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Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in front of Congress, more or less predicting the end of the the American empire: &qout;The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability… If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large… A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated…&qout; |
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If you would like to be added to the CRG e-mail list enter your e-mail address below and click Add. Iraq Coalition Casualty Count = ICasualties.org ICasualties.org is the best source for details on US casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They have compiled an extensive database of this information, which is sortable by state, city, time periods, rank, service, etc. They help to feed this information to Antiwar.com and much of the alternative and mainstream media. ICasualties was recently the victim of a malicious cyber-attack which disabled their server and sent visitors to random sites. The perpetrators have not been identified.
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Is the Fourth Estate a Fifth Column?Friday 11 July 2008 by: Bill Moyers, In These Times Corporate media colludes with democracy's demise. I heard this story a long time ago, growing up in Choctaw County in Oklahoma before my family moved to Texas. A tribal elder was telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging within himself. He said, "It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The boy took this in for a few minutes and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf won?" The old Cherokee replied simply, "The one I feed." Democracy is that way. The wolf that wins is the one we feed. And in our society, media provides the fodder. Sadly, in many respects, the Fourth Estate has become the fifth column of democracy, colluding with the powers that be in a culture of deception that subverts the thing most necessary to freedom, and that is the truth. But we're not alone and we know what we need to say. So let us all go tell it on the mountains and in the cities. From our websites and laptops, the street corners and coffeehouses, the delis and diners, the factory floors and the bookstores. On campus, at the mall, the synagogue, sanctuary and mosque, let's tell it where we can, when we can and while we still can. Democracy only works when ordinary people claim it as their own. Message Machine: Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand By DAVID BARSTOW NY Times Published: April 20, 2008
Few Americans Trust Military or Media for Information on Iraq: Poll Pentagon Officer Created Phony Intel on Iraq/al-Qaeda Link Newly released documents confirm that a Pentagon unit knowingly cooked up intelligence claiming a direct link between Iraq and al-Qaeda in order to win support for a preemptive strike against the country. &npsp;&npsp;&npsp;&npsp;A report prepared by the Defense Department's Inspector General for Carl Levin, the Democratic Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, explicitly shows how former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith used his defense department position to cook intelligence claiming a connection between the terrorist organization and Saddam Hussein's regime. &npsp;&npsp;&npsp;&npsp;The Inspector General's report, &qout;Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy,&qout; focuses specifically on Feith's intelligence gathering operations in the months prior to the March 2003 invasion. An executive summary of the report was declassified in February. The full report was declassified and released Thursday at Levin's request. &npsp;&npsp;&npsp;&npsp;&qout;It is important for the public to see why the Pentagon's inspector general concluded that Secretary Feith's office 'developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship,' which included 'conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community,' and why the Inspector General concluded that these actions were 'inappropriate,'&qout; Levin said. &qout;Until today, those details were classified and outside the public's view.&qout; Fighting a Mockery of Democracy E.J. DionneWith the 2008 presidential election on the horizon, a novel plan to circumvent a constitutional amendment and eliminate the anti-democratic Electoral College is gaining momentum in Maryland and other states. Funding Failure Is Not An Option Iraqi support for attacks on our troops is directly linked to opposition to permanent bases (which already exist). Belief that such bases will be used to expand the war beyond Iraq's borders prevents essential regional diplomacy from working. Both House and Senate versions of the Iraq bill ban funds for permanent bases. Beyond the flexible timelines for redeployment, such a ban represents a fundamental change in course of our foreign policy goals—away from continued failure. Troops already in the field should not be hung out to dry. But funding a failed strategy does exactly that. The debate is not about whether to fund troops in the field. It's about whether or not we should occupy Iraq forever. What does Bush want with Uruguay? A searing assault on Iraq's intellectuals Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years Brown Turns a Blind Eye But in an opinion chock full of jingoistic language, Judge Janice Rogers Brown (the controversial Bush II nominee who was confirmed as part of the Gang of 14 