Chris Floyd

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.
-- Shakespeare, Hamlet

Britain's "Chilcot Inquiry" into the origins of the invasion of Iraq has largely faded from the headlines, following Tony Blair's bravura display of pious bluster before the panel of Establishment worthies last month. And in truth, it has been a rather toothless affair, with the already deferential worthies further constrained by the narrow confines placed upon their investigation by the government: chiefly, the cloak of secrecy wrapped around the many documents that detail the deceptions and manipulations of the Bush and Blair regimes as they schemed their way to war.

But as Chris Ames points out in the Guardian, in the wind-up of its first phase, the Chilcot panel seem to be trying to tell the public, obliquely, about some of the smoking guns in these buried documents: an official record of knowing deceit that confirms, yet again, the damning fact that the US and UK were determined to invade Iraq no matter what: with or without UN backing, whether or not Iraq had WMD -- and as we have pointed out here for many years, even if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power. The documentary evidence shows that every single purported reason or justification for the war -- the WMD, connections to 9/11, the repressive nature of Saddam's regime -- was false to the core, and known to be false by the leaders who put these explanations forward.

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Stephen Lendman

On December 7, 2009, under the direction of Professor Mark Denbeaux, Seton Hall University School of Law's Center for Policy & Research (CP&R) published its 15th GITMO report titled, "Death in Camp Delta," covering three simultaneous deaths on June 9, 2006 in the maximum security Alpha Block. The detainees were found hanged in separate cells shortly after midnight on June 10, unobserved for at least two hours, rags stuffed down their throats, despite constant surveillance by five guards responsible for 28 inmates in a lit cell block monitored by video cameras. One of them was scheduled for release in 19 days, so why would he commit suicide?

The report found "dramatic flaws in the government's investigation (and) raise(s) serious questions about the security of the Camp (and) derelictions of duty by officials of multiple defense and intelligence agencies," who either let them die or killed them, then whitewashed the investigation to suppress it.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for “terrorists.” Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

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Len Hart

The establishment derides conspiracies and, for awhile, it was fashionable to deny the existence of 'conspiracies'. In fact, conspiracies are how things get done. Very little is accomplished by one person working alone. If what is to be accomplished is illegal, the 'conspiracy' is called a 'crime syndicate' or 'orgnized crime'.

If the 'conspiracy' in question is legal, however questionable, it is called a corporation or a business enterprise. Theorists on the high court have said corporations are people! But, should you call five idiots who have thus conspired to subvert the U.S. Constitution by the term 'conspirators', you are likely to be called a nut job! But SCOTUS believes mere words on paper is a real, living breathing person if it happens to have a seal on it supplied to you by the Delaware Secreatary of State! So --I ask you --who is nuts?

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Krista Kapralos

A village elder passes in front of the mud mosque in the village of
Welingare, Mali, in January 2007. (Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

Mali may be the boondocks of backwaters, but foreigners interested in oil, drugs, land, terrorists and souls are clamoring for a piece of it.

SEGOU, Mali —Usually, nothing much changes in this dust-choked West African city.

Families live in mud-built huts along the Niger River, where fishermen in paddle-powered boats cast nets for catfish and carp. The weekly market announces itself by sending out a pungent stench, from pile after pile of cured fish. Most of the traffic amounts to donkeys pulling precarious cart loads of millet and sheep; Men use switches, prods, and clubs, to spur the beasts forward. Segou is Mali’s second-largest city, but life here is stuck, in many ways, in a pre-modern era.

That’s why people here were flummoxed when, three years ago, Libyan leader Moammer Gadafi built a sleek concrete mosque large enough to hold 10,000 people near the city center.

In a region known among adventure travelers for towering mud mosques built generations ago, Gadafi’s mosque is like a gaudy costume necklace set in an antique jewelry box. But many Malians are delighted.

“It’s so beautiful that when I go inside, I’m inspired to be a better Muslim,” says Baaba Traore, 67. In a city perpetually coated with dust and goat dung, the mosque, protected by tall walls, is a clean oasis. The imam is chauffeured in a luxury car – a rare reminder for Malians that there is a world of riches beyond their rural fields.

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