Louise,

regarding your most recent comment on Obama’s AIPAC Speech…have a look when you have time, at this piece by Michael Carmichael, at globalresearch. I wish I could send you my adobe copy, since I’ve marked if for review on the points that really give me a serious sort of deja vu. But, I don’t know how to do that through the PM system.

Anyway, it’s semi-lengthy. (6-7 pages) but it’s very revealing, and like I said, just sort of gave me a feeling like, OOOKAY..this is what I’ve been thinking.

Anyway, here’s the link for when you have time. I posted it about a week or so ago, but I’ve noticed since the new ‘set-up’ here, that comments drop off after a page.

The url address of this article is: http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleI d=9436

No I don’t get it in regards to the Zionists. They’re to much like all the other mosquitoes. I don’t get killing and stealing and terrorism in the name of God, no matter who does it! Us, them or all thems ... I don’t get it!

I get that the Israeli War Party and the Republican War Party are in bed together. And I think Obama gets that too. But there isn’t a whole lot he can do about it until he’s president and we have a complete Democrat Congress, making stalls and filibusters almost impossible.

I’ve listened several times to Obama’s speech at AIPAC, trying to figure out what exactly first made me so angry. His story about visiting the village where Jews and Christians and Muslims live together in peace was touching. I can understand where he’s coming from on that. I think what made me angry was the fact that he didn’t mention the suffering in Palestine, except peripherally. And he should have. But there is the possibility that he doesn’t know the whole story. Who does? In this country mainstreammedia does not recognize Palestine exists, so maybe he honestly doesn’t know. But he is a good listener. I think he can be made to understand.

By the way, his comments about the people he met in Israel reminds me of some of the comments Ahmadinejad has made. I think if Obama sits down with the leaders of the Islamic Republic, we might be surprised at the good that will come out of that. Assuming Bush doesn’t start World War Three before Obama has a chance. And given Iran’s Oil Bourse trading in the euro is official now, maybe that will happen very soon.

God, if there is a God, will you please sit Georgie down and explain to him, war like oil, is stinky dirty stuff. Especially when it’s being managed by a moron!

If the idea was to get everything wrong, he got the right advice. Which leads me to reason God had nothing to do with it. At least not THAT god. [Assuming there is a God.]

Fadel, Ernest,

Just got a chance to check in and read both the pieces from cann4ing and Writer. Indeed, excellent. Needless to say, I can’t provide cann4ings permission to use his stuff, but I can send you some other stuff from Professor Zimbardo, since you might be interested in all of his work. (you know my basic area, so it’s obviously included.) Just depends on how much of it you can take at once I guess, seeing as how one probably has to be a tad bit weird to study the details of stuff like torture and massive crimes against humanity…indeed, my group of academic colleagues is small..I do understand).

This is one of the main components that Ernest mentions here. It comes up again and again in studying various Authoritarian regimes..

•  “The dramatic impact of dehumanization found its embodiment in the testimony of Vietnam Vet Scott Camile’s Feb. 1971 testimony at the first “Winter Soldier” hearings in Philadelphia.”

It’s the dehumanization that does it nearly every time. There must ALWAYS be an established ‘enemy’, real or perceived, and then the process it to simply dehumanize them in the way that is described. So, let me know if any of that might help you. (and not depress you even more). Most of what I have is my own work, but it’s only been critiqued by my own mentors/professors. (even though that alone says a lot. They’re really smart). Still, it would be good to have another take here or there.

Speaking of which. Remember Nabih Ammari? He posted here for quite some time, and finally got disgusted and stopped when people were being censored. It’s just as well I suppose, since he’d really be annoyed by some of this most recent stuff. Anyway, I said that to say that I just received several reports from him via US postal mail that are excellent. All journal articles from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and they are surprisingly frank and honest about the real situations there, specifically with Israel. (I say ‘surprisingly, just because they are from the “Washington” Report, and so I just automatically assume that if it’s got anything to do with “Washington” it’s not going to be truthful. That’s terrible of course, because I should know better, and I usually do. It’s just that this environment…well, you know.

