Ten Years Of Murderous Nonsense

WTC6 was hollowed out. What did this?

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the last happy day of my life.

It was an ignorant sort of happy, but I remember it fondly nonetheless.

I may as well; tomorrow will mark ten years of murderous nonsense. The official story of 9/11 is impossible to believe, yet it is promoted more brazenly than any contemporary truth.

My effort to avoid the anniversary propaganda having failed, I started trying to mark the biggest, stupidest, 9/11-related lie I can find.

There are plenty of candidates for the honor.

WTC5 had multiple holes. What did this?

Some serious 9/11 researchers have been trying to compile a list of all the "holes" in the official story: the distortions, the omissions, the contradictions, the outright lies, and all the other bits and pieces of evidence which suggest that the real story behind 9/11 is not the one we have been told.

These people remind me of the Renaissance mathematicians who spent their whole lives trying to find all the prime numbers.

The mathematicians were working for the royal courts, in many cases, whereas the 9/11 researchers are working against the powers of our day.

But the fields of research are more or less equally infinite.

Being somewhat less ambitious, I started a list of the people who used to be, or used to be considered, investigative journalists, or at least honest dissident writers, but who have shown quite clearly that their primary interest in the truth about 9/11 is in bashing those who seek it.

What burned these cars?

My list would certainly have been finite, but I lacked the discipline required to keep adding to it.

At last I settled on a smaller task: finding the undisputed facts in the official story.

My list now contains the date, as well as the names and locations of some of the buildings which were damaged or destroyed on that day.

I do not see any possibility of adding to this list in the future.

And that's the state of play.

Jerome Hauer

What drilled huge holes in WTC5 and WTC6?

What burned hundreds of cars, some more than half a mile away from the WTC?

Why are such questions not allowed even at so-called '9/11 Truth' sites?

I could write at length about such matters, and if I were healthy I would probably do so. But I can't.

Instead I can only point out that the people who disseminated the official story of 9/11, the people who have fabricated new "research" to support it, and the people who mount vicious attacks on those of us who don't buy their murderous nonsense, are all -- by their own choice -- mortal enemies of everything that is true and just and righteous, and therefore of all humanity.

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Two More Tales From America's Very Dark History

I've lost track of the number of times that I have been profoundly disgusted to read mass-murderous nonsense from "investigative journalists" and "citizen bloggers" whom I have supported over the years. Whether that support has involved active assistance or simply linking with praise, it's always painful to realize once again that I've been wrong about somebody's intentions and that I have directed my readers to people who clearly have more respect for their own agendas than they have for the truth.

On the other hand there have been a few occasions on which I have been pleasantly surprised to find excellent work from people of whom I have been critical, and two of those occasions came along a few days ago. It behooves me to share.

Truth Excavator at Disquiet Reservations has pulled together some excellent information regarding the insane conspiracy theory about President Roosevelt and the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. Did Roosevelt know, as some have claimed, that the attack was coming? Did the American government actually go out of its way to provoke that mass-murderous attack? Read all about it here: "October 7, 1940: The Day That Should Have Lived in Infamy"

From Robert Parry of Consortium News (of whom I have been unreservedly critical in the recent past), in collaboration with Peter Dale Scott (of whom I have not), comes a piece called "A Long History of America's Dark Side", which could easily have been called "A Short History of America's Long Dark Past". And even though I could quibble with the title, I think you should read the piece.

Late Breaking: Joe Biden Is A Maverick, Too!

One of the lines I was most eager to blog about when I read it -- but couldn't at the time -- came from Mary MacElveen, via Bob Parry's Consortium News.

While arguing that the national news media unfairly pay more attention to Elephant veep candidate Sarah Palin than to Donkey veep candidate Joe Biden [photo], MacElveen also argues that John McCain is not the only "maverick" in the race.

According to MacElveen:

Biden too showed he was a maverick in stating he would buck his own party to continue funding the troops when some opposed it.

He certainly doesn't appear to be the sort of maverick we need at the moment. But thanks for the insight, Mary.

From one point of view, Consortium News, with its 24/7 Obamathon, continues to be one of the hugest craters in the pockmarked landscape formerly known as independent American journalism.

But from another angle, it's remarkable how deeply and fully Bob Parry's site reveals the bankruptcy of American politics -- where even those pulling for the "opposition" are unabashedly despicable.

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Yea Though I Walk Through The Valley Of Endless Spin

Chris Floyd was exactly right about Bush and his address to the Knesset, and you should read "Progressive Vision Failure: The Real Scandal of Bush’s Knesset Speech" in its entirety. Pay particular attention to what Chris has to say about the work of Will Bunch. I'll wait.

As Robert Parry writes:

The irony of George W. Bush going before the Knesset and mocking the late Sen. William Borah for expressing surprise at Adolf Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland is that Bush’s own family played a much bigger role assisting the Nazis.

Parry has even more detail on the connection between the Bush family and rise of Hitler and the state-sponsored evil we call the Nazis, and you should read "The Bushes and Hitler's Appeasement" too -- especially if you have any doubt as to the correctness of what Floyd wrote in this regard. I don't mind waiting again.

There are ironies galore in this story -- which continues to reverberate despite its lack of newsworthiness -- and in the short time I have available I wish to mention a few of them...

The fixation on the "appeasement" angle -- the focus on one short passage of the speech and the interpretation of that passage as an oblique attack on Barack Obama -- is not only a "progressosphere" phenomenon, although, as Chris Floyd points out, this is the angle you will get from the big "progressive" sites. But it's also an angle that got substantial play in the mainstream -- and even the foreign -- press. I got tired of reading about it in the Washington Post so I turned to a Canadian television network, and they -- CBC -- were saying exactly the same thing -- and treating the story as if nothing mattered in that speech except the angle they were pushing. It seemed strange to me that these independent [sic] news [sic] sources should independently [sic] land on the exact same point and put the exact same interpretation on it. But at the same time other elements within the blogosphere were picking up on that loony-sounding point and amplifying it. Hmm.

The appeasement Bush decries is already happening. But it's Bush who is being appeased. His "commander in chief" presidency has not been seriously tackled by any Democrats, none of whom, apparently, want to end up like Cynthia McKinney, much less Paul Wellstone. (There are of course other reasons why Bush's policies have been largely unopposed by the Democrats.) So the "unitary executive" madness continues to deepen and there's no end in sight.

Bush is also being appeased on the international level, where his doctrine of "preemptive warfare" -- meaning the US can attack anyone anytime for no reason at all -- has the rest of the world scurrying for cover. Nobody wants to become the next Iraq, or the next Afghanistan, or the next Pakistan, or the next Somalia ... so they sit back and watch America destroy one country after another with barely so much as the odd "Tut, tut." (This appeasement is not new, of course. America has been destroying one country after another for more than fifty years.)

Historically speaking, the United States didn't exactly vanquish the evil embodied in the Nazis. The US didn't even vanquish the Nazis. They did arrange war crimes trials for the top leaders, but many of the second-level administrators -- the technicians of the giant evil machine -- were smuggled into the USA after the war and became the nucleus of the CIA. How very convenient is it that this is never mentioned?

The US didn't have a monopoly on the recruitment and absorption of German evil monsters, though: Some professional bad guys went to Russia and worked for the KGB. Others stayed in East Germany and became key figures in the secret police there. Others may have suddenly become British, for all I know.

We were told the Cold War was an epic struggle of good vs. evil. But what if it was a power struggle between two different brands of evil? What if our evil was just a shade more potent than the evil possessed by the Russians? What if we won the Cold War because we had more and better Nazis?

The only thing about the Holocaust that matters to the Knesset is the political cover it gives Israel. Because of the anti-Semitism displayed before and during World War II, Israel can now do anything it wants to do, as long as the Americans don't object too strenuously. And the US almost never objects -- strenuously or otherwise.

With their veto power in the UN Security Council, the Americans can protect Israel from the indignation of the rest of the world, and they do -- every time. So when Bush appears before the Knesset and talks about the evils of appeasement, he's really giving the aggressive Israelis a clear signal that the aggressive Americans still support them to the hilt. Some analysts say the speech encouraged Israel to attack Iran if the Americans don't do it themselves, or if they don't do it soon enough. Thus the American hawks are actually Israel's Number One appeasers in this regard.

There's an interesting parallel between the militarized industrialized Nazis proclaiming "God is with us" while persecuting stateless defenseless Jews ... and the militarized industrialized Israelis claiming to be God's chosen people while persecuting stateless defenseless Palestinians ... and the militarized industrialized United States where the culture is rife with mutant militant Christianity and the prevailing mentality looks approvingly on a nation that wages war wherever it wants, whenever its unelected president says God tells him to smite somebody.

