So please tell me again: What’s the war about? By William Blum

Via: Anti-Empire Report.

When facts are inconvenient, when international law, human rights and history get in the way, when war crimes can’t easily be justified or explained away, when logic doesn’t help much, the current crop of American political leaders turns to what is now the old reliable: 9/11. We have to fight in Afghanistan because … somehow … it’s tied into what happened on September 11, 2001. Here’s Vice-President Joe Biden: “We know that it was from the space that joins Afghanistan and Pakistan that the attacks of 9/11 occurred.” ¹

Here’s Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC): “This is the place [Afghanistan] we were attacked from 9/11.” ²

Rep. Mike Pence, the third-ranking House Republican, asserted that the revelations in the Wikileaks documents do not change his view of the Afghan conflict, nor does he expect a shift in public opinion. “Back home in Indiana, people still remember where the attacks on 9/11 came from.” ³

Here’s President Obama a year ago: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.” ⁴

And here is the president, two days after the release of the Wikileaks documents, referring to Afghanistan and Pakistan as “the region from which the 9/11 attacks were waged and other attacks against the United States and our friends and allies have been planned”. ⁵

Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.

Never mind that the “plot to kill Americans” in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t Washington bombed those countries?

Indeed, what actually is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

Obama declares Gulf disaster “coming to an end”. By Tom Eley

Via: WSWS.

The Obama administration on Wednesday stepped up its efforts to declare the Gulf oil catastrophe at an end.

The public relations campaign, which is based on little scientific evidence, aims to bury the ongoing disaster in advance of the midterm elections, protect BP from further financial damages, and accelerate deep-sea oil drilling operations under the same environment of total deregulation that led to the April 20 blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig.

In the morning, the Obama administration’s National Incident Command issued a three-page report, entitled “BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget: What Happened to the Oil?,” that all but declared the blowout to be an insignificant event.

Hours later BP claimed success in its latest effort to seal the Macondo well. The “static kill” process of pumping heavy mud into the well’s blowout preventer worked, BP declared, paving the way for the completion of two relief wells later this month. It is impossible to independently verify BP’s claims.

Later in the day, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulators, appearing before a Congressional hearing, gave an ex post facto clean bill of health to the spill response’s heavy use of the chemical dispersant Corexit 9500, which is known to be highly toxic.

Finally, speaking to a convention of AFL-CIO officials on Wednesday, Obama hailed the latest developments and stated that “the long battle to stop the leak and contain the oil is finally close to coming to an end.”

Residents of the Gulf can only take Obama’s words and the day’s media events as an ominous warning. Cleanup operations, which BP has already begun to scale back, will soon enough be brought to a halt. The enormous dose of toxins dumped into the sea and on the coastline will be left to “Mother Nature,” as Obama environmental advisor Carol Browner put it. Workers who have lost their jobs and business owners who face bankruptcy will be left to their own devices. And the public health crisis—whose initial manifestation in sick cleanup workers has been largely hidden—will be denied.

On the other hand, all of the day’s events and pronouncements redound to the benefit of BP. The political purpose of the campaign was underlined by Senate Democrats’ abandonment of a bill that would have put in place new safety measures for offshore drilling and would have raised the federal liability cap on corporations responsible for oil spills, which is currently set at the absurdly low level of $75 million.

Palestine Takes Center Stage in the Antiwar Movement. By Andrew Pollack

Via: The Palestine  Chronicle.

Palestine is back at the heart of the antiwar movement.

The United National Antiwar Conference, attended by 850 people from July 23 to 25, 2010 in Albany, New York, marked a sea change in the attitude of the antiwar movement toward Palestine. For the first time a broadly representative, democratic national conference of peace activists adopted the demand “End All US Aid to Israel.” UNAC also endorsed the global BDS movement, committed itself to joining Palestine solidarity efforts around future flotillas, emergency responses to Zionist attacks, etc., and expressed its opposition to the US’s many-faceted complicity in Zionism’s various crimes. All of these positions were adopted in near-unanimous votes and in the face of attempts by a handful of delegates to water down or obstruct them.