compromise) dissented. In her lengthy ode to the executive’s broad power to wage a war on terror—complete with a crude reference to the fact that the oral arguments in the case fell on the fifth anniversary of September 11th—Brown conceded the district court had jurisdiction but accepted the government’s last ditch argument that Omar had not satisfied the test for a preliminary injunction. She concluded that Omar had not shown he would be exposed to irreparable injury in the event the injunction was denied. Although she conceded that Omar would be at risk of being tortured if he were transferred to Iraqi custody (in its 2006 annual report, Human Rights Watch documented the systematic use of torture by Iraqi government forces, including routine beatings, sleep deprivation, electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body, prolonged suspension from the wrists with the hands tied behind the back, deprivation of food and water for prolonged periods, and severely overcrowded cells), she argued that the courts still had no power to interfere with the transfer. Informed Comment: The pro-war forces keep pretending that the November 2006 elections never happened, and that they haven't lost both houses of Congress and that the American public doesn't want an end to the war. The pretence is often weirdly allowed to stand by the corporate media. But here in Realityland, aka the blogosphere, we don't have to play those games. Iraqis Increasingly Pessimistic, Anti-US Suicide Was the Only Way Out of Iraq for Col. Westhusing Writing in his suicide note, &qout;I am sullied -- no more,&qout; U.S. Colonel Ted Westhusing, father of three, chose death over a life of lies and corruption in occupied Iraq. From Shock and Awe to the &qout;Surge&qout; Without End White House says Rove relayed complaints about prosecutors Department of Injustice The Whole Truth about Libby and the Leak Now shorn of Rumsfeld, Cheney and his men, increasingly beleaguered, are nonetheless pushing on as the Vice President secretively travels the world, warning and scheming. Only this week, in &qout;The Redirection,&qout; a New Yorker piece as chilling as any you might ever want to read, our premier journalist of this era (as well as the Vietnam one), Seymour Hersh reports that, two years ago, old hands from the Iran-Contra fiasco of the Reagan era, well-seeded into the Bush administration, had an informal meeting led by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Their conclusions: &qout;As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: ‘One, you can't trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can't trust the uniformed military, and four, it's got to be run out of the Vice-President's office.&qout; Army Says Fox TV's &qout;24&qout; Promotes Use of Torture in Iraq Prisons Five western governors sign agreement to reduce greenhouse gases US's Iraq oil grab is a done deal &qout;By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies.&qout; - US Vice President Dick Cheney, then Halliburton chief executive officer, London, autumn 1999 US President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney might as well declare the Iraq war over and out. As far as they - and the humongous energy interests they defend - are concerned, only now is the mission really accomplished. More than half a trillion dollars spent and perhaps half a million Iraqis killed have come down to this. Bush and Cheney got their oily cake - and they will eat it, too (or be drenched in its glory). Mission accomplished: permanent, sprawling military bases on the eastern flank of the Arab nation and control of some of largest, untapped oil wealth on the planet - a key geostrategic goal of the New American Century. Now it's time to move east, bomb Iran, force regime change and - what else? - force PSAs down their Persian throats. Al Gore, Global Warming, the Oscars and the Iraq War Bush's Future Iran War Speech US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack In For the Long Haul I’m merely a messenger for a coterie of counterinsurgency experts who have helped to design the Petraeus plan—his so-called “dream team”—and who have discussed it with NEWSWEEK, usually on condition of anonymity, owing to the sensitivity of the subject. To a degree little understood by the U.S. public, Petraeus is engaged in a giant “do-over.” It is a near-reversal of the approach taken by Petraeus’s predecessor as commander of multinational forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, until the latter was relieved in early February, and most other top U.S. commanders going back to Rick Sanchez and Tommy Franks. Casey sought to accelerate both the training of Iraqi forces and American withdrawal. By 2008, the remaining 60,000 or so U.S. troops were supposed to be hunkering down in four giant “superbases,” where they would be relatively safe. Under Petraeus’s plan, a U.S. military force of 160,000 or more is setting up hundreds of “mini-forts” all over Baghdad and the rest of the country, right in the middle of the action. The U.S. Army has also stopped pretending that Iraqis—who have failed to build a credible government, military or police force on their own—are in the lead when it comes to kicking down doors and keeping the peace. And that means the future of Iraq depends on the long-term presence of U.S. forces in a way it did not just a few months ago. “We’re putting down roots,” says Philip Carter, a former U.S. Army captain who returned last summer from a