But the experts in the national media don't want to talk about any of this, any more than they want to talk about how the Bush family facilitated the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. And the progressosphere wants the very same thing. Hmmm. Once again. Hmmmmmm.

I've said for a few years now that all the big "liberal" or "progressive" blogs are running psy-ops. Saying things like this brands me as a "conspiracy theorist". But on the other hand you can be called a "conspiracy theorist" for saying that president Bush's grandfather helped to facilitate the rise of Adolph Hitler. You can be called a "conspiracy theorist" for saying that 9/11 was an inside job. You can be called a "conspiracy theorist" for saying that John Kennedy was killed as part of a military coup supported by elements deep within the American power structure. There are a number of other things you can say which are obviously true, any one of which will get you branded as a "conspiracy theorist", which is beginning to seem like a compliment.

So here's my question: Who issues the talking points to the Washington Post and the CBC and Atrios and Digby and Will Bunch? Who feeds the American media, the international media, and all the prog-bloggers to the extent that they can all be found saying the very same thing at the very same time?

Who tells them all:

"This is the passage to concentrate on. This is where Bush attacks Obama. Nothing like this has ever been done before. This is worse than torture. This is worse than indefinite incarceration without charge or trial. This is worse than a war of choice based on lies which has killed more than a million people. When I snap my fingers, you will open your eyes, and you will forget this conversation ever happened."

Who tells them? That's what I want to know.

I promise I'll be polite about it. I won't mention any of the ways in which Israeli and American policies and tactics mimic the policies and tactics employed by Hitler and the Nazis. I won't mention the Reichstag Fire and 9/11 and how similar they appear from a certain perspective. I won't say anything at all about Hitler's Enabling Act and Bush's PATRIOT Act. I won't talk about unprovoked attacks on non-threatening foreign countries. And I won't mention any other false-flag attacks that were staged in order to mobilize political support for war.

... because we all know that it's OK to kill millions of people, provided they're not ours (we can only kill thousands of ours), but it's considered impolite to ask questions about it.

And I would never wish to be impolite. Not in the Valley of Endless Spin.

Scrubbed: Lee Hamilton And The Unbearable Baggage Of Recent History

(UPDATED below)

Guest contributor Jerry Meldon has an interesting new piece at Bob Parry's site, Consortium News dot com. It's called "Dr. Hamilton and Mr. Hyde", and it's interesting in quite a number of ways.

The "Dr. Hamilton" of the title is Lee Hamilton [photo], whose name is well-known to students of 9/11 -- not all of whom may be familiar with much of his background. Dr. Hamilton's official biography is indeed a well-connected one; here's a sample:

Lee H. Hamilton is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. Hamilton represented Indiana’s 9th congressional district for 34 years beginning January 1965. He served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress.
...

Hamilton served as co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, a forward looking, bi-partisan assessment of the situation in Iraq, created at the urging of Congress. He served as Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission and co-chaired the 9/11 Public Discourse Project established to monitor implementation of the Commission’s recommendations. He is currently a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, the FBI Director’s Advisory Board, the CIA Director’s Economic Intelligence Advisory Panel, the Defense Secretary’s National Security Study Group, and the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force on Preventing the Entry of Weapons of Mass Effect on American Soil.

The Wikipedia page on Dr. Hamilton contains a good deal of overlap but some interesting additional information:

Hamilton was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat as part of the national Democratic landslide of 1964. He chaired many committees during his tenure in office, including the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Joint Committee on Printing, and others. As chair of the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, Hamilton chose not to investigate President Ronald Reagan or President George H. W. Bush, stating that he did not think it would be "good for the country" to put the public through another impeachment trial. He was one of the top choices to be running mate of Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton. It was specualated that Hamilton's chances were blocked by feminist organziations like National Organization for Women who didn't find Hamilton sufficantly pro-choice on abortion. He remained in Congress until 1999; at the time he was one of two surviving members of the large Democratic freshman class of 1965 (the other being John Conyers).

On March 15, 2006, Congress announced the formation of the Iraq Study Group, organized by the United States Institute of Peace, of which Hamilton is the Democratic co-chair, along with the former Secretary of State (under President George H.W. Bush) James A. Baker III. Hamilton, like Baker, is considered a master negotiator.

Since leaving Congress, Mr. Hamilton has served as a member of the Hart-Rudman Commission, and was co-chair of the Baker-Hamilton Commission to Investigate Certain Security Issues at Los Alamos. He sits on many advisory boards, including those to the CIA, the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, and the United States Army. Hamilton is an Advisory Board member and Co-Chair for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. He is currently the president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and was appointed to serve as the vice chair of the 9/11 Commission.

Jerry Meldon's piece fills in more of the background on Dr. Hamilton's decision, "as chair of the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran", "not to investigate President Ronald Reagan or President George H. W. Bush".

Dr. Hamilton's "justification" for his decision -- that he did not think it would be "good for the country" to put the public through another impeachment trial -- may or may not represent faulty judgment about what's "good for the country", but it undeniably puts one man's opinion -- his -- above the rule of law.

It's a neocon fascist act, thoroughly consistent with the acts of the neocon fascists with whom he cooperates today -- as "an Advisory Board member and Co-Chair for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy".

This means: As an alleged Democrat who supports neocon fascist policies, Lee Hamilton tries to make neocon fascist policies seem reasonable, and this fabricated support for the Republican agenda among the "Democrats" is then used to paint any opposition as "hyperpartisan" -- shrill, radical, and not serious.

In other words, the "Partnership for a Secure America" is one of many front groups set up to provide a veneer of legitimacy for the post-9/11 transformation of America, and Dr. Lee Hamilton, the "bipartisan Democrat", has been selected to give the "not-for-profit" group its Democratic "credibility".

As Jerry Meldon points out, Dr. Hamilton has a long history of enabling criminal abuse of the country by radical Republicans. Extensive excerpts from Meldon:

When former Rep. Lee Hamilton gives the keynote address – entitled “Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond” – at a Tufts University symposium on March 27, he may be thankful if he doesn’t have to discuss “yesterday.”

He probably would prefer not to revisit fateful decisions he made while chairing investigations into Republican dirty work, especially those that let George H.W. Bush off the hook and cleared George W. Bush's path to the White House.

As veteran journalist Robert Parry has persuasively argued at Consortiumnews.com, the Bush family name squeaked through the 80’s and early 90’s essentially mud-free, only because:

-- On Christmas Eve 1992, lame-duck President George H.W. Bush pardoned six of his earlier co-conspirators in the Iran-Contra affair (the Reagan-Bush White House’s diversion of profits from illegal arms sales to Iran to bankroll Nicaragua’s contra terrorists in defiance of a congressional ban). Until he was pardoned that day, former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger might have bought clemency by testifying against co-conspirator Bush.

-- After Bush left office on Jan. 20, 1993, President Bill Clinton (along with other senior Democrats, including Hamilton) cut short a congressional inquiry into Bush’s secret billion-dollar loans to Saddam Hussein and did nothing to help Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh penetrate the Iran-Contra cover-up.

-- Hamilton also soft-pedaled two key congressional inquiries. The first investigated the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987 and the second examined allegations that the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign team had struck a treasonous deal with the hostage-holding Iranian government while Jimmy Carter was still president.

Conventional wisdom has attributed the target-friendliness of those latter investigations to Mr. Hamilton's celebrated spirit of bipartisanship.

After all, what else could have persuaded Hamilton to narrow the scope of the Iran-Contra investigation in order to placate Dick Cheney and the rest of the committee's Republicans, if not his desire to appear bipartisan?

And how else to explain Hamilton’s ill-advised decision to join with the panel’s Republicans (in defiance of all but one other Democrat) and immunize the testimony of a man on whom it had the goods, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North (whose operations in the Old Executive Office Building had been exposed by reporter Parry in 1985-86)?

How much more criminal activity can we celebrate in the "spirit of bipartisanship"?

One may note here that much of Jerry Meldon's reporting depends on the excellent work done by Robert Parry in the 1980s and 1990s.

Parry has been very critical of Bill Clinton for not pursuing allegations of treason against his predecessor, George H. W. Bush, arguing that George W. Bush could never have been presented as a "serious" presidential candidate if the full extent of his father's criminal past had been well-known before the 2000 "election".

Jerry Meldon again:

North proceeded to cover up for then-Vice President Bush, and North was spared a felony record because his later criminal conviction was reversed because of his immunized testimony, which Hamilton had helped arrange.