Anyway, one is a UN report, “Straight-Speaking Under Secretary-General Pascoe Detailed and Damning.” By Ian Williams. This is just the first paragraph…

“It is almost an axiom of Middle Eastern politics that, except for American politicians, Israeli politicians and their behavior will eventually exasperate anyone, no matter how sympathetic they were to start with. Ban Ki Moon, who for the first six months or so of his secretary-generalship did not utter a word of condemnation, has now begun to realize just how unsupportable Israeli tactics are.”

That’s just one, and he’s sent 3 or 4 others. I like wouldn’t have seen them otherwise. In fact, I KNOW I wouldn’t have. So, let me know if you or anyone else is interested. I would send them via email or PM.

Meantime, I got sidetracked because of the Zimbardo discussion. I just wanted to throw in my agreement with Ernest that it IS a pathology that affects people like Dan. He’s definitely not the only one, and it’s not just military either. We see it on this thread all the time. Just witnessing/reading such pathology is unsettling.

There’s a documentary film entitled “The Road to Abu Ghraib”, that does basically this same thing. It includes interviews with several of the soldiers/marines involved in that abuse, including the one that blew the whistle on it. Very informative.

Louise:  You obviously get it in regards to the zionists.  Why then, after hearing obama’s speech in front of them vowing to do anything to protect them against big bad iran do you still support this slimy snake oil salesman? Simply because he’s not a republican? How is he different?

which the Washington Post has ably done on its front webpage to day.

The nation’s primo newpaper has began publishing an incisive and hopefully decisive investigation of the murder of a, ” 24-year-old woman from California, with hazel eyes and a head full of unruly brown curls. Ten years ago she had left her Dupont Circle apartment and then simply disappeared. Her name Chandra Levy. She had been missing for 85 days, and the search for her had captivated the city and the nation. Her laptop computer’s history showed that she was interested in visiting the vast 1,750-acre park on the day she vanished”.

This investigation by WP’s staff will be serialized for another 12 reports
detailing their findings. On this the same day The Times of London carried an extensive reportage about what Bush told Israel what to do in pre-preparation of attacking Iran with the proviso that Israel is on its own period.

Other European outlets reported on the increasing casualties suffered by specifically US forces in Afghanistan. Today’s number of dead US military is put at 9.

Whats my purpose in writing the above? The fact that Washington, DC’s main media is agog with the a ten year old murder or suicide of an intern with the name Chondra Levy. So my question is whats more important, distabelizing Iraq or stabilizing DC first?

mrmb: Hard to know what to do.  Whatever we do, we must do it in large numbers to have any effect.  The mainscream media barely covered the huge worldwide protest prior to the iraq war.  As they say, if it isn’t on tv it didn’t happen.

Take the mosquito. Some of them carry serious disease and some of them don’t, but all of them are annoying little blood-suckers. So we need to develop the perfect weapon to bring them under control.

Awe I have it! Missiles!

‘Course you might blow up a few neighbors houses - and neighbors, but think about the advantage. Maybe those missiles might knock off one or two mosquitoes in the process!

Speaking of missiles, I read the missiles Iran test-fired are not capable of reaching Israel, but they sure are capable of reaching the Green Zone. How about that? Bush and Gates are so worried about Israel, they haven’t mentioned the threat, if indeed there is a threat, to our kids in Baghdad. Guess it’s all a matter of “values.”

Speaking of values, does anyone really believe when Bush decided to attack Iraq, and get Saddam it was because he “valued” Iraqi citizens lives, or rights?

Likewise, does anyone really believe Israel’s war party is demanding (DEMANDING! Like who do they think they are anyway?) We attack Iran, because they value the lives and rights of those folks living on that sliver of sand we call Israel? 

Lets face it, the hold Israel has over the American population defies understanding. Certainly defies explanation.

Could it be they’re really ticked about getting stuck on that tiny bit of sand and dirt that no thinking person would want to live on? Forget about the “bible” stories, and the holy land, and gods promise to the children of Israel. Forget all that stuff, unless you want to really study bible history. ‘Cause that man called “Israel” was promised “his” seed would be in “all” the children of the Earth. And the Earth would be given to his seed, and that would be ALL of us. So what the H*E*double*Q are we fighting over anyway?

The same thing fighting is always over. Somebody wants something that belongs to somebody else - duh.