year of policing and training in the hot zone around Baquba. “The Americans are no longer willing to accept failure in order to put Iraqis in the lead. You can’t let the mission fail just for the sake of diplomacy.” Schwartz on Surging into Catastrophe in Iraq 737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial &qout;footprint&qout; and the militarism that grows with it. It is not easy, however, to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records available to the public on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual inventories from 2002 to 2005 of real property it owns around the world, the Base Structure Report, there has been an immense churning in the numbers of installations. The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up. US 'Iran attack plans' revealed US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned. Two triggers BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies. Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran. The BBC's Tehran correspondent Frances Harrison says the news that there are now two possible triggers for an attack is a concern to Iranians. Authorities insist there is no cause for alarm but ordinary people are now becoming a little worried, she says. Joe Scarborough (R): &qout;In Bush’s Washington, the capital is a much clubbier place where everyone in the White House knows someone on the Hill who worked with the Old Man, summered in Maine, or pledged DKE at Yale. The result? Chummy relationships, no vetoes, and record-breaking debts&qout; Congress' Liability in a Nuclear Strike on Iran ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo stated in his acceptance speech that &qout;the creation of the International Criminal Court will help us to prevent those atrocities from being repeated in the future.&qout; He furthermore stated that &qout;The primary responsibility to prevent, control, and prosecute those atrocious crimes belong to the states in which jurisdictions they are committed. The principle of complementarity established by the Statute compels the prosecutor's office to collaborate with national jurisdictions in order to help them improve their efficiency.&qout; It logically follows that if national jurisdictions fail to act to prevent atrocious crimes, the entire responsibility to try to prevent the crimes lies with the ICC. The ICC has jurisdiction over situations in any State where the situation is referred by the United Nations (UN) Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, in case of &qout;the existence of any threat to the peace.&qout; Presumably, where the &qout;threat to the peace&qout; involves a veto-wielding member of the UNSC, the entire responsibility to act on threats to peace lies with the ICC. The ICC Prosecutor has full authority to &qout;initiate investigations proprio motu.&qout; The ICC Statute says &qout;Under the Rome Statute, individuals or organizations may submit to the Prosecutor information on crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court ('communications'). The Prosecutor shall analyze the information to determine whether there is a basis to launch an investigation.&qout; Unlike any other country in the world and unlike any other time in history, the United States under the Bush administration has openly and publicly claimed for itself the right to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon countries at the sole discretion of one person, the president, and has engaged in preparations to that effect. If a large enough number of concerned individuals and organizations provide input to the ICC Prosecutor and ask him to launch an investigation on the threat of nuclear weapons use by the United States that could ultimately lead to widespread nuclear genocide, Dr. Luis Moreno Ocampo may be inclined to act on the matter and indict U.S. members of Congress for their failure to legislate, thereby prompting these legislators to come to their senses and act before it is too late. The ICC Office of the Prosecutor e-mail address is otp.informationdesk@icc-cpi.int, tel.: +31 70 515 85 15, fax 31 70 5158555, postal: International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor, Post Office Box 19519, 2500 CM The Hague, The Netherlands. Eisenhower's Mistake: Breakdown At The Iraq Lie Factory There is, of course, no basis for arguing that the civil war in Iraq is caused by Iran. And there is no basis—“not supported by underlying intelligence,” as the Pentagon I.G. said about Doug Feith’s 2002&npsp; work—to argue that Iran is responsible for a significant part of American deaths in Iraq. Nearly all of the U.S. casualties in Iraq are caused by the secular-Baathist Sunni-led resistance and religious Sunni extremists&npsp;fighting the occupation, and none of the forces allied with the resistance have ties to Iran. Even the anonymous briefers at the dog-and-camel show in Baghdad admitted that Iran is helping the Shiite militias, not the Sunnis; in other words, Iran is helping the self-same militias that are being trained and armed by the United States. And the spurious claim that 170 Americans have died in attacks using Iranian-supplied super-IED’s since 2004 can only mean one thing: that the Pentagon is counting the numbers of U.S. soldiers and Marines who died in April and August, 2004. That was when the United States waged two mini-wars against Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. It was the only time in the past four years when the United