Hamilton’s Iran-Contra performance was troubling. But he went several steps further when he chaired the October Surprise Task Force and handed the Reagan-Bush administration a deck full of get-out-of-jail-free cards.

In the lead-up to the 1980 election, Republicans feared that Jimmy Carter would pull off an "October Surprise" and talk the Iranians into releasing 52 American hostages. Carter's failure to do so led to Reagan’s landslide victory.

However, over the next several years, a parade of individuals alleged that Carter failed only because the Republicans had secretly agreed to arm Iran in exchange for a delay in the hostages’ release.

Heated Republican denials notwithstanding, the fact remained that the Iranians chose to end the hostages’ 444-day ordeal within hours of Reagan’s inauguration. To put the nasty rumors to rest more than a decade later, the House Foreign Affairs Committee formed a task force under the leadership of Henry Hyde, R-Illinois, and … Lee Hamilton.

How much do you know about this task force? How much do you remember?

Jerry Meldon continues:

The task force was charged with examining allegations that in the summer and fall of 1980 Republican heavyweights, notably the vice presidential candidate, former CIA director George H.W. Bush, and the campaign director, future CIA director William J. Casey, had secretly flown to Europe to strike the fateful deal.

The key issue was the veracity of Bush’s and Casey’s alibis.

In the heat of his 1992 re-election campaign, an angry President Bush accused the task force of waging a “witch hunt.” Obligingly, Hamilton and Hyde disclosed that partially redacted Secret Service records backed Bush's alibi, thus clearing him of suspicion.

However, Spencer Oliver, chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, objected, asking why key sections of those records were blacked out; why one crucial entry asserted a trip to a Maryland country club that Bush never took; and why the identity of a person who supposedly met with Bush was withheld from the task force.

Oliver charged that the Bush administration was stonewalling:

“They have sought to block, limit, restrict and discredit the investigation in every possible way … President Bush’s recent outbursts [about] his whereabouts in mid-October of 1980 are disingenuous at best since the administration has refused to make available the documents and the witnesses that could finally and conclusively clear Mr. Bush.”

Journalist Parry adds: “The Bush administration flatly refused to give any more information to the House task force unless it agreed never to interview [Mr. Bush's] alibi witness and never to release [that person’s] name. Amazingly, the task force accepted the administration’s terms.”

Hamilton’s treatment of Mr. Bush was outrageously deferential...

Do you hear any echoes from the past?

Does Barack Obama hear those echoes? His plea for unity in the face of diversity sounds very much like the "good for the country" story under which the crimes of Bush 41 were buried.

And some of us fear that Obama -- if elected -- would follow in the steps of Bill Clinton and Lee Hamilton and bury the crimes of the preceding administration. Is it unreasonable for us to fear such an outcome?

Bob Parry doesn't appear to be concerned in the least; his support for Obama is on the order of Hollywood PR, even though Obama seems set to do the very same thing Parry rips Bill Clinton for doing. Very strange.

There's more from Jerry Meldon and you should read it all. If you do, you'll learn nothing of what Lee Hamilton has done in the past 15 years. You'll also note a subtle, ironic flavor to Meldon's introduction ...

When former Rep. Lee Hamilton gives the keynote address – entitled “Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond” – at a Tufts University symposium on March 27, he may be thankful if he doesn’t have to discuss “yesterday.”

... and his conclusion ...

on March 27 – as Mr. Hamilton participates in the Fares Center’s symposium, “The United States and the Middle East: What Comes Next After Iraq?” – the Tufts community will have the opportunity to ask Mr. Hamilton exactly why he has repeatedly kept Americans in the dark about critical episodes of their nation’s history in dealing with the Middle East.

Such a treatment -- implying that Dr. Hamilton may not want to talk about "yesterday" and hinting about his role in keeping "Americans in the dark about critical episodes of their nation’s history in dealing with the Middle East" -- may well be valid, but when such a treatment is applied to an article that doesn't mention anything that's happened since 1993, it's tough not to think of a word that rhymes with "aristocracy" and starts with the letter "H".

Why would an "independent investigative journalist" whose website does so much good work exposing America's hidden history be so reluctant to discuss America's recent hidden history?

Is there something controversial about the claim that Lee Hamilton was the co-chair of the 9/11 Commission?

Is there something controversial about the claim that the 9/11 Commission's report is unbelievable?

If so, we've got a problem, because one of the people making that claim is Lee Hamilton himself.

Why couldn't Jerry Meldon mention any of this? Why couldn't Robert Parry -- who wrote both an introduction to Meldon's article and a coda -- have mentioned any of this?

Did I miss a memo someplace? Are we not allowed to talk about anything that's happened in the last 15 years?

Or is this what the Consortium News masthead means where it says "Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995"??

I think I'd better stay away from "independent investigative journalism", and just keep blogging!

~~~

UPDATE: Larisa Alexandrovna praises the Consortium News piece, and adds some important details (and lots of interesting links):

Hamilton is a long time friend of both former SecDef Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
...

Remember that some of the Iran Contra folks graduated to the Bush II administration. Among them and perhaps the most notorious, Elliott Abrams (the current number two National Security Adviser). It is also widely believed that those old Iran Contra channels resurfaced to help with the delivery of the Niger Forgeries and even the same arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, had back-channel meetings with his Washington Iran Contra contacts. See my articles on this:

Cheney has tapped Iranian expatriate, arms dealer to surveil discussions with Iran

Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels

Cheney and Rumsfeld Outsourcing Special Ops in Iraq to Terror Group (MEK)

American Who Advised Pentagon Says he Worked for Magazine that Found Niger Documents

Chalabi Involved in Key US-Iran Policy Making Discussions

Pentagon Confirms Iranian Directorate

Intelligence Laundry: To Paris Again

Conversations with Machiavelli's Ghost: Demystifying Intrigue (Second installment of Michael Ledeen interviews)

Ebb Tide V: Robert Parry Looks At Barack Obama And Sees Michael Douglas

Veteran journalist Robert Parry has done fantastic work on a number of important fronts; see, for instance, Iraq War As A War Crime (Part One), and don't forget (Part Two).

But he frustrates me because he won't talk about 9/11 in any terms other than the official story, he never mentions any issues relating to election integrity, and his take on the Democratic nomination process has been bizarre -- and increasingly so.

Bob Parry quite rightly points out deceit and gamesmanship when it comes from Hillary Clinton. But he seems to have a blind spot when the same tactics come from Barack Obama -- who has never quite managed to make me stand and cheer. But when Bob Parry looks at Obama, he sees ... Hollywood!

Thus, "Obama's 'Michael Douglas Moment'"

Barack Obama’s speech on race – both laying out the nation’s multi-sided racial resentments and pointing to a path beyond them – might be called his “Michael Douglas moment,” reminiscent of the speech near the end of “The American President.”

In the climactic scene of that 1995 movie, the President (played by Douglas) responds to political attacks against his girlfriend over an old photograph of a burning American flag and to insinuations about his own alleged lack of patriotism reflected in his American Civil Liberties Union membership.

After weeks of political maneuvering in his pursuit of a second term – and finally fed up with the attack politics of his opponent, Bob Rumson – the President bursts into the press room to denounce the smears and to renounce his own politics of equivocation.

“We have serious problems to solve,” Douglas says, “and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-age, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President’s girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. …

“We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people. And if you want to talk about character, Bob, you’d better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.”

Well, that's just about the way I saw it ...

Except that Obama didn't get serious -- he changed the subject!

And he didn't denounce the smears -- he capitulated to them!

And he didn't renounce his equivocation -- he wallowed in it!

Other than that, Bob Parry's analysis is ... well ... let's just say his introduction didn't contain any misdirection.

I left him a long comment at his blog, and since it took me quite a while to compose it, and since it lays out my thoughts a bit better than any of my recent posts here, I thought I might share it with you.

It makes me sad to say this, Mr. Parry, but I cannot understand how an observer as intelligent and as experienced as you could fall for this.

I do understand that we all see things differently and we all form our own opinions. But to me it seemed as if Obama played his "race cards" for just long enough to put everyone in a warm and fuzzy mood, but not quite asleep, and then while nobody was looking he threw the truth under the bus.

Facts are facts, are they not?

Jeremiah Wright, September 16, 2001, Chicago:

“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said America's chickens, are coming home to roost.”

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.

“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

What in the name of heaven is wrong with this? Is there a single assertion of fact here that is incorrect? If anything, Reverend Wright's list is too short. He left out Guatemala. He left out Vietnam. He left out death squads in El Salvador. On and on it goes.

Barack Obama, March 18, 2008, Philadelphia:

the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

This is one lie after another; let's look at only the last of them:

Do "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" emerge from a cosmic void? Can the United States really continue to bomb and invade and destroy one foreign country after another without ever releasing any "chickens" that might someday "come home to roost"?

Operation Cyclone

Beginning in 1979, Americans working secretly through the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, as well as some other Middle Eastern allies, recruited and trained terrorists; armed and funded them; motivated them with extremist Islamic propaganda; and infiltrated them into Afghanistan via Pakistan.

The object was to hassle the Soviets, to lure them into invading Afghanistan. The American-trained terrorists were known as "mujahadeen" at the time, and in the USA they were called "freedom fighters". Their modern offshoots have names like "Taliban" and "al Qaeda".

The damage these groups have done is almost immeasurable. We hear about al Qaeda all the time although they don't attack here. That's because they attack in Pakistan. And elsewhere. In Pakistan alone in 2006 there were more than 600 terrorist attacks in which more than 900 people were killed. In 2007 the numbers were even higher. That's just one country. We think we know about terrorism. We know nothing.

Operation Cyclone was started during the Carter administration. It was a brainchild of Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Carter, Brzezinski, and the other supposedly "pro-human rights" Democrats thought nothing of fomenting terrorism in one foreign country, exporting it to another and using it to attack a third.

Is this not a war crime of the highest magnitude?

Zbigniew Brzezinski is now a foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama. So tell me: How much hypocrisy does it take for Barack Obama to say what he has said about the conflicts in the Middle East? How can he dismiss America's long and gruesome record of crimes against humanity so easily?

How can we possibly hope for peace or justice or unity in the face of such mendacity?

Barack Obama essentially wasted 37 minutes of our time telling us how unfortunate it was that Jeremiah Wright was an older black man who grew up harboring certain resentments that are no longer relevant, or something to that effect.

He turned the whole story into an issue of race, when the basic question was "Why did you sit through his sermons? Why did you stay in his church?" and the correct answers would have been "Because he's a good man who loves God and his country, and because was telling us the truth!"

"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism."

Barack Obama should have repudiated his foreign policy advisor, not his pastor.

Horrifying: Obama's Brilliant Speech Of Hope And Unity Scares Me Half To Death

The Sermon Obama Repudiated Was One We All Needed To Hear

My comment has not produced a response. As far as I know, it hasn't even caused a single mouse to click. If that changes, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I'll continue to read Consortium News. But when it comes to the Democratic primaries, I'll be getting my "independent investigative journalism" elsewhere.