Meanwhile, did anyone read the report that Ahmadinejad has no wish to attack Israel?
http://www.davidduke.com/general/paranoid-zionist-warm ongering-driving-up-the-price-of-oil-while-25000-jews-live- peacefully-in-iran-ron-paul-comments_4091.html

“President Ahmadinejad said that the Islamic Republic has never waged war against any nation and does not intend to do so, adding that Israel is not an exception to this policy. “The regime will disintegrate on its own. Since Zionists can no longer sustain themselves, they have been forced to draw attention away from their present situation by blaming Iran. Iran has no plans to attack Israel.” He said.

Ahmadinejad noted that Jewish people amicably live in the Islamic Republic, are free to practice their religion, and despite being a small minority have a representative in the Iranian Parliament.

~~~

Oh my, another duh ... The oil bomb!

“Iran has really gone and done it now. No, they haven’t sent their first nuclear sub into the Persian Gulf. They are about to launch something much more deadly. ” next week the Iran Bourse will open to trade oil, not in dollars but in Euros.”
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily -english-online/Opinions/Columns/13-Jul-2008/The-oil-bomb

louis, there is no evidence that Iran & Iraq desire to “destroy Israel.”  The recent missile tests are a form of defensive posturing—a statement that an unprovoked Israeli strike would generate a response—this after ongoing provocation and threats from both the U.S. and Iran and illegal covert actions inside Iran via support by the U.S. for the radical MEK as part of a goal of regime change.

It never ceases to amaze how individuals like yourself can only find bad intentions in the other side—never in our own.

mrmb: I know.  Maybe one of the stifled ones will grow some courage and speak out? Ya think? Is there a Smedley Butler amongst them? Probably not. But right now, that seems to be our only hope.

I meant who AREN’T bushies… sorry

mrmb:  You think there is even the slightest chance there are ANY high ranking officers left in the military who are bushies that will refuse to be suckered into this thing?

We know black ops have been doing their dirty business in Iran for some time now. We know the invasion of Iran was part of the pnac plan. Their map of conquest includes the entire middle east. They intend to stop at nothing and Israel is their propeller, cheerleader and not so silent sidekick. 

The question is what false flag will they perpetrate to light the power keg? Any guesses?

Fadel, my message to you at the e-mail address was returned as undeliverable.  Please submit your permission request to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and I will send the reply.

Thank you Fadel & Writer for your kind words.  I concur with Writer’s post but would add that what is often described as “terrorism” by the powerful who possess the means to rein terror on civilian populations through massive bombardment (as occurred when the Nazis bombed Guernica and again when the Americans reduced Falluja to rubble) to describe guerrilla warfare, the only viable tactic available to an inferior force. 

Here, in the U.S., where the bulk of what we see, hear and read is controlled by corporations with a vested interest in the extension of U.S. imperialism, the definition of who is or is not a terrorist is one provided by what U.S. officials say, so that, for example, any attack by Palestinians on Israelis is labeled “terrorist” while Israel’s wholesale slaughter of civilians as a result of its brutal 40-year occupation goes largely unreported.

Remarkably, coverage is far less biased in the Israeli press.  Take, for example, the 10/17/04 Haaretz article by Gideon Levy “Killing Children is No Longer a Big Deal” which was reprinted in Norm Finkelstein’s “Beyond Chutzpah.”  Levy observed that 30 Palestinian children were killed in the first two weeks of Operation Days of Penitence in Gaza; that, per B’Tselem, before that operatino 557 Palestinian minors were killed as compared to 110 Israeli minors.
The victims included 8 two year olds.  Also killed were 13 newborn infants who died at checkpoints during births.

Levy poignantly observed:  “With horrific statistics like this, the question of who is a terrorist should have long since become very burdensome for every Israeli.  Yet it is not on the public agenda.  Child killers are always Palestinians, the soldiers always only defend us and themselves, and the hell with the statistics.”

For many, like Dan, the emotionalism of the word “terrorism” gets caught up in the objectification of the “enemy” through the process of dehumanization.  Despite the writings of numerous Muslim scholars to the effect that the tactics of al Qaeda are an affront to Islam, Dan sees only a “battle with Islam.”  It doesn’t occur to Dan that Tim McVeigh, the man responsible for the worst domestic terrorist incident in the U.S., was a Christian—the thought of a “battle with Christianity” because of it would not so much as creep into his thoroughly brainwashed mind.