States suffered significant casualties fighting the Shiites—though the administration presented zero evidence that Sadr’s Mahdi Army gets weapons from Iran, or needs to. But if they’re counting as far back as 2004—and, according to the Pentagon, the super-IED’s started showing up in 2004—then the whole issue is absurd, since what happened three years ago has little or no relevance to current conditions Neo-cons pull their punches on Iran Despite the sharply rising tensions between Iran and the US over the past month, for example, the lead editorials of the past four issues of the Standard - always a reliable indication of neo-con priorities - were all devoted to rallying lawmakers behind the surge. This is suggested by their titles: &qout;All we are saying .. is give [General David] Petraeus [the new Iraq commander] a chance&qout; (January 29); &qout;Not this time: Don't give up when victory is at hand&qout; (February 5); &qout;A terrible ignominy: How many Republicans will desert the troops&qout; (February 12); and &qout;The GOP's [Republicans'] moment of truth: You get no credit for timidity&qout; (February 19). THE BBC AND THE 'HARMLESS' HEAT-RAY Westhead's piece (although his name had now disappeared) also included this disturbing comment: &qout;The weapon could potentially be used for dispersing hostile crowds in conflict zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan.&qout; Why not also in Britain and America, if the weapon is &qout;harmless&qout;? Useful Questions And Their Significance In the meantime, Richard Moyes of Landmine Action had sent us &qout;questions (with explanations of their significance) [that] could be usefully asked regarding the heat-ray weapon&qout;. The questions were posed by Juergen Altmann, a physicist from the university of Dortmund specialising in unconventional weapon technologies: &qout;What is the beam power (in watts or kilowatts)? Beam power is one of the most basic parameters, it seems that it has not been made public so far. &qout;What is the intensity (in kW/m2 or W/cm2) at e.g. 30, 100, 300, 700 m? Intensity is decisive for the rate of heating (how many seconds until pain sets in, until pain is at maximum, until burns of 2nd, 3rd degree develop). It seems that this distance-dependent quantity has not been made public so far. After which time (a few seconds) are the pain threshold (skin temperature about 44°C) and the maximum pain (skin temperature about 54°C) reached (at some typical distance, e.g. 300 m)? Context obvious.
Until the War Ends ... Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq Of course, Kerr and his Baghdad black-op crew are not alone in the double-dealing world of Iraqi counterinsurgency. The Pentagon's ever-expanding secret armies are deeply enmeshed in such efforts as well. As Sy Hersh has reported (&qout;The Coming Wars,&qout; New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005), after his re-election in 2004, George W. Bush signed a series of secret presidential directives that authorized the Pentagon to run virtually unrestricted covert operations, including a reprise of the American-backed, American-trained death squads employed by authoritarian regimes in Central and South America during the Reagan Administration, where so many of the Bush faction cut their teeth. &npsp;&npsp;&npsp;&npsp;&qout;Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?&qout; a former high-level intelligence official said to Hersh. &qout;We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it.&qout; A Pentagon insider added: &qout;We're going to be riding with the bad boys.&qout; Another role model for the expanded dirty war cited by Pentagon sources, said Hersh, was Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created their own terrorist groups to confuse and discredit the insurgency, and killed thousands of innocent civilians in quashing the uprising. &npsp;&npsp;&npsp;&npsp;Bush's formal greenlighting of the death-squad option built upon an already securely-established base, part of a larger effort to turn the world into a &qout;global free-fire zone&qout; for covert operatives, as one top Pentagon official told Hersh. For example, in November 2002 a Pentagon plan to infiltrate terrorist groups and &qout;stimulate&qout; them into action was uncovered by William Arkin, then writing for the Los Angeles Times. The new unit, the &qout;Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group,&qout; was described in the Pentagon documents as &qout;a super-Intelligence Support Activity&qout; that brings &qout;together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception.&qout; &npsp;&npsp;&npsp;&npsp;Later, in August 2004, then deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz appeared before Congress to ask for $500 million to arm and train non-governmental &qout;local militias&qout; to serve as U.S. proxies for &qout;counter-insurgency and &qout;counterterrorist&qout; operations in &qout;ungoverned areas&qout; and hot spots around the world, Agence France Presse (and virtually no one else) reported at the time. These hired paramilitaries were to be employed in what Wolfowitz called an &qout;arc of crisis&qout; that just happened to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America. &npsp;&npsp;&npsp;&npsp;By then, the Bush Administration had already begun laying the groundwork for an expanded covert war in the hot spot of Iraq. In November 2003, it created a &qout;commando squad&qout; drawn from the sectarian