~~~

fifth in a series

Fighting Bullshit With Bullshit: The Surge And The Myth

Many years ago -- in the New Yorker, unless I am mistaken -- I saw a cartoon that has stayed with me. It was a simple scene: a man in a suit standing behind a podium, speaking. Easy to draw, and hardly remarkable, but the caption was brilliant. It said:

Don't believe his lies. Believe my lies.

I hadn't thought of that cartoon for a long time but it came rushing back to me when I started reading a column by Congressman Robert Wexler [photo], published at Bob Parry's Consortium News, and called "A Surge of More Lies".

In this piece, Congressman Wexler disputes the administration's contention that the surge has been "a resounding success", a contention which, as Parry points out in a short introduction, has become "an article of faith in Official Washington".

Wexler's method is instructive and, I would suggest, representative (no pun intended) of the "best" American "journalism" has to offer. In other words, Wexler fights bullshit with bullshit.

Excerpts first, then translation:

The surge had a clear and defined objective – to create stability and security - enabling the Iraqi government to enact lasting political solutions and foster genuine reconciliation and cooperation between Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds.

This has not happened.

There has been negligible political progress in Iraq, and we are no closer to solving the complex problems - including a power-sharing government, oil revenue agreement and new constitution - than we were before the Administration upped the ante and sent 30,000 more troops to Iraq.
...

The reduction in violence in Iraq has exposed the continuing failure of Iraqi officials to solve their substantial political rifts. By President Bush's own stated goal of political progress, the surge has failed.
...

The military progress is a testament to the patience and dedication of our brave troops – even in the face of 15-month-long deployments followed by insufficient Veteran's health services when they return home.

They have performed brilliantly – despite the insult of having President Bush recently veto a military spending bill that enhanced funding and benefits, and increased care.

Despite the efforts of American soldiers, the surge alone cannot bring about the political solutions needed to end centuries of sectarian divide.
...

Enough is enough: While the Administration over-commits American forces in Iraq, we see al-Qaeda regrouping and Osama bin Laden still at large. We remain seriously bogged down in Afghanistan, and are witnessing a crisis in Pakistan that has left a nuclear country on the brink of a meltdown.

America's resources and attention are desperately needed elsewhere and our soldiers must no longer be needlessly sacrificed as we wait for Iraqis to stand up.

First, Wexler misrepresents the point of the "surge". He confuses publicity with reality when he talks about the point of the surge. The basic idea, of course, was to extend and expand the war -- to create a quagmire so deep and so vast that no two succeeding administrations could find a way out. All the rest was window dressing.

But rather than call a war crime a war crime, Wexler goes along with the program. And thus, in his telling, the surge has failed because it hasn't enabled the Iraqis to agree on a formula by which they will divide the scant 12% of the money that comes from their oil after they agree on a formula by which control of that oil will be handed to wealthy foreigners.

The surge has failed because the Iraqi people, in the midst of being tortured and shot, raped and looted, crushed and burned, and bombed in their own homes by the occupying foreigners, have failed to stop the civil war the occupiers started just a few years ago -- but which Wexler now describes as "centuries of sectarian divide".

The surge has failed despite the sacrifices of all the brave soldiers who have served so brilliantly, because America still doesn't have what it wants: a compliant government, the oil rights, a constitution to make all the petro-looting permanent and enough basic security to make commercial development viable.

In other words, since the Iraqis have not stood up and given us what we want, the surge has failed. So now it's time to get out. That's Wexler's lie: we got our ass kicked, the Iraqis aren't worth our sacrifice, so let's go home ... well, not home exactly: let's not be bogged down anymore; let's find Osama bin Laden; let's go save Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It's horrible, and it's double-bullshit, but as I mentioned, it's representative. It's the best you're going to get from the Democrats and it's the best you're going to get most of the time from the major "news" media. Sorry about that.

If you want to know what's really going on -- what the surge was really about and how we really know it has really failed -- you have to know where to look. And surely Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque deserves a spot at the top of any list of such places.

Floyd's newest post provides a great example of why I consider his site so valuable: in "Ground Zero: On the Front Lines of a War Crime" he links to a powerful source of real information about the real war -- two sources, actually: "As Iraqis See It" by Michael Massing, from the New York Review of Books, and Massing's source, "Inside Iraq", a blog written from Iraq by employees of McClatchy News.

Floyd's sharp eye catches the major theme:

These are people happily working with Americans, English-speaking, not sectarians, not insurgents; yet the picture they paint of the American occupation, and its effect on the daily lives of ordinary Iraqis, is damning indeed. As Massing notes:

The overwhelming sense is that of a society undergoing a catastrophic breakdown from the never-ending waves of violence, criminality, and brutality inflicted on it by insurgents, militias, jihadis, terrorists, soldiers, policemen, bodyguards, mercenaries, armed gangs, warlords, kidnappers, and everyday thugs. "Inside Iraq" suggests how the relentless and cumulative effects of these vicious crimes have degraded virtually every aspect of the nation's social, economic, professional, and personal life.

Massing tells of the confrontation that McClatchy blogger Sahar had with American troops who invaded her home one night. One soldier was astounded to find American science fiction books, John Grisham novels and even video games like Grand Theft Auto on her shelves:

She told me that when the American soldier discovered Grisham and Asimov on her bookshelf, "He was totally amazed. When he looked at me, he didn't see an Iraqi woman in a hijab, he saw a human being. You can't imagine the look on his face—there were tears in his eyes. He was inside a house, with love, a family, like anywhere else."

The incident, Sahar said, gave her a sense of the extent to which the Iraqi people are unknown. "People in America look at pictures of Afghanistan and think Iraq is the same," she said. "They think Iraqis are people who are uneducated, who are Bedouins living in tents, tending camels and sheep." Until the plague of wars began devouring the country, she went on, Iraq was the leading nation in the region, with a highly educated people boasting the best doctors, teachers, and engineers. Americans, Sahar sighed, "don't know this. And when you don't know a person, you can't feel for them, can you?"