Whether done by guerrilla forces or organized armies, killing is killing.  As I stated in an earlier post, the best wars are the ones that never have to be fought.

By cann4ing, July 9 at 4:15 pm #

Fadel, I believe it more scientific to describe Dan’s hatred of Arabs and Muslims to be a form of “pathology” rather than “evil.”
=============================
Thank you dear cann4ing for your highly learned and well-articulated response to Dan’s. I am glad that you decided to respond to him at length, rather than ignoring him as I suggested. Yours is a piece I’ll cherish as one of the best pieces I read on the subject, and therefore I ask your permission to share it with other educators who are working on fighting bigotry, stereotypes and deceptive misinformation. I even think that your piece is worth being published in a book on this subject which I am currently gathering material for. Please give me your permission by writing to me at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Again I do appreciate all the effort and relevant material you included in your highly educated piece. It’s people like you that can make a difference in making this world more peaceful for everyone. And may our misguided fellow citizen Dan see the light as a result of what you wrote!

Cann4ing’s nimble response to Mr Murphy’s rant is certainly more informed than mine would have been, but there is an argument in Murphy’s comment that I haven’t heard before, and which I feel should be specifically redressed.

Murphy boldly claims that, since other terrorist attacks have been committed against “countries that are not imperial in nature”, therefor the theory of blow back is invalid. Well Dan, I’m afraid it is your argument that is, as you say, astoundingly idiotic.

Terrorism is a method of warfare currently engaged in by people from every religious and political stripe, from christian capitalists to godless communists. There is no ‘them’ in the term ‘terrorist’, despite the clumsy efforts of some to imply it. The terrorists in India, Thailand etc.,  are completely different people with completely different issues than those who committed the 9/11 crimes, who are themselves completely different from those committing crimes in Bagdhad. who are again completely different from - well you get the idea. One would have to determine the exact reasons for each crime of terrorism committed in each respective country to know if blow back was involved.

In practical usage, the term ‘terrorism’ is mostly utilized by political leaders to mean “people who are crazy and should be swatted like flies because they have absolutely no legitimate gripe against us.” When you watch western leaders go before the media to decry the evil terrorists, Dan, remember that what you are actually seeing is a concerted effort to arrest any substantive public debate about foreign policy.

This is not an easy notion for some to grasp, especially since many who engage in terrorist methods are at the same time invoking strong religious beliefs in order to bolster the convictions of their followers. But make no mistake about it—many of the groups regarded by mainstream America as wild eyed religious zealots, are in fact far more politically driven than our leaders would have us believe. Both Hezbollah and Hamas, for example, are first and foremost political organizations.

It’s much easier to dismiss the grievances of others when we think of them as ‘other’. It may be sociology 101, but unfortunately every self serving politician knows it has a powerful effect on people like Dan.

In furtherance of my last post, Fadel, I believe that Dan suffers from what Professor Phillip Zimbardo, citing Sam Keen “Faces of the Enemy” described as a “hostile imagination” which “is created by virtually every nation’s propaganda on its path to war….”

“The process,” Zimbardo says, “begins with stereotyped conceptions of the other,...conceptions of the other as worthless, the other as all-powerful,...the other as a fundamental threat to our cherished values and beliefs.  With public fear notched up and enemy threat imminent, reasonable people act irrationally, independent people act in mindless conformity, and peaceful people act as warriors.  Dramatic visual images of the enemy on posters, television, magazine covers, movies, and the internet imprint on the recesses of the limbic system, the primitive brain, with the powerful emotions of fear and hate.”

The dramatic impact of dehumanization found its embodiment in the testimony of Vietnam Vet Scott Camile’s Feb. 1971 testimony at the first “Winter Soldier” hearings in Philadelphia.  After he described how members of his unit, in the presence of a Lt. Col. beheaded two people, leaving their heads on stakes in the middle of a field, Camile was asked whether the men in his unit felt they could do anything they wanted to the Vietnamese, Camile replied:  “It wasn’t like they were humans, like we were—you know, we were conditioned to believe that…this was for the good of our country, and anything we did was okay.  And like, when you shot someone, you didn’t think you were shooting a human.  They were a gook or a Commie, and it was okay.”