This huge success follows on the heels of a similarly significant step forward at the US Social Forum. The resolutions passed at the USSF, which mirrored the positions adopted by UNAC, expressed the sentiment of the 15,000 activists in attendance from every social movement. But what is different about the UNAC votes is that they were taken on amendments to an omnibus Action Proposal calling for specific actions, foremost among them nationally-coordinated local antiwar actions in the fall, and national mobilizations in NY and SF in the spring. As such, UNAC has explicitly put Palestine at the center of those actions.

Obama Warned Israel May Bomb Iran

Via: Consortiumnews.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: War With Iran

We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war.

Israel’s leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel, no matter how the war started, and that U.S. troops and weaponry would flow freely. Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel.

This can be stopped, but only if you move quickly to pre-empt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens.

We believe that comments by senior American officials, you included, reflect misplaced trust in Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu.

Actually, the phrasing itself can be revealing, as when CIA Director Panetta implied cavalierly that Washington leaves it up to the Israelis to decide whether and when to attack Iran, and how much “room” to give to the diplomatic effort.

On June 27, Panetta casually told ABC’s Jake Tapper, “I think they are willing to give us the room to be able to try to change Iran diplomatically … as opposed to changing them militarily.”

Similarly, the tone you struck referring to Netanyahu and yourself in your July 7 interview with Israeli TV was distinctly out of tune with decades of unfortunate history with Israeli leaders.

“Neither of us try to surprise each other,” you said, “and that approach is one that I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to.” You may wish to ask Vice President Biden to remind you of the kind of surprises he has encountered in Israel.

Blindsiding has long been an arrow in Israel’s quiver. During the emerging Middle East crisis in the spring of 1967, some of us witnessed closely a flood of Israeli surprises and deception, as Netanyahu’s predecessors feigned fear of an imminent Arab attack as justification for starting a war to seize and occupy Arab territories.

We had long since concluded that Israel had been exaggerating the Arab “threat” — well before 1982 when former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin publicly confessed:

“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

Israel had, in fact, prepared well militarily and also mounted provocations against its neighbors, in order to provoke a response that could be used to justify expansion of its borders.

Given this record, one would be well advised to greet with appropriate skepticism any private assurances Netanyahu may have given you that Israel would not surprise you with an attack on Iran.

Netanyahu’s Calculations

Netanyahu believes he holds the high cards, largely because of the strong support he enjoys in our Congress and our strongly pro-Israel media. He reads your reluctance even to mention in controversial bilateral issues publicly during his recent visit as affirmation that he is in the catbird seat in the relationship.

During election years in the U.S. (including mid-terms), Israeli leaders are particularly confident of the power they and the Likud Lobby enjoy on the American political scene.

This prime minister learned well from Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon.

Netanyahu’s attitude comes through in a video taped nine years ago and shown on Israeli TV, in which he bragged about how he deceived President Clinton into believing he (Netanyahu) was helping implement the Oslo accords when he was actually destroying them.

Hiroshima: Where Mankind Managed to do More Than Death. By Prensa Latina

Via: PRAVDA.

The traveler who comes to the modern and populated city of Hiroshima, the Japanese island of Honshu, keeps marveling at the great wonders and sumptuous buildings, hotels and well defined avenues through which thousands of cars, buses, taxis and motorcycles pass. However, in the middle of this dazzling whirlwind the visitor cannot forget that it was the first martyr city virtually volatized for the sake of United States domination of the world.

This impact is received when visiting and traveling through the Park of Peace, the Museum of Victims and the eternal flame on the black cenotaph that inscribes the names of the victims of genocide by the White House to blackmail the world on 6 August 1945.

Precisely the geographical configuration of the city, the capital city of the same name, sunk between large mountains and hills enabled the B-26 bomber Enola Gay to enter by surprise by the sea and launch their deadly artifact jokingly dubbed by the Pentagon as “Little Boy” (little boy).

So on that fateful morning on 6 June at 8:15 (local time), the Enola Gay appeared in the sky about 12 thousand meters over the city escorted by two other B-29 bombers and dropped its onus, which exploded in the air above the Shima Hospital.