She continued: "How many have been killed in Iraq? Bordering on a million. If you realize that these are real people with real feelings who are being killed—that they are fathers and husbands, teachers and doctors—if these facts could be made known, would people be so brutalized? It's our job as Iraqi journalists to show that Iraqis are real people. This is what we try to advance through the blog."

Massing's conclusion cuts to the heart of the matter: the relentless humiliation of having foreign soldiers occupying your native land:

The question on everyone's mind, of course, is whether the Americans should stay or go. On this, [McClatchy bureau chief] Leila Fadel told me, her Iraqi staff is divided. Some of them think the Americans should leave at once. While withdrawal would probably result in a bloodletting among Iraqis, they believe the country would be better off if this happened sooner rather than later, thus avoiding the effects of a prolonged occupation. Others think the Americans should stay and fix all the destruction they've caused over the last four and a half years. But, she adds, the staff's views on this keep shifting: "They're at war within themselves—on whether they want the Americans to stay or not, and whether they think that staying would make things any better. It's something they go back and forth on."

Whichever side they come down on, however, there is one feeling that predominates: humiliation. "They remind me of this constantly," Fadel says. "Americans believe their soldiers are working for the greater good. The Iraqis don't see that. They see people who are here for their own self-interest—who drive the wrong way on roads, who stop traffic whenever they want to, who they have to be careful not to get too close to so that they won't be shot." When one of her staff members wrote the post about the student who threw a rock at a US soldier, Fadel says, she asked him, "Why did this kid throw a rock at a man with a weapon, a helmet, and a vest? What was he thinking?" "These are foreign soldiers," he replied. "This is an occupation." That, Fadel notes, is a very common feeling among Iraqis. "Everybody I speak to thinks this. They don't have power in their own country."

And that's just the beginning of an essential education. I think you should read all of "As Iraqis See It" and bookmark "Inside Iraq".

If you think it's sad that this sort of coverage is lacking from the major dailies, consider that the smaller papers are for the most part considerably worse.

"Maine Owl" provides a perfect illustration with "Fallujah as "progress" in Iraq", landing on a note that rings true and clear:

The entire environment in which news is reported in America about Iraq is broken. The Pentagon very much loves local papers to report the "good news" and not the bad. So far in 2008, it is getting what it wants.

... And The 'Reverse Bang For The Buck' Award Goes To ... MoveOn!

Robert Parry dissects the MoveOn / Petraeus / New York Times debacle, focusing on return on investment, rather than the more commonly discussed angle, freedom of speech.

His conclusion:

MoveOn has taken $142,083 from American donors and given it to the New York Times for the privilege of running an ad that served to undermine the goal of reining in President Bush’s Iraq War. Talk about getting a reverse bang for your buck.

Note to MoveOn leadership:

The New York Times is now and has always been our enemy.

Let them raise their own money.

Please!

Parry continues:

(By contrast, for many independent media outlets, the cost of that one ad would cover all their expenses for a year or more. In 2006, the entire budget of our Web site, Consortiumnews.com, was $109,000.)

