney: Consultant in Chief - Brian Carney, Wall Street Journal
Rudy Giuliani: New York Cowboy - Rich Lowry, National Review
Why Are Dems Getting Nervous? - Terence Samuel, The American Prospect
Oil Price Causes Global Shift in Wealth - Steven Mufson, Washington Post
Pakistan Chaos Can't Be Scripted - Mark Steyn, Orange-County Register
U.S. Strategy for Pakistan Precarious - Helene Cooper, New York Times
America's Strategies for Victory & Defeat - Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post
Hugo Chavez's Criminal Paradise - Moises Naim, Los Angeles Times
Dollar's Fall Becomes a U.S. Problem - Krishna Guha, Financial Times
NBC's Green Fraud - Jonah Goldberg, New York Post
Ambush in War Zone D - Wesley Clark, Washington Monthly
Why Don't We Know Our Heroes? - William Bennett, National Review Online
Bush and Relatives of Fallen Lean on Each Other - Sheryl Stolberg, NYT
RCP 2008 Charts: Democratic Nomination | Republican Nomination
Politics Nation: Edwards Sharpens Attacks on Clinton

Non-News From Iraq
- Rich Galen, Mullings
Why Are Dems Getting Nervous?
- Terence Samuel, The American Prospect
Mrs. Clinton is No Iron Lady
- Peggy Noonan, OpinionJournal
Huckabee Closing Hard

Hillary Clinton: A Bilderberg Presidency
( Published on Thursday, November 08, 2007 )
While President Bush’s approval rating falls to record lows, the torch is being prepared to pass on to Hillary Clinton, with full endorsement from the global elite

Clinton no open book on healthcare By Peter Nicholas Hundreds of pages of memos involving her reform effort during her husband's presidency have been withheld by federal archivists.
Clinton campaign admits planting questions By Don Frederick and Andrew Malcolm Also: Political ad season starts; Obama runs late; Ron Paul, Guy Fawkes, and some Miami guy; Huckabee feels left out; and a sweaty encounter.
In Iowa, political adversaries aren't enemies By Louise Roug Presidential candidates tend to learn quickly -- one way or another -- that civility is the order of the day.

Evangelicals Move Beyond The Religious Right - Mike Gerson, Newsweek
For The Dems It's 'Heart Versus Brain' - Reid Wilson, RealClearPolitics
Hillary Has a Guy Problem - Michael Goodwin, New York Daily News
Pat, Rudy, and Other Surprises - Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune
The GOP is Back on Its Feet - Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard
'Curveball,' Swing and A Miss - George Will, Houston Chronicle
Back From War, Out of a Job - Ted Kennedy and Max Cleland, Boston Globe
Finishing the Job in Afghanistan - Hans Binnendijk, Wall Street Journal
Labor's New Recruits - David Broder, Washington Post
Do Endorsements Matter? - Michael Powell, New York Times
A Mess of a Nominating Process - Michael Tackett, Chicago Tribune
Paul Breaks Quixote Image - David Brown, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
A Vet Returns Home - William Quinn, Washington Post
Ignore Gore, But Not His Nobel Friends - Bjorn Lomborg, Sunday Telegraph
Why Norman Mailer Mattered - Richard Lacayo, Time
Norman Mailer, a Dissenting View - Roger Kimball, Pajamas Media
Obama and the Dream of a Color-Blind America - Jon Kaufman, WSJ

Clinton and Obama Duel Before Iowa Democrats - New York Times
A Fine Line for Democrats on Border Issues - Los Angeles Times
Fame Doesn't Ease Campaign For Fred - Boston Globe
Huckabee on the Offensive in Iowa