The bomb measured three meters wide, weighed four tonnes and stored a single kilogram of uranium-235, which at a cost of two billion dollars, went down with a parachute and exploded 600 meters high.

Smoke, fog and blackness (the mushroom cloud) floated for more than six hours on the more than 400,000 terrified inhabitants, among them Chinese nationals, Koreans, Malaysians and Indonesians, uprooted from their countries into forced labor.

This mushroom cloud was preceded by extreme temperatures of a million degrees centigrade. Three entire kilometers were completely vaporized and the only thing left of the people was just their shadows.

More than 65,000 buildings, houses and hospitals and 70,000 people were vaporized instantly. The area had 300 doctors, of whom 60 died and 210 were injured as a result. The assistance centers and emergency care, as well as 18 hospitals disappeared.

Another 110,000 women, men and boys died shortly after charred or mutilated. Hiroshima was erased from the map.

Blair Must Be Arrested. By John Pilger

Via: New Statesman.

Having helped destroy other nations far away, our former prime minister — “peace envoy” to the Middle East — is now free to profit from the useful contacts he made while working as a “servant of the people”.

Tony Blair must be prosecuted, not indulged like Peter Mandelson. Both have produced self-serving memoirs for which they have been paid fortunes; Blair’s, which have earned him a £4.6m advance, will appear next month.

Now consider the Proceeds of Crime Act. Blair conspired in and executed an unprovoked war of aggression against a defenceless country, of a kind the Nuremberg judges in 1946 described as the “paramount war crime”. This has caused, according to scholarly studies, the deaths of more than a million people, a figure that exceeds the Fordham University estimate of deaths in the Rwandan genocide.

In addition, four million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes and a majority of children have descended into malnutrition and trauma. Cancer rates near the cities of Fallujah, Najaf and Basra (the latter “liberated” by the British) are now higher than those at Hiroshima. “UK forces used about 1.9 metric tonnes of depleted uranium ammunition in the Iraq war in 2003,” the Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, told parliament on 22 July. A range of toxic “anti-personnel” weapons, such as cluster bombs, was employed by British and US forces.

Such carnage was justified with lies that have been exposed repeatedly. On 29 January 2003, Blair told parliament: “We do know of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq . . .” Last month, the former head of MI5 Eliza Manningham-Buller told the Chilcot inquiry: “There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection . . . [it was the invasion] that gave Osama Bin Laden his Iraqi jihad.” Asked to what extent the invasion exacerbated the threat to Britain from terrorism, she replied: “Substantially.”

The bombings in London on 7 July 2005 were a direct consequence of Blair’s actions.

Voracious greed

Documents released by the high court show that British citizens were allowed to be abducted and tortured under Blair. In January 2002, Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, decided that Guantanamo was the “best way” to ensure that UK nationals were “securely held”.

Israel Classifies its Past as Top Secret. By Lawrence Davidson

Via: INTIFADA.

Israel is a land built on myths. It is, of course, not unique in this. Indeed in this way Israel is very much like its patron, the United States. In order to build and maintain a mythical status a nation must create a picture of itself from its very inception and pass that picture down generation upon generation. For the U.S. it is the idea that the nation is a beacon of both democracy and capitalism unto the world and what it does in terms of foreign policy, and even when at war, is always done altruistically. For Israel, the myth is that the nation is democratic and the last bastion of safety for the world’s Jews. Everything it does, even when that amounts to imperial expansion, is done defensively.

In order to maintain these myths one must control history. The story line must be taught in the schools and supported by the nation’s multiple media sources. One must raise up a population that is so well inculcated with its mythic worldview that if something occurs which contradicts it, it can be readily dismissed as an exception to the rule. In the case of the United States, two hundred years of indoctrination and a long term status as a great power has allowed its myths to survive, in the minds of its own people, the horrors of Viet Nam, Iraq and now Afghanistan. Israel is a much younger nation with only three or so generations of indoctrination under its psychological belt, so to speak. And, while it may be a regional superpower, its reputation in the Middle East is built on fear. With the rest of the world that reputation is associated with equally unstable and temporary attitudes, like Holocaust guilt. In essence, apart from the convinced Zionists, Israel’s sustaining national myths are still fragile.