I can't even imagine what sort of coverage this cold website could provide if it had a hundred thousand a year to work with. But even without that ... What an unbelievable waste of money!

~~~

For the full impact of Robert Parry's analysis, please read these three columns from Consortium News:

Hard Lessons from MoveOn Fiasco

MoveOn & Media Double Standards

The Left's Media Miscalculation (Redux)

Can A Dictator Be Impeached?

In "The Logic of Impeachment", Bob Parry of Consortium News dot com writes:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment “off the table,” in line with Official Washington’s view that trying to oust George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be an unpleasant waste of time. But there is emerging a compelling logic that an unprecedented dual impeachment might be vital to the future of the United States.

Emerging? The logic supporting impeachment was clear six years ago, and has only become clearer since then. But it's nice that more dissident journalists are starting to notice.

If some historic challenge is not made to the extraordinary assertions of power by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the United States might lose its status as a democratic Republic based on a Constitution that adheres to the twin principles that no one is above the law and everyone is endowed with inalienable rights.

The time for that consideration is long past, in my humble estimation. The judicial system is ruined and the Obscene Court can be counted on to give this obscene president anything he demands. The Congress is cowed and bought -- between the big money lobby and the memories of anthrax and assassination, and after the DLC's betrayal of their grassroots supporters by failing to fund their most truthful candidates -- and can be counted on for a pajama party but no substantive opposition. The electoral system is ruined and there is no way to vote the bums out. In fact we voted the bums out in 2004 but they didn't leave. So where does the United States base its claim to be "a democratic Republic"?

Over the past six-plus years, Bush has trampled on these traditional concepts of liberty and the rule of law time and again, even as he professes his love of freedom and democracy. Indeed, in Bush’s world, the word “freedom” has come to define almost its classical opposite.

Six-plus years of abuse and now the "compelling logic" supporting impeachment is "emerging"?

This ain't some chump we're talking about here; Bob Parry was one of the great investigative journalists of his generation. His fearless work on the Iran/Contra scandal, and many other important national stories, caused both the AP and Newsweek to throw him overboard: "Sorry, Bob, you tell too much truth!"

Nowadays he's on his own, and he's chosen not to talk about election fraud, or 9/11 as an inside job, or false flag terror in any way at all, yet he's still doing a great job chronicling all the administration's other outrageous abuses of power -- and even without election fraud, even without any 9/11 truth, it still adds up to a compelling case for impeachment. Or at least the logic supporting such a conclusion is "emerging".

As the current outrageous abuse of power,

Bush’s latest affront to the traditional American concept of checks and balances was to bar the Justice Department from handling contempt-of-Congress complaints lodged against White House aides who have invoked executive privilege rather than testify about the politically tainted firings of nine federal prosecutors, ones who didn't measure up as "loyal Bushies."

In Bush’s view, federal prosecutors can enforce the laws only the way he sees fit – and thus once he tells a subordinate not to testify, the Justice Department has no choice but to rebuff any efforts by Congress to compel testimony.

So, the “unitary executive” gets to decide how much congressional oversight will be allowed, regardless of an existing law which makes it the duty of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to take congressional contempt citations to a grand jury.
...

Bush is daring Congress to either mount a constitutional battle or submit to his will.

Well, exactly! Bush -- that is to say, Karl Rove -- doesn't think Congress is up to the challenge, and he's probably right about that. Worse: even if Congress managed to drag such a battle into the courts, the Obscene Court stands firmly in Bush's corner, by the widest 5-4 margin anyone could ever ask for, and he -- Rove -- has nothing to fear from the judiciary.

And in the meantime the elephant fascist noisemakers are still clamoring for another domestic terror attack, just like 9/11 only worse, which would obviate any attempt -- congressional or judicial or otherwise -- to rein in the criminals who have taken over our country.

What to do, what to do? I asked this question of one of my friends recently and he said, "Well, exactly. What do you do about a dictatorship?"

Impeachment is clearly called for, but is it enough? More to the point, I suppose, is it even possible?

I don't know; that's why I'm asking: Can a dictator be impeached?

The War On Gore: A Special Report From Robert Parry

Robert Parry has written a thorough case study of one of the sorriest tales in the history of American "journalism", called "U.S. News Media's 'War on Gore'". Like all Parry's best work, there's a lot to it.

It starts like this:

When historians sort out what happened to the United States at the start of the 21st Century, one of the mysteries may be why the national press corps ganged up like school-yard bullies against a well-qualified Democratic presidential candidate while giving his dimwitted Republican opponent virtually a free pass.

Or maybe it won't be a mystery at all. Maybe it will be transparently obvious why the corporate press ganged up on a well-qualified candidate who just happened to be not only Democratic but also environmentalist.

You just never know, do you?

How could major news organizations, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, have behaved so irresponsibly as to spread falsehoods and exaggerations to tear down then-Vice President Al Gore – ironically while the newspapers were berating him for supposedly lying and exaggerating?

In a modern information age, these historians might ask, how could an apocryphal quote like Gore claiming to have “invented the Internet” been allowed to define a leading political figure much as the made-up quote “let them eat cake” was exploited by French propagandists to undermine Marie Antoinette two centuries earlier?

Why did the U.S. news media continue ridiculing Gore in 2002 when he was one of the most prominent Americans to warn that George W. Bush’s radical policy of preemptive war was leading the nation into a disaster in Iraq?

These all amount to different ways of wording the same question: Why does the media favor Bush over Gore?

Arguably, those violations of journalistic principles at leading U.S. news organizations, in applying double standards to Gore and Bush, altered the course of American history and put the nation on a very dangerous road.

In my opinion it is not arguable in any way, shape or form. The media gave George W. Bush a free ride with all the trappings, and took potshots at Al Gore at every possible opportunity. It was obvious, it was malicious, it was deliberate, and at least part of it was very carefully orchestrated!

The evidence Parry recounts is stronger than the conclusions he draws. For instance,

In December 1999, for instance, the news media generated dozens of stories about Gore's supposed claim that he discovered the Love Canal toxic waste dump. "I was the one that started it all," he was quoted as saying. This "gaffe" then was used to recycle other situations in which Gore allegedly exaggerated his role or, as some writers put it, told "bold-faced lies."

One of these lies involved "Love Story"; another concerned the Internet. Parry documents the development of these and some others. The stories were widely circulated.

But behind these examples of Gore's "lies" was some very sloppy journalism.

That's a very generous way to describe it, in my opinion. Some would say Al Gore was ambushed.

The Love Canal flap started when The Washington Post and The New York Times misquoted Gore on a key point and cropped out the context of another sentence to give readers a false impression of what he meant.

The error was then exploited by national Republicans and amplified endlessly by the rest of the news media, even after the Post and Times grudgingly filed corrections.

Almost as remarkable, though, is how the two newspapers finally agreed to run corrections. They were effectively shamed into doing so by high school students in New Hampshire and by an Internet site called The Daily Howler, edited by a stand-up comic named Bob Somerby.

It really is remarkable. The Love Canal is a toxic waste nightmare in Niagara Falls, NY, where the Army and private chemical producers buried countless drums of the world's most deadly chemistry. The underground time-bomb ticked for about 30 years before it went off; shortly thereafter, Love Canal became the first such nightmare to receive national (and even global) attention. I could do an entire post on its history, and maybe some day I will.

The Love Canal quote controversy began on Nov. 30, 1999, when Gore was speaking to a group of high school students in Concord, N.H. He was exhorting the students to reject cynicism and to recognize that individual citizens can effect important changes.

As an example, he cited a high school girl from Toone, Tenn., a town that had experienced problems with toxic waste. She brought the issue to the attention of Gore's congressional office in the late 1970s.

"I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing," Gore told the students. "I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee – that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."

After the hearings, Gore said, "we passed a major national law to clean up hazardous dump sites. And we had new efforts to stop the practices that ended up poisoning water around the country. We've still got work to do. But we made a huge difference. And it all happened because one high school student got involved."

As Parry points out, the context is clear. Love Canal was well-known -- even outside the US -- but Toone was not. At all. And yet,

What sparked his interest in the toxic-waste issue was the situation in Toone – "that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."

After learning about the Toone situation, Gore looked for other examples and "found" a similar case at Love Canal. He was not claiming to have been the first one to discover Love Canal, which already had been evacuated. He simply needed other case studies for the hearings.

The next day, The Washington Post stripped Gore's comments of their context and gave them a negative twist.

"Gore boasted about his efforts in Congress 20 years ago to publicize the dangers of toxic waste," the Post reported. "'I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal,' he said, referring to the Niagara homes evacuated in August 1978 because of chemical contamination. 'I had the first hearing on this issue.' … Gore said his efforts made a lasting impact. 'I was the one that started it all,' he said." [Washington Post, Dec. 1, 1999]

The New York Times ran a slightly less contentious story with the same false quote: "I was the one that started it all."

Where did the false quote come from? Did these two huge newspapers simply print this preposterous statement without even checking to see whether this was what the man said? Apparently so. And it gets worse.

The Republican National Committee spotted Gore's alleged boast and was quick to fax around its own take. "Al Gore is simply unbelievable – in the most literal sense of that term," declared Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson. "It's a pattern of phoniness – and it would be funny if it weren't also a little scary."

Au contraire! This example of so-called journalism would be funny if it weren't absolutely terrifying!

The GOP release then doctored Gore's quote a bit more. After all, it would be grammatically incorrect to have said, "I was the one that started it all." So, the Republican handout fixed Gore's grammar to say, "I was the one who started it all."

In just one day, the key quote had transformed from "that was the one that started it all" to "I was the one that started it all" to "I was the one who started it all."

In just one day...

The national pundit shows quickly picked up the story of Gore's new “exaggeration.”

"Let's talk about the 'love' factor here," chortled Chris Matthews of CNBC's Hardball. "Here's the guy who said he was the character Ryan O'Neal was based on in ‘Love Story.’ … It seems to me … he's now the guy who created the Love Canal [case]. I mean, isn't this getting ridiculous? … Isn't it getting to be delusionary?"

Matthews turned to his baffled guest, Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal resident who is widely credited with bringing the issue to public attention. She sounded confused about why Gore would claim credit for discovering Love Canal, but defended Gore's hard work on the issue.

