Grotesque Ignorance

An overwhelming majority of 85% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks!”

Also, 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq!” - U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006 ZOGBY Poll

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ...
it expects what never was and never will be."
- Thomas Jefferson

Chomsky on Israel: "As the Middle East (Egypt included) struggled to free itself from debilitating and murderous Western control, a new Western enclave was established in its heart, the Levant, separating the North African from the West Asian Arab-speaking areas. This was achieved by virtue of the intervention of the Western imperial powers from whom the people of the region were seeking to free themselves. In the course of the conquest by European settlers, the indigenous population was displaced and marginalized. The fact that the European settlers had suffered horrendous brutality in Europe was invoked to demand that Palestinians compensate by giving up their land to them; there was no proposal for a Jewish state in Bavaria or New York (where there was a considerable Jewish population, even a majority in parts): it was Palestinians who were to pay for the crimes of the Europeans against Jews, an arrangement which seemed less than just to many people in the region.

The new Jewish state reduced its own Arab citizens to second-rate status, with severe discriminatory laws and practices that would be considered an utter outrage in any Western democracy; imagine the reaction here if 92% of the land in the US were effectively under the control of an organization dedicated to work for the benefit of people of "white Christian race, religion, or origin," hence excluding Jews, Blacks, etc., from the land. The newly-established state was also violent and aggressive beyond its borders. It immediately expanded illegally into the demilitarized zones, forcefully expelling thousands of Bedouins, and carried out murderous terrorist attacks against villages implicated in no anti-Israel actions. It proceeded to invade Egypt in collusion with the traditional imperial masters (England, France), doing so again with US support a decade later. It refused Egypt's offers for a full peace settlement in 1971, agreeing in part only after the 1973 war deflated its triumphalism. But that later (Camp David) agreement, brokered by the US, was designed to remove Egypt from the conflict, leaving Israel free to integrate the occupied territories and attack Lebanon, as it proceeded at once to do with huge US aid. It invaded Lebanon again shortly after, killing 20,000 people while devastating large parts of the country. Etc., etc., on to the present. That's only a small sample of course, and it leaves out more complex interactions along the way: I'm outlining the basis for perceptions, not writing a history." - Chomsky replies to Alejandro on "Arab countries' attitudes towards Jews, Israel"

The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference

Chomsky talks about the way the U.S. press reacted to the 1953 coup backed by the CIA and how the press portrayed Iran under the Shah to the American public: "In fact the reaction at the time, if you look, is quite interesting. After the coup they knew what had happened. They pretended that they didn't but it was pretty clear what had happened. The New York Times ran an editorial in which it said the overthrow of the Mossadegh government "will be an object lesson to governments that go berserk with hysterical nationalis" meaning they go berserk by trying to control their own resources. This will be an object lesson of what will happen to them. That's the way it was understood - teaching a lesson to any country that is trying to control it's own resources. That was praised in The New York Times. Then came the - I don't have to describe to you what the Shah's regime was like - very ugly, one of the worst torturers and killers. Almost nothing was reported. I mean almost nothing was reported - I mean Amnesty International - year after year picked out Iran as one of the worst criminal states in the world for its treatment of its population - virtually nothing. The only discussion of this began in 1979. Then there was some talk on this. There is a pretty good book on this by Farhang and Dorman ( The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference ), which just reviews the coverage and it's pretty shocking. The fact that they came out now with documentary material is good because it's nice to have material but when you read the reports they basically tell you nothing that you didn't already know." - Things you'll never hear

About the book, a reviewer wrote: "No one seriously interested in the character of public knowledge and the quality of debate over American alliances can afford to ignore the complex link between press and policy and the ways in which mainstream journalism in the U.S. portrays a Third World ally. The case of Iran offers a particularly rich view of these dynamics and suggests that the press is far from fulfilling the watchdog role assigned it in democratic theory and popular imagination."

"This book is a case study of the American media's coverage of events in Iran from 1951-1978. For those who still needed convincing, it shows that public knowledge and debate is shaped by the major media to serve the needs of U.S. foreign policy. ... "In short, at least historically, American liberals were (and are) supportive of U.S. foreign policy during the cold war. The political right's paranoia or misreading of history does not alter this truth." (p.219)" - http://www.namebase.org/sources/KA.html

Talking about Israel and Iran in 2004

" ... first of all Iran is under attack by the world's superpower, with embargoes, this that and the other thing; it's surrounded by states either occupied by its superpower enemy, or having nuclear weapons. A little way down the road, is the regional superpower, which has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction and is, essentially, an offshore US military base, and has the biggest air force, and technologically most advanced air force in NATO, more than any NATO power (outside the United States), and in the past year, has been supplied by the global superpower with a hundred advanced jet bombers, openly advertised as able to fly to Iran and back to bomb it; and also provided (I'm talking about Israel) [laughter from crowd] with what the Hebrew press calls "special weaponry". Well, nobody knows what that means, but if if you're an Iranian intelligence analyst, you're going to give a worst case analysis of it, of course; and has actually been publicly provided with smart bombs and deep penetration weapons and so on." - Chomsky on Iran

Reposted:
The Problem Was Not "Faulty Intelligence," the Problem Was Dishonestly Selecting And Omitting Intelligence

"when the Bush administration began gearing up for war with Iraq in 2002, it found that selective citation of Kamel's testimony could be very helpful in making its case. Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in an August 2002 speech (8/26/02) that the Iraqi regime had been "very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents," and continued "to pursue the nuclear program they began many years ago." To back this up these claims, Cheney added, "We've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law"—a reference to Kamel.