A number of years ago Israel applied its law that required the government archives to be opened for public review and research following a thirty year waiting period for political affairs and fifty years for military affairs. This brought many of the government documents referring to seminal years of 1947 and 1948 into the open. The result was a serious, evidence based, revision of the founding legends of Israel. In other words, the state lost momentary control of its own history. The result undermined the nation’s mythic self-image amongst observers outside of Israel and caused significant unease within the country. So powerful was the reaction of the elites against this revised interpretation of the past that the “new historians” who brought it forth are now either teaching abroad or have, as in the case of Benny Morris, recanted.

You Got It Wrong Mr Abbas

Via: iPetitions.

It was reported recently that the S Daniel Abraham Centre for Middle East Peace hosted the Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas for dinner in Washington DC, on June 9 2010. The head of this Centre is Robert Wexler, a former Florida Congressman and a staunch supporter of Israeli government policies. He was a leading defender of the 2008 Israeli invasion of Gaza and of the recent Israeli assault on the ‘Free Gaza’ Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.

In attendance at this dinner were some of the most powerful Jewish leaders in the United States who work feverishly for the Zionist Agenda which promotes and preserves Israel as a Jewish State thus condoning the illegal occupation of Historic Palestine.

Guests at this dinner included the Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations;  the Executive Director and the President of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); the National Chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); the CEO & Executive Vice President of UJA Federation (United Jewish Appeal); the President of the Israel Policy Forum; and other American Jewish community leaders and foreign policy scholars.

Mahmoud Abbas, whose mandate as President of the PA expired in July 2009, was invited to answer unscripted questions ‘on the record’ put to him by his hosts and their guests to which he responded ‘on the record’ on behalf of all Palestinians: those who elected him and those who did not. Those who were killed by the Israeli military machine and those who await that fate.

Shimon Peres, Anti-Semitism and Freedom of Speech. By Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Via: PRAVDA.

Is Israeli President Shimon Peres stupid, senile, arrogant or insensitive? In the Tablet interview given last week to an Israeli journalist, Israel’s President stated categorically that there is an “anti-Semitism” element involved in policymaking by the British Establishment. However, as Israel’s President should know, the term “anti-Semitic” is a non-entity, a misnomer, an expression used and abused by pathologically sensitive elements in the Israeli establishment.

By definition, as Shimon Peres should know, a Semite is a person who speaks a Semitic language, including Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician and Tigre. So the term “anti-Semitic” is per se, nonsense, an idiotic phrase coined by those who wish to capitalise on a feeling of collective guilt or collective blame, gaining points at the expense of history’s pogroms against the Jews.

By definition, as Shimon Peres should know, the term “anti-Semitic” would mean “one who is against speakers of Hebrew (Jews) and Arabic (Arabs), etc”. As Shimon Peres should know, the term makes as much sense as saying that a person is anti-Celtic, anti-Indigenous or anti-Russian.

What Shimon Peres meant, and was unable to express, was something entirely different, yet what Shimon Peres said, and also meant, was something sinister, foolhardy, wrong and presses the finger in the wound which fuels anti-Jewish sentiments in a growing number of communities around the world.

To begin with, the Jewish lobby has managed to hijack the term “anti-Semitism” and uses it in knee-jerk pathologically defensive stances on any statement or policy remotely antagonistic to the Zionist realpolitik.

Let us then separate the wheat from the chaff. And the chaff includes arrogant attempts at self-justification from Peres, claiming that the Israelis had to endure thousands of missiles fired into their territory by “terrorists”, while trying to be “democratic”.

While nobody civilized supports terrorist acts against civilians in any way, shape or form, while any act of violence is unjustified, this goes for Israelis as well as Palestinians. If Palestinian radical groups fire missiles into Israel, why is it? Because Israel gave them territory?

Or because Israel stole their territory in the past, and continues to steal their territory all the time today setting up illegal colonies, against each and every fibre of international law, forcing Palestinians from their homes and their lands?

Revealing Moments: Obama, WikiLeaks, the “Good War” Myth, and Silly Liberal Faith in the Emperor. By Paul Street

Via: ZCommunications.