"I actually think he's done a great job," Gibbs said. "I mean, he really did work, when nobody else was working, on trying to define what the hazards were in this country and how to clean it up and helping with the Superfund and other legislation." [CNBC's Hardball, Dec. 1, 1999]

I'm here to tell you Lois Gibbs is absolutely credible about Love Canal. I could tell you stories. But not now. Maybe later.

While the national media was excoriating Gore, the Concord students [who knew first-hand that Gore had been misquoted] were learning more than they had expected about how media and politics work in modern America.

For days, the students pressed for a correction from The Washington Post and The New York Times. But the prestige papers balked, insisting that the error was insignificant.

"The part that bugs me is the way they nit pick," said Tara Baker, a Concord High junior. "[But] they should at least get it right." [AP, Dec. 14, 1999]

When the David Letterman show made Love Canal the jumping off point for a joke list: "Top 10 Achievements Claimed by Al Gore," the students responded with a press release entitled "Top 10 Reasons Why Many Concord High Students Feel Betrayed by Some of the Media Coverage of Al Gore's Visit to Their School." [Boston Globe, Dec. 26, 1999]

The Web site, The Daily Howler, also was hectoring what it termed a "grumbling editor" at the Post to correct the error.

So The Washington Post and the New York Times were forced to print corrections, but they still didn't get the story right!

Finally, on Dec. 7, a week after Gore's comment, the Post published a partial correction, tucked away as the last item in a corrections box. But the Post still misled readers about what Gore actually said.

The Post correction read: "In fact, Gore said, 'That was the one that started it all,' referring to the congressional hearings on the subject that he called."

The revision fit with the Post's insistence that the two quotes meant pretty much the same thing, but again, the newspaper was distorting Gore's clear intent by attaching "that" to the wrong antecedent. From the full quote, it's obvious the "that" refers to the Toone toxic waste case, not to Gore's hearings.

Three days later, The New York Times followed suit with a correction of its own, but again without fully explaining Gore's position. "They fixed how they misquoted him, but they didn't tell the whole story," commented Lindsey Roy, another Concord High junior.

On and on it goes. Read all about it. Read more about the Love Canal lie, the Internet lie, the "Love Story" lie, and more. Read about how all these lies were woven together into an entirely fictional narrative, one that some in the "news" media felt "obliged" to tell.

The Post's Ceci Connolly even defended her inaccurate rendition of Gore's quote as something of a journalistic duty. "We have an obligation to our readers to alert them [that] this [Gore's false boasting] continues to be something of a habit," she said. [AP, Dec. 14, 1999]

Meanwhile they were packaging a mean-spirited dry-drunk half-witted warmonger -- who had already admitted in public that he would attack Iraq if he could -- as a "compassionate conservative" who wanted to conduct a "humble foreign policy".

Bob Parry can use the word "arguable" if he wants, but that doesn't mean I have to.

If the media had told the truth about the two candidates, the 2000 election would never have been close enough to steal. Period.

Thus was our birthright stolen from us.

What are we gonna do about it?



We've got plenty of guillotines.

We've got plenty of buckets.

What are we waiting for?

Iraq In Chaos; Iran In The Crosshairs

Iraq is a much more tangled mess than most of us realize, and that makes Iran more attractive, to a certain small group of very powerful people.

Preparations For War With Iran Are Advancing

Robert Parry

Military and intelligence sources continue to tell me that preparations are advancing for a war with Iran starting possibly as early as mid-to-late February.
...
There is growing alarm among military and intelligence experts that Bush already has decided to attack and simply is waiting for a second aircraft carrier strike force to arrive in the region – and for a propaganda blitz to stir up some pro-war sentiment at home.

One well-informed U.S. military source called me in a fury after consulting with Pentagon associates and discovering how far along the war preparations are. He said the plans call for extensive aerial attacks on Iran, including use of powerful bunker-busting ordnance.

Another source with a pipeline into Israeli thinking said the Iran war plan has expanded over the past several weeks. Earlier thinking had been that Israeli warplanes would hit Iranian nuclear targets with U.S. forces in reserve in case of Iranian retaliation, but now the strategy anticipates a major U.S. military follow-up to an Israeli attack, the source said.

Both sources used the same word “crazy” in describing the plan to expand the war to Iran.

This Ain't No Foolin' Around

Marc Lord

The USS Dwight Eisenhower is in the Persian Gulf, off Somalia near the Horn of Africa. The USS John C. Stennis should arrive to join it on station in mid-February. The USS Ronald Reagan should arrive in the region at the beginning of March, right after Admiral William Fallon is confirmed as CENTCOM commander. There is no need for 3 aircraft carriers there, except for an attack on Iran; this ain't no party, this ain't no disco.

Iraq Is Worse Than You Think

Robert Parry

Sources with first-hand knowledge of conditions in Iraq have told me that the U.S. position is even more precarious than generally understood. Westerners can’t even move around Baghdad and many other Iraqi cities except in armed convoys.

“In some countries, if you want to get out of the car and go to the market, they’ll tell you that it might be dangerous,” one experienced American cameraman told me. “In Iraq, you will be killed. Not that you might be killed, but you will be killed. The first Iraqi with a gun will shoot you, and if no one has a gun, they’ll stone you.”
...
The American cameraman said one European journalist rebelled at the confinement, took off on her own in a cab – and was never seen again.
...
The futility of the Iraq War also is contributing to professional cynicism. Some intelligence support personnel are volunteering for Iraq duty not because they think they can help win the war but because the hazard pay is high and life in the protected Green Zone is relatively safe and easy.
...
That American officials have come to view a posting in Iraq as a pleasant career enhancer – rather than a vital national security mission for the United States – is another sign that the war is almost certainly beyond recovery.

Security? The Mahdi Army Control The Iraqi Police

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

Fadhel and his family found themselves in the squatters' compound in east Baghdad. He and his brother joined the Mahdi Army and fought against the Americans in Sadr City and Karbala. Now he lives in a small rented flat in Dora, once a mixed Sunni area but now one of the main battle fronts in this sectarian war. To gather intelligence, he set out to make Sunni friends: "I live with them, pray like them, I even insult the imams and the Mahdi Army."

Fadhel and other Mahdi Army commanders describe an intimate relationship with Iraqi security services, especially the commandos of the Iraqi interior ministry. He says the Mahdi Army often uses these official forces in conducting its own operations against Sunni "terrorists".

"We have specific units that we work with where members of the Mahdi Army are in command. We conduct operations together. We can't ask any army unit to come with us, we just ask the units that are under the control of our men.

"The police are all under our control, we ask them to help or inform them that shooting will take place in a street and it involves the Mahdi Army, and that's it."

Recent Personnel Changes Foreshadow A Widening Of The War

Robert Parry

On Jan. 4, Bush ousted the top two commanders in the Middle East, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, who had opposed a military escalation in Iraq. Bush also removed Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who had stood by intelligence estimates downplaying the near-term threat from Iran’s nuclear program.

Bush appointed Admiral William Fallon as the new chief of Central Command for the Middle East despite the fact that Fallon, a Navy aviator and head of the Pacific Command, will oversee two ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The choice of Fallon makes more sense if Bush foresees a bigger role for the two aircraft carrier groups off Iran’s coast.

Though not considered a Middle East expert, Fallon has moved in neocon circles, for instance, attending a 2001 awards ceremony at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think tank dedicated to explaining “the link between American defense policy and the security of Israel.”

Bush also shifted Negroponte from his Cabinet-level position as DNI to a sub-Cabinet post as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. To replace Negroponte, Bush nominated retired Vice Admiral John “Mike” McConnell, who is viewed by intelligence professionals as a low-profile technocrat, not a strong independent figure.

McConnell is seen as more likely than Negroponte to give the administration an alarming assessment of Iran’s nuclear capabilities and intentions in an upcoming National Intelligence Estimate. Last year, to the consternation of neoconservatives, Negroponte splashed cold water on their heated rhetoric about the imminent threat from Iran.

“Our assessment is that the prospects of an Iranian weapon are still a number of years off, and probably into the next decade,” Negroponte said in an interview with NBC News in April 2006. Expressing a similarly tempered view in a speech at the National Press Club, Negroponte said, “I think it’s important that this issue be kept in perspective.”

Operation Deathtrap

James Carroll

'Who the hell is shooting at us?" a U.S. soldier yelled last week. His platoon was in a strife-torn part of Baghdad, teamed with an Iraqi Army unit. Gunfire was coming from all directions. "Who's shooting at us? Do we know who they are?"
...
Just by being in the streets to shoot at, well-armed soldiers empower the gunmen on all sides. Perhaps the most destructive unintended consequence of America's lethal presence has been the way the lethal power of all belligerents has scaled up to match it. America's young people are surrounded now by killers united only in the will to kill them. Operation deathtrap, exactly.

But anguish about the war is equally fueled by what is happening in Washington. After Bush's State of the Union address, antiwar Republicans and Democrats began vying with each other over ways to challenge U.S. policy, even as Vice President Dick Cheney bluntly declared of congressional action, "It won't stop us." And sure enough, the Democrats and Republicans quickly tempered their opposition.

Why Attack Iran? Other Political Considerations

Robert Parry

Bush and his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, also have powerful political motives for ordering air strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites. Both leaders have suffered military reversals – Bush in Iraq and Olmert in Lebanon – and their public approval ratings have plummeted.
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Bush and Olmert are two desperate politicians looking for something to put themselves back on top.

It also is conventional wisdom among American neoconservatives – as well as many Israelis – that President Bush may be the only U.S. leader who would countenance a preemptive military strike against Iran.

So, if the bombing raid is going to happen, these neocons believe it must occur within the next two years, preferably as soon as possible.

A Huge Battle In A Small Village: Zarqa, Near Najaf

Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

A huge battle broke out around the small village of Zarqa, just a few kilometers northeast of the Shi'ite holy city Najaf, which is 90km south of Baghdad.
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More than 200 people lay dead after more than half a day of fighting on Sunday.
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Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani announced to reporters at 9am on Sunday that Najaf was being attacked by al-Qaeda. Immediately after this announcement, the Ministry of National Security (MNS) announced that the dead were members of the Shi'ite splinter extremist group Jund al-Sama (Army of Heaven) who were out to kill senior ayatollahs in Najaf, including Sistani.

Iraqi National Security Adviser Muaffaq al-Rubaii said just 15 minutes after the MNS announcement that hundreds of Arab fighters had been killed, and that many had been arrested. Rubaii claimed there were Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians and Afghans.

"What Can We Do? It's Like Having A Mentally Ill Relative."

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

