James Abourezk

I picked up a copy of a memoir written by the long-gone CIA Director, George Tenet. On the first page of the book's preface, Mr. Tenet described what it was like on the day after the World Trade Towers had exploded as a result of the terrorists' actions on 9-11-01.

I quote Mr. Tenet here:

“All this weighed heavy on my mind as I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West Wing and saw Richard Perle exiting the building just as I was about to enter. Perle is one of the godfathers of the neoconservative movement and, at the time, was head of the Defense Policy Board, an independent advisory group attached to the Secretary of Defense. Ours was little more than a passing acquaintance. As the doors closed behind him, we made eye contact and nodded. I had just reached the door myself when Perle turned to me and said, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. 'They bear responsibility.' (Italics added).

“I was stunned but said nothing. Eighteen hours earlier, I had scanned passenger manifests for the four hijacked airplanes that showed beyond a doubt that al-Qa'ida was behind the attacks. Over the months and years to follow, we would carefully examine the potential of a collaborative role for state sponsors. The intelligence then and now, however, showed no evidence of Iraqi complicity."

The idea that George W. Bush's neocon advisers--Perle included--convinced him that the U.S. should invade Iraq received some attention after the Iraqi war started. But to my knowledge, no one, either in politics or the media, pressed the case too hard, lest they discover that those who wanted to invade Iraq had, not America's interest, but Israel's interest in mind.

There was never a threat to the United States from Saddam Hussein. He was a threat to his own people, but not to our country, a fact which became much more clear as the war went on. But Bush's critics stopped short of implicating Israel's interests as a reason for invading Iraq. A great many people believe, myself included, that Israel wanted Saddam out of the way because, while he was not really a military threat to Israel, he was a political threat. He was someone, like Hizbollah, who stood in the way of Israeli hegemony over the entire Middle East.

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Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood considers the deadly implications for humanity of US President Barack Obama’s decision to sell Israel nuclear materials and technology and to reaffirm “a four-decade-old secret understanding that allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, against the background of total congressional servitude to Israel.

I went cold, very cold, when I read in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that "the US has reportedly pledged to sell Israel ... nuclear technology and other supplies, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT].

"Other countries have refused to cooperate with Israel on nuclear matters because it has not signed the NPT, and there has been increasing international pressure for Israel to be more transparent about its nuclear arsenal."

Obama and Netanyahu also discussed the upcoming International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference on a nuclear-free Middle East, which was proposed during the 2010 NTP review conference in New York and which Netanyahu is refusing to attend because Israel would be singled out. Well, obviously.

So Obama thought it best put the toys back in Bibi's pram before he threw another tantrum. The two leaders agreed to work together to oppose efforts to single out Israel at the conference in September, in which case what will be the point of it?

In what many will see as a pact with the devil, Obama has emphasized that the US will cuddle up to Israel to "support our common efforts to strengthen international peace and stability" and ensure that arms control initiatives don’t rock the boat on Israel's precious security.

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Stephen Lendman

Jewish squatters on stolen Palstinian land. -Evidently not coy about it either.

B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, addressed it in its July 2010 report titled, "By Hook and By Crook: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank", ahead of a July 6 meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama, their fifth - a shameless love fest endorsing Israeli crimes, Obama saying Israel has "got to be able to respond to threats or any combination of threats in the region," ones it manufactures to pursue ruthless, lawless policies, nonviolent civilians the victims.

On July 5, Israeli National News.com writer Hillel Fendel headlined, "Timed to Sabotage," quoting Yesha Council (YC) head Danny Dayan calling B'Tselem "an anti-Zionist tool for the destruction of Israel," citing the report and its report release date as one example.

YC (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) is the successor to Gush Emunim ("Block of the Faithful"), the militant pro-settlement movement committed to Palestinian displacement, its members influential in Israeli politics, advocating a Greater Israel exclusively for Jews, its ideology based on religious zealotry, its members calling Cast Lead a religious war, its bogus justification for systemic violence, barbarism, military occupation, land theft, and efforts to silence truth.

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Matthew Harwood
t r u t h o u t report

In his fight against British imperialism, Mahatma Gandhi described the life cycle of successful civil disobedience: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mikey Weinstein, the 55-year-old founder of the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), likes to quote it, knowing full well he's crossed the line into a bloody-knuckle brawl. Over the past year, Weinstein and his organization have recorded a tremendous string of victories in the fight against Christian supremacists inside the armed forces.

In January, the MRFF broke the story on the Pentagon's Jesus Rifles, where rifle scopes used in Afghanistan and Iraq were embossed with New Testament verses. In April, he got the military to rescind its invitation to the Reverend Franklin Graham to speak at May's National Prayer Day because of Islamophobic remarks. Most shockingly, MRFF received its second nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in late October. These high-profile victories have earned him the enmity of the hardcore Christian Right and the mentally unstable. And the crazies are getting crazier. Weinstein and his family are bombarded with hate mail, from the grammatically incorrect and easy to dismiss - "I hope all your kids turn out gay as hell, take it in the ass, and get aids and die!!!!" - to the kind of threats that immediately make you leap out of your chair and double-check that the doors and windows are locked. (MRFF has referred multiple death threats on Mikey, his family, and MRFF employees to the FBI.)

Unlike Gandhi, Mikey's no pacifist. Aggression rises up in his voice like a white shark's fin breaks the waves. In a recent conversation, Mikey bragged how a punk wouldn't shut up in a movie. When a confrontation ensued and the man took a wild swing, Mikey put him down. None of this is surprising. Weinstein boxed during his Air Force days, his face marked by a strong jawline sitting below a bald head on top of a stocky body - a cross between Rocky Marciano and Butter Bean. Simply put: Mikey Weinstein can be a brute and a zealot. He knows this and admits it freely. But he believes it's the only position a reasonable person can take when confronted with a faction dedicated to mutating the U.S. military into "a weaponized Gospel of Jesus Christ."

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