War Crime Whistleblower in Obama’s Sights, War Criminals Not

Private First Class Bradley Manning, a 22 year old U.S. Army intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq, is being prosecuted by the Obama administration for disclosing a classified video showing American troops murdering civilians in Baghdad from an Apache Attack Helicopter in 2007. Eleven adults were killed in the attack captured on tape, including two Reuters journalists.  Two children were critically injured. The video (available at www.collateralmurder.com) was published by WikiLeaks in early April of this year. The soldiers shown in the video have yet to face charges. Manning is looking at 52 years in federal prison if convicted.

It might seem odd to some that the Obama White House is going after Manning and not the war criminals Manning may have helped expose. Didn’t Obama use his opposition to the highly unpopular Iraq War to advance his presidential campaign in 2007 and 2008? Yes, he did, but once he succeeded in exploiting the Iraq War to gain the nation’s highest office, Obama became commander in chief of the world’s greatest imperial killing machine.  He and his handlers hardly want to do anything that might inhibit the American military’s freedom of action as he conducts a “five-front terror war” (Glenn Greenwald) in Iraq (where Obama has defied his campaign promises by acting to sustain the U.S. occupation), Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.  It should also be remembered that U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Obama repeatedly voted to fund the Iraq occupation, campaigned for pro-war against anti-war Democrats in the 2006 congressional primaries, and never once criticized Cheney and George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq on moral or legal grounds.  Candidate Obama’s only problem with the Iraq occupation was that it did not make strategic sense for the interests of the supposedly benevolent and exceptionally humane and democratic American Empire. He saw the Iraq occupation like the elite Democratic “doves” of the late 1960s saw the Vietnam War – as a tactical “mistake” carried out with the best, indeed an excess, of democratic intentions.  In late 2006, speaking to the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, Obama even  had the cold imperial audacity to say the following in support of his claim that most U.S. citizens supported  “victory” in Iraq: “The American people have been extraordinarily resolved. They have seen their sons and daughters killed or wounded in the streets of Fallujah [emphasis added].” This was a spine-chilling selection of locales. Fallujah was the site for colossal U.S. atrocity – American crimes included the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the targeting even of ambulances and hospitals, and the practical leveling of an entire city – by the U.S. military in April and November of 2004. The town was designated for destruction as an example of the awesome state terror promised to those who dared to resist U.S. power. Not surprisingly, Fallujah became a powerful and instant symbol of American imperialism in the Arab and Muslim worlds.  It was a deeply provocative and insulting place for Obama to have chosen to highlight American sacrifice and “resolve” in the imperialist occupation of Iraq. For these and many other reasons detailed in the fourth chapter of my early 2008 book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Paradigm, 2008), it is hardly surprising that Obama as president is going after an America Iraq war crime whistleblower, not American war crimes in Iraq.

The looting of Iraq. By Richard Becker

Via: PSLweb.org.

Nearly $9 billion in Iraqi funds disappeared

Iraqi oil fields: 'the primary target'

The corporate media-created popular image of “looting” is one of poor people taking TVs or shoes or other goods from broken-into stores. Many desperate, mostly African American residents of New Orleans abandoned to their fate when Hurricane Katrina flooded that city in 2005 were assailed and arrested as “looters” for appropriating food from shutdown grocery stores.

On July 27, the office of the U.S. Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction released a report that states the Pentagon cannot account for an astounding 95 percent of at least $9.1 billion in Iraqi funds that it seized when U.S. forces conquered Iraq and dismantled its government in 2003. A total of $8.7 billion has disappeared from the “Development Fund for Iraq.”

L. Paul Bremer, the head of the Civilian Provisional Authority, who ruled Iraq as a virtual dictator for the 15 months following the April 2003 occupation of the country, set up the DFI. Its funds came from frozen Iraqi assets in the United States and other countries and sales from Iraq’s then-nationalized oil fields.

Did Bremer, the Pentagon and their corporate cronies like Halliburton engage in massive looting? Not according to the corporate media. The Special Inspector General’s report does not even allege any crime has been committed.

“The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss,” the audit states, describing theft on an unimaginable scale in the blandest possible terms.