The new Bush plan to secure Baghdad gives a major role to the Iraqi army and police units in securing Baghdad. Few in the city expect that these predominantly Shia forces will seriously challenge their fellow Shia.

As the discussions for the new security plan were continuing, an Iraqi Shia official who belongs to another party told me: "We know that Moqtada [al-Sadr] and his men are responsible for all this mess but what can we do? We can't attack them, we can only talk to them. Its like having a mentally ill relative - you can't just throw him in the street."

Fadhel and other Mahdi army officers also describe a complex relationship with Iraq's Shia neighbour. Iran, which backs a rival Shia faction to the Mahdi Army, secured a PR success when Mr Sadr upon his arrival in Tehran last year announced that the Mahdi Army would defend Iran if attacked by the US. One Mahdi Army commander told me: "The Iranians are helping us not because they like us, but because they hate the US."

Not-So-Diplomatic Maneuvering

Robert Parry

There is a sense of futility among many in Washington who doubt they can do anything to stop Bush. So far, the Democratic-controlled Congress has lagged behind the curve, debating how to phrase a non-binding resolution of disapproval about Bush’s “surge” of 21,500 troops in Iraq, while Bush may be opening an entirely new front in Iran.

According to intelligence sources, Bush’s Iran strategy is expected to let the Israelis take a lead role in attacking Iran's nuclear facilities in order to defuse Democratic opposition and let the U.S. intervention be sold as defensive, a case of a vulnerable ally protecting itself from a future nuclear threat.
...
On Jan. 10, the night of Bush’s national address on the Iraq War, NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert made a striking observation about a pre-speech briefing that Bush and other senior administration officials gave to news executives.

“There’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue in the country and the world in a very acute way – and a prediction that in 2008 candidates of both parties will have as a fundamental campaign promise or premise a policy to deal with Iran and not let it go nuclear,” Russert said. “That’s how significant Iran was today.”

So, Bush and his top advisers not only signaled their expectation of a “very acute” development with Iran but that the Iranian issue would come to dominate Campaign 2008 with candidates forced to spell out plans for containing this enemy state.

Warplanes Killed The Pilgrims

Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

Iraqi government statements over the killing of hundreds of Shi'ites in an attack on Sunday stand exposed by independent investigations carried out by Inter Press Service (IPS).
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"We were going to conduct the usual ceremonies that we conduct every year when we were attacked by Iraqi soldiers," Jabbar al-Hatami, a leader of the al-Hatami Shi'ite Arab tribe told IPS.

"We thought it was one of the usual mistakes of the Iraqi army killing civilians, so we advanced to explain to the soldiers that they killed five of us for no reason. But we were surprised by more gunfire from the soldiers."
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"American helicopters participated in the slaughter," Jassim Abbas, a farmer from the area, told IPS. "They were soon there to kill those pilgrims without hesitation, but they were never there for helping Iraqis in anything they need. We just watched them getting killed group by group while trapped in those plantations."

Much of the killing was done by US and British warplanes, witnesses said.

How Are Iranians Helping Iraqis?

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

The help comes in different forms. "We get weapons from them, mortar shells, RPG rounds, sometimes they give us weapons for free sometimes we have to buy. Depends on who is doing the deal," said the same commander.

Fadhel told me that back in November he escorted a small truck filled with weapons from Kut, on the Iranian border, to Baghdad. "We get the weapons in trucks, we take a letter to the Iraqi army checkpoints and it's all fine."

Like many of their Sunni counterparts, the Mahdi commanders boast that they could wipe out the other sect and gain total control over Baghdad if the US left. "We control most of Baghdad, our main enemy is the Americans," said Fadhel. Then he paused for a second and continued: "Also we can't trust the other Shia factions. Imam Ali says 'God please protect me against my friends and I will take care of my enemies.'"

"Public Diplomacy"

Robert Parry

In his prime-time speech, Bush injected other reasons to anticipate a wider war. He used language that suggested U.S. or allied forces might launch attacks inside Iran and Syria to “disrupt the attacks on our forces” in Iraq.

“We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria,” Bush said. “And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”
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However, Bush’s announcement about the installation of Patriot missiles and the deployment of another aircraft carrier attack group suggested he was putting in place a military infrastructure for a regional war.

The Patriots and the aircraft carriers would be useful to deter – or defend against – retaliatory missile strikes from Iran if the Israelis or the United States were to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities or stage military raids inside Iran.

The Kids Are Roaming The Streets Carrying Two Guns Each

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

Rami was explaining how the insurgency had changed since the first heady days after the US invasion. "I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad."

Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood. Until the last few months, the insurgency got by with weapons and ammunition looted from former Iraqi army depots. But now that Sunnis were besieged in their neighbourhoods and fighting daily clashes with the better-equipped Shia ministry of interior forces, they needed new sources of weapons and money.

He told me that one of his main suppliers had been an interpreter working for the US army in Baghdad. "He had a deal with an American officer. We bought brand new AKs and ammunition from them." He claimed the American officer, whom he had never met but he believed was a captain serving at Baghdad airport, had even helped to divert a truckload of weapons as soon as it was driven over the border from Jordan.

These days Rami gets most of his supplies from the new American-equipped Iraqi army. "We buy ammunition from officers in charge of warehouses, a small box of AK-47 bullets is $450 (£230). If the guy sells a thousand boxes he can become rich and leave the country." But as the security situation deteriorates, Rami finds it increasingly difficult to travel across Baghdad. "Now I have to pay a Shia taxi driver to bring the ammo to me. He gets $50 for each shipment."

Room To Maneuver?

Robert Parry

One way to get around the opposition of the Joint Chiefs would be to delegate the bombing operation to the Israelis. Given Israel’s powerful lobbying operation in Washington and its strong ties to leading Democrats, an Israeli-led attack might be more politically palatable with Congress.
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Since 2003 when the WMD justification for the Iraq invasion proved bogus, Bush has suffered from a credibility gap on similar statements about other countries.
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Though Israeli spokesmen say Israel has no plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, there appears to be growing public support in Israel for such an operation.

"Don't Look Up. Shia Spies Are Everywhere."

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

A heated discussion was raging. One of the men, with a very thin moustache, a huge belly and a red kuffiya wrapped around his shoulder, held a copy of the Qur'an in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. I asked him what his objectives were. "We are fighting to liberate our country from the occupations of the Americans and their Iranian-Shia stooges."

"My brother, I disagree," said Abu Omar. "Look, the Americans are trying to talk to us Sunnis and we need to show them that we can do politics. We need to use the Americans to fight the Shia."

He looked nervously at them: suggestions of talking to the Americans could easily have him labelled as traitor. "Where is the jihad and the mujahideen?" he continued. "Baghdad has become a Shia town. Our brothers are being slaughtered every day! Where are these al-Qaida heroes? One neighbourhood after another will be lost if we don't work on a strategy."

The taxi driver commander, who sat cross-legged on a sofa, joined in: "If the Americans leave we will be slaughtered." A big-bellied man waved his hands dismissively: "We will massacre the Shia and show them who are the Sunnis! They couldn't have done anything without the Americans' support."

When the meeting was over the taxi driver went out to check the road, then the rest followed. "Don't look up, we could be monitored, Shia spies are everywhere," said the big man. The next day the taxi driver was arrested.

Exxon-Mobil Posts Record Profits

Reuters

Exxon Mobil Corp. posted the largest annual profit in U.S. history Thursday, even though fourth-quarter earnings fell on lower natural gas prices and shrinking gasoline margins.

For the year, Exxon Mobil earned $39.5 billion, up from its previous record $36.1 billion in 2005.

Net income in the fourth quarter slipped to $10.25 billion, or $1.76 a share, from $10.71 billion, or $1.71 a share, a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded company, earned $1.69 a share.
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Earnings from exploration and production activities were $6.22 billion, down $818 million from a year earlier due to the natural gas price drop and decreased volumes driven by lower demand in Europe.

Earnings from refining and marketing operations totaled $1.86 billion, down $430 million due to lower margins.

And The Wind Begins To Howl

Chris Floyd

And, as Parry notes, while all this is going on, the Senate is still dithering over an absolutely toothless, spineless, worthless, non-binding expression of its "displeasure" at Bush's murderous "surge" plan in Iraq. These mighty sentinels of our liberties, these "co-equals in the governance of the United States," have -- as any sentient being could have foreseen -- caved in once again to the radical militarist fringe group that has seized control of the Executive Branch, and rams through its sinister program of loot and dominion without any more pretense about the "consent of the governed." Although poll after poll shows that the Bush gang is one of the most unpopular administrations in American history, that almost two-thirds of the public now oppose the Iraq War, still the Democratic leaders in Congress quail and quiver before the tinpot, dimbulb tyrant. They have the legitimate power and the legal right -- and the popular support -- to end the bloody war crime in Iraq right now, if they had the courage of the American people's convictions.

But they don't. As they have demonstrated over and over and over again, in every situation, in the minority and the majorities they had in 2001-2002 and again in 2007, they are, with very few exceptions, pathetic cowards. Oh, they will talk tough, they will bluster, they will pose, they will preen, but when the deal goes down, they fold.

The Democrats cannot even bring themselves to stand up against a criminal war that has been clearly rejected by the American people, a war bringing nothing but ruin, dishonor and ever-increasing danger to the United States. If they will not act in these entirely favorable circumstances, who in their right mind can expect them to oppose the coming war with Iran -- especially, as we have noted here over and over, the Democrats have been even more bellicose in their warmongering rhetoric about Iran than the Bush gang? (Although that is now changing as the Bushists, having quietly made their logistical preparations, throw the switch on the PR campaign for war).

These are dark days, and they are about to get darker. Yet in this desperate hour, we are led by nothing but fools and cranks and cowards, on every side, as the riders -- the pale riders -- are approaching.

~~~ LINKS ~~~

Reuters via CNN Money: Exxon Mobil sets annual profit record

Robert Parry: The Logic of a Wider Mideast War

Robert Parry: Iran Clock Is Ticking

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: 'If they pay we kill them anyway' - the kidnapper's story

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: 'The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans'

James Carroll: Operation deathtrap

Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily: Pilgrims massacred in the 'battle' of Najaf

Marc Lord: Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons

Chris Floyd: All Along the Watchtower: The Firestorm of New War is Almost Upon Us