Aside from the rare sociopath, people are not inherently evil.  It is “the process of dehumanization,” Prof. Zimbardo states, “by which certain other people or collectives of them are depicted as less than human….”  This is “one of the central processes in the transformation of ordinary, normal people into indifferent or even wanton perpetrators of evil…a ‘cortical cataract’ that clouds one’s thinking and fosters the perception that the other people are less than human…to see…others as the enemies deserving of torment, torture, and even annihilation.”

History’s most abhorrent example, the “final solution,” was not the product of some inherent psychological deficiency in the German people.  To the contrary, as Zimbardo forcefully points out, it was the product of a deliberate campaign carried out in newspapers, on radio, in required texts of school children, and even in comic books, which “sought to create the perception of Jews as a sub-human race that was a threat to the national state.”

Go back and again read the passages from Dan’s rant on Islam, and then ask yourself, do these contain the very characteristics of dehumanization, the “cortical cataract” that Prof. Zimbardo describes?  I think the answer obvious—they do.

Fadel, I believe it more scientific to describe Dan’s hatred of Arabs and Muslims to be a form of “pathology” rather than “evil.” 

Jack Shaheen, a Professor Emeritus of Mass Communications at So. Ill. Univ. studied how Arabs were depicted in more than 1,000 movies dating back to the first silent films of the 1880s.  His results were published both in a book and documentary, “Reel Bad Arabs:  How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” which was summarized in an “Egypt Today” review. 

Hollywood employs “the generic ‘Ali Baba kit’ comprising of lecherous, barbaric Arab men flanked by erotic belly dancers.”  Just as African Americans during the Jim Crow era were cast as lusting after white women, these early films depicted the “prize of every Sheikh’s harem” as “the abducted American woman who bravely fights off her sinister master’s sexual advances.”

These disparaging images morphed into a more sinister caricature of Arabs after WW II.  As explained by “Egypt Today,” “Hollywood’s epic battles between good and evil.  Arabs and Muslims make some of the best generic villains.  These are bad guys are one-dimensional killers, bloodthirsty and often fanatically religious or nationalistic terrorists…When Arabs and Muslims are not terrorizing Americans or kidnapping their women; they are buying up the country and being the source of America’s economic troubles.”

In the 1970s movie, Network, nutty newsman Howard Beal shouts:  “Listen to me, God damn it!  The Arabs are simply buying us!  There’s only one thing that can stop them!  You!”

“This kind of anger,” Shaheen observes, “the anger born of fear, all of it in response to a perceived conspiracy and threat by a specific group of people, well, we’ve seen and heard this before.  If we look at the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazis, at is core is an identical type of economic threat.”

While Don Imus was dismissed by MSNBC for disparaging the Rutgers’ women’s basketball players as “nappy-headed hos,” and rightly so, American media pundits regularly disparage Arabs, even call for their wholesale slaughter, and, almost universally, they do so without adverse repercussions to their careers.

It is this backdrop that explains our “Dan.”

Dan, getting angry does not make your arguments persuasive.  I’d suggest several volumes of material for your reading, such as books by Chalmers Johnson, Noam Chomsky, Carl Boggs or Norman Solomon, but it is clear from the content of your tirade that you, like so many other brainwashed Americans, are the product of a culture that has so thoroughly imbued with anti-Muslim & anti-Arab propaganda, that it would be pointless to try to pierce your dense layer of dehumanization.

As to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, tell me, Dan, what is it you so admire?  The needless deaths of more than one million Iraqis, not to mention 4,200 of our own troops, the maiming and permanent disfigurement of tens of thousands more, the displacement of 4 million Iraqis, 2 million in exile, the three trillion that has poured out of our national treasury and into the coffers of KBR, Blackwater or the other war profiteers in the military-industrial complex, the slick way in which the Bush cabal privatized Iraq’s economy, placing it in the hands of U.S.-led, multi-national corporations, or the sweetheart oil deals that Chevron, Exxon-Mobil & BP are obtaining?  Or do you just enjoy seeing Arabs stripped naked, cringing from snarling dogs or drowning as they are subjected to waterboarding? 