In a Chicago Tribune op-ed (9/10/02), former head of the U.N. weapons inspection team Scott Ritter pointed out that Cheney had left out a critical part of Kamel's story:

Throughout his interview with UNSCOM, a U.N. special commission, Hussein Kamel reiterated his main point - that nothing was left. "All chemical weapons were destroyed," he said. "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed."

Nevertheless, the administration continued to selectively use Kamel's disclosures to bolster its case that Iraq had hidden stockpiles of banned weapons. "It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX," then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his February 5, 2003 speech to the U.N. "The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law." Powell did not note that Kamel had also reported that this nerve gas, along with all other such weapons, had been destroyed years earlier (Extra!, 5-6/03)." - Missing From ABC's WMD 'Scoop' Star defector Hussein Kamel said weapons were destroyed

(Above was originally posted by me at 2/18/2006 04:41:00 AM Oddly, I don't see this post when I look at the Feb archive or my blog edit entries, it isn't there so I decided to repost it. Linking to it still works: http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/02/problem-was-not-faulty-inteligence.html )

Another Memo Gets Underreported in the American Mainstream Media

The British Guardian reported on February 3, 2006:

"The memo seen by Prof Sands, author of Lawless World, reveals:

· Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]". ( The media ALSO misrepresented to the American public the facts about what was called the "no-fly zone" The mainstream media had sold the U.S. government's version of events to the American people. The bottom line is the "no fly zones" were not set up by the UN, they were not sanctioned by the UN and they were not legal. Mainstream media has not made this clear to the public and has in fact misrepresented the "no fly zones" as UN sanctioned which is the lie US government officials have been pushing. Most often this misrepresentation was done by lies of omission and by reporting on the "no fly zones" as if they were perfectly legal when in fact they were not. See: The "No Fly Zones" and Journalistic Malpractice ) It should be pointed out that Bush is scheming to get Saddam to shoot at UN marked planes because Bush knows that Iraq shooting at American planes was legal since the American planes were illegally flying in the "no-fly zones" which were not legal. Mainstream Media is not willing to explain that to the public! )

· Mr Bush even expressed the hope that a defector would be extracted from Iraq and give a "public presentation about Saddam's WMD". He is also said to have referred Mr Blair to a "small possibility" that Saddam would be "assassinated".

· Mr Bush told the prime minister that he "thought it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups". Mr Blair did not demur, according to the book." - Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war revealed in secret memo

New Book Exposes More Lies that Mainstream Media
"In a case of yet another leaked memo in Britain, one of the United Kingdom's top international lawyers quotes minutes from a January 31, 2003 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush in an updated version of his book, "Lawless World", where it appears the two men made the decision to go to war regardless of what the United Nations decided about passing a second resolution that would have allowed the start of the war."

See: Mainstream Media Is Once Again Not Reporting Bush and Blair Scheming for Illegal War

Once Again the Media Bias in Favor of Poweful Elites Is Clear

The media was been reluctant to cover the Downing Street Memo and when it did finally mention it, it gave it very little coverage. For example, the New York Times was not eager to cover it and they downplayed it: "The Sunday Times' May 1 memo story, which broke just four days before Britain's national elections, caused a sensation in Europe. American media reacted more cautiously. The New York Times wrote about the memo May 2, but didn't mention until its 15th paragraph that the memo stated U.S. officials had 'fixed' intelligence and facts" - Another "Downing St. memo" on Bush, Blair & Iraq?

Mark Memmott points out: "None of the stories appeared on the newspapers' front pages. Several other major media outlets, including the evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC, had not said a word about the document before Tuesday. Today marks USA TODAY's first mention. Some activists who opposed Bush's decision to attack Iraq have been peppering editors with letters and e-mails to push the news media into more aggressive coverage."

Now there is another memo that shows Bush was not honest about the War on Iraq. The "White House Memo reports that Bush told Blair "The U.S. would put its full weight behind efforts to get another (UN) resolution and would 'twist arms' and 'even threaten'. But he had to say that if ultimately we failed, military action would follow anyway.'' - Coalition That Won Coverage of Downing Street Memo Promotes New Document

"Jan. 31, 2003, was also the day that the NSA circulated an internal top-secret memo planning spying on UN Security Council members." And this is anthor story most of mainstream media underreported or didn't report at all. See U.S. SPY SCANDAL

The new memo shows that Bush was hoping to assassinate Saddam Hussein, and that Bush was so desperate to provoke a war that he even proposed painting US planes to look like UN planes and flying them low over Iraq in hopes of getting shot at" - see below:

Coalition That Won Coverage of Downing Street Memo Promotes New Document

2/6/2006 8:03:00 AM

---

To: National Desk

Contact: David Swanson, 202-329-7847, for After Downing Street

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A coalition of over 100 organizations -- headquartered at http://www.AfterDowningStreet.org -- flooded the U.S. media with e-mails, phone calls, faxes and protests last June until a leaked British document known as the Downing Street Memo received coverage.

The same coalition