militias of five major Iraqi factions, as the Washington Post reported that year. Armed, funded and trained by the American occupation forces, and supplied with a &qout;state-of-the-art command, control and communications center&qout; from the Pentagon, the new Iraqi commandos were loosed on the then-nascent Iraqi insurgency - despite the very prescient fears of some U.S. officials &qout;that various Sunni or Shiite factions could eventually use the service to secretly undermine their political competitors,&qout; as the Post noted. Republic or Empire Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire. Several factors, however, indicate that this course will be a brief one, which most likely will end in economic and political collapse. Military Keynesianism: The imperial project is expensive. The flow of the nation's wealth—from taxpayers and (increasingly) foreign lenders through the government to military contractors and (decreasingly) back to the taxpayers—has created a form of “military Keynesianism,” in which the domestic economy requires sustained military ambition in order to avoid recession or collapse. The Unitary Presidency: Sustained military ambition is inherently anti-republican, in that it tends to concentrate power in the executive branch. In the United States, President George W. Bush subscribes to an esoteric interpretation of the Constitution called the theory of the unitary executive, which holds, in effect, that the president has the authority to ignore the separation of powers written into the Constitution, creating a feedback loop in which permanent war and the unitary presidency are mutually reinforcing. Failed Checks on Executive Ambition: The U.S. legislature and judiciary appear to be incapable of restraining the president and therefore restraining imperial ambition. Direct opposition from the people, in the form of democratic action or violent uprising, is unlikely because the television and print media have by and large found it unprofitable to inform the public about the actions of the country's leaders. Nor is it likely that the military will attempt to take over the executive branch by way of a coup. Bankruptcy and Collapse: Confronted by the limits of its own vast but nonetheless finite financial resources and lacking the political check on spending provided by a functioning democracy, the United States will within a very short time face financial or even political collapse at home and a significantly diminished ability to project force abroad. &npsp; Ersatz Apocalypto: Slaughter and Spin in the Battle for Najaf It is No Use Blaming Iran for the Insurgency in Iraq Criminals Control the Executive Branch Helping Israel Die Thelma and Louise Imperialism: Over the cliff with George and Dick? Will the Watada Mistrial Spark an End to the War? The Rise of Christian Fascism and Its Threat to American Democracy Bush Budget Delivers the Bacon President Bush’s outrageous military budget has nothing do with fighting terrorism but everything to do with pumping up the profits of the administration’s generous political donors in the defense industry. So, the question is: Will the Democrats have the guts to stop this betrayal of the public trust? 7 GOP Senators Back War Debate By Shailagh Murray - Washington Post - February 8, 2007 US ex-generals reject Iran attack Who's Counting: How Iraq Trillion Could Have Been Spent Next on Bush's 'Hit List'
&qout;In the State of the Union Address last night, the President called out Iran no less than seven times. &qout;Was this speech the first step in an effort to blame all that has gone wrong in the Middle East on Iran? Was the focus on Iran during the President’s address an attempt to link Iran to the war on terrorism, and by extension, start building a case that our response to the 9/11 attacks must include dealing with Iran? &qout;I fear that the machinery may have already been set in motion which may ultimately lead to a military attack inside Iran, or perhaps Syria, despite the opposition of the American people, many in Congress, and even some within his Administration. &qout;Today I am introducing a resolution that clearly states that it is Congress, not the President, that is vested with the ultimate decision on whether to take this country to war against another country. This resolution is a rejection of the bankrupt, dangerous, and unconstitutional doctrine of preemption, which proposes that the President may strike another country before it threatens us. &qout;If there exists a reckless determination for a new war in the Middle East, I fear that the attorneys of the Executive Branch are already seeking ways to tie this war to the use of force resolution for Iraq, or the resolution passed in response to 9/11. &qout;But the American people need only be reminded about the untruths of Iraq’s supposed ties to the 9/11 attacks so see how far the truth can be stretched in order to achieve the desired outcome. &qout;If the Executive Branch were to try to prod, stretch, or rewrite the 9/11 or the Iraq use of force resolutions in an outrageous attempt to apply them to an attack on Iran, Syria, or anywhere else, this resolution is clear: the Constitution says that Congress, not the President, must make the decision for war or peace. &qout;The power to declare war resides in Congress, and it is we – the elected representatives of the people – who are the &qout;deciders.&qout; Next target Tehran
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