Perhaps it is the massacres of entire families in Haditha or, as related by returning U.S. soldiers at the recent Winter Soldier hearings, the many more innocent Iraqis needlessly gunned down at checkpoints by soldiers whose level of dehumanization is so deep they simply refer to them as Hajis or rag heads—just as many of my fellow soldiers referred to the Vietnamese as “Gooks”?

Now, I don’t know for sure Dan, but I suspect that your praise for this war of aggression stems from the fact that you, like so many of the rest of the chicken hawk neocons, never served in a war—you know like your hero, George W. Bush whose daddy pulled strings to get him a position guarding the skies of Texas—at least until he went AWOL, or five-deferment who had more important things to do than serve alongside myself and other grunts in Vietnam.  There is no glory in war, Dan.  Only gruesome death, destruction and suffering.  You cannot praise this war of choice without denying your own humanity, Dan.

Don’t worry cann4ing! Evil, like everything else, seeks company! So evil Blackspeare company comes from a new little devil who calls himself Dan Murphy!

My friendly advise is not to bother responding to them; let them be consumed by their evil!

That’s easy, Writer, they would simply dismiss the offer as a publicity stunt and carry on with their true aim—regime change.

I wonder how our leaders would react if Iran made the offer of complete capitulation and cooperation with the west vis a vis it’s nuclear development in exchange for Israel returning to the 1967 borders?

Ah, another post from TD’s resident evil that goes by the handle Blackspeare.  Last time he was extolling virtues of torture.  This time he is extolling the virtues of state terrorism conducted under the auspices of “proxy” wars.  He acknowledges that the same CIA-funded and armed Mujahideen whom Pres. Reagan referred to as “freedom fighters” when they were fighting the Soviets would later morph into al-Qaeda but brushes this aside as simply “the law of unintended consequences”—that is what the CIA refers to as “blow back.” 

It doesn’t seem to dawn on Blackspeare that 9/11 and the death of more than 3,000 of our citizens was the blow back for past imperial policies in the Middle East, just as he cannot see that the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, as well as the enmity between Iran and the U.S. over the past thirty years is a form of blow back that dates back to the 1953 CIA-engineered coup that removed the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq and brought in the murderous regime of the Shah—an action that benefited U.S. & UK oil companies but certainly not the American people.  The MEK strategy could well create new generations of terrorists and next time the blow back could be worse—e.g., one involving a suitcase sized nuclear bomb which a trillion dollar missile defense shield would be incapable of intercepting.

No Blackspeare, you are flat out wrong.  The best war is not a proxy war.  The best war is the war that it never waged.  War is not the answer!

Undermining adversarial governments by assisting internal dissidents is the best way to go——you lose no one.  Take the example of Afghanistan under the Soviets; by arming, training, and financing the Mujahideen they were able to force the Russians to withdraw with no involvement of US forces.  Of course, the Mujahideen morphed into the Taliban and then into al-Qaeda, but that’s the law of unintended consequences and the fault of the US for not following through after the Russians left and allowing Afghanistan to become lawless.

Let the Iranian Mujahideen MEK and others destabilize the Mullahs with covert outside assistants and hope for the best.  In other words let the Persians fight among themselves as we should have done in Iraq——it couldn’t have been worse.

The best wars are proxy wars and you may quote me on that!

Few simple observations on Patrick Cockburn’a piece:

1. Since the American invasion, and indefinitely as long as it continues, Iraq was never and will never be stabilized. So to talk about destabilization of Iraq if Iran is attacked is an irrelevant statement.

2. Of course attacking Iran would certainly make things threefold worse. So in light of this Cockburn’s piece just states the very obvious. So there is no originality or any thing that we don’t know in Cockbur’s piece.

3. Having said this, I liked the part of the article where he says “An embarrassing aspect of the American pin-prick war against Iran is that many of its instruments were previously on the payroll of Saddam Hussein.” Though again, these facts about American hypocrisy and continued dangerous shifting principles are also known to keen observers of the Middle East, many ignorant Americans do not know about these details. Therefore it’s good that Cockburn and others should be bringing them up, as often as possible, as part of the education of the ignorant masses. But alas! How many people in this so-called bastion of freedom and democracy care about free education?! You can judge by yourself: How many people comment on important news and articles on Truthdig, for example?! Twenty, thirty, seventy, a hundred! And in very rare cases close to one thousand, which, sadly, turn to be partisan duels between few people! In case you don’t know the population of the United States, we are some 300 million, mostly apolitical and undereducated about things the are matters of life and death for our existence! And that’s why cunning and opportunist politicians keep taking us for our unpleasant rides, knowing at the end that it’s the herd mentality that counts in this so-called great democracy of ours!

Get a good reason to attack and invade the M.E. en mass then seize power and control over the Oil fields?
Add Hagee’s sociopathic Armegeddon doctrine to justify it with religious Righteousness and Voila- you have a mandate from God!
This stratedgy was consciously chosen decades ago, it has just taken time to see it come to pass. The Oil industry ( with Cheney’s guidance & Political influence) has been working towards this totalitarian power structure via the MIC. 9/11 was an attack againt the MIC- Not US. They have been working hand & Hand with the ‘royals’ to secure rogue countries supplies- covertly, now overtly.
The majority of 9/11 ‘Terrorist’ were born & raised in Saudi Arabia, only going away to ‘college’ in Afghanistan.Why has the Saudi’s not been held responsible for their spawning of these ideologies, why have they not been added to the list of Harborers of Terrorist? Because they are the Bosses of the MIC.Bin Laden could Never surive in a cave- dialysis requires treatment at least weekly- he is being cared for where medical access is readily available and where they are not ‘looking’ for him.
At this point I am willing to place direct blame for 9/11 on Cheney & Co. as an intentional move to usurp U.S. Rsources and Power. The gutting of the Constitution alone is evidence of a Conspiracy.

Oh yeah Paolo,

We see the hypocrisy and cann4ing does a mini documentation of it quite nicely. In short, sometimes these groups (fill in the blanks for the names) are ‘terrorists’ and sometimes they’re ‘freedom fighters’.
Just depends on how accommodating they are to the US hegemonic goals of the US regime in charge at the moment.

Thing is, they’re playing with fire, because they don’t have a clue to the real ‘properties’ of any of these groups. That’s why these US supplied weapons fall into the hands of those who use them for genocide (or ethnic cleansing) within their own geographic areas.

Then again, I don’t know that this genocide/ethnic cleansing isn’t perfectly fine with the US regime. I think it is.

“The balancing act has become more difficult for Iraq since George Bush successfully requested $400m (£200m) from Congress last year to fund covert operations aimed at destabilising the Iranian leadership. Some of these operations are likely to be launched from Iraqi territory with the help of Iranian militants opposed to Tehran.”

So we have openly called for covert operations to destabilize a foreign country that has neither attacked nor threatened us. And, we will launch these operations from Iraqi territory?

Doesn’t anyone see the hypocrisy? The administration has been crying about Iranians interfering in Iraq (a charge that is unproved)! Imagine how we would react in the USA if we discovered covert operations designed to undermine our government!

What unbelievable hypocrites we have in Washington.

Mr. Cockburn writes, “An embarrassing aspect of the American pin-prick war against Iran is that many of its instruments were previously on the payroll of Saddam Hussein.”

Why should that be any more embarrassing than the fact that the elements of Mujahideen proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, including one Osama bin Laden, were receiving sophisticated weapons and financial support from the CIA?  Why is that any more embarrassing that the photos of Saddam and Rumsfield’s cozy little meeting during the Reagan administration?

Organizations are only labeled “terrorist” by the official source-dependent corporate media when they act contrary to the goals of U.S. imperial hegemony.  When the Contras were blowing up civilians in Nicaragua or when the same Mujahideen that later morphed into al Qaeda were fighting the Soviets they were called “freedom fighters.”  The same thing has occurred in Iraq where former Sunni resistance fighters, once labeled “terrorists,” have accepted huge sums of cash to supposedly fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, though most of the weaponry has been used for ethnic cleansing of Sunni neighborhoods as a counter part to ethnic cleansing in Shiite neighborhoods—a point documented by Rick Rowley of Big Noise films on Democracy Now, September 11, 2007.  In the Rowley short, American officers are depicted handing wads of cash to tribal leaders of the same Sunni militias who once attacked U.S. forces, the officers referring to them as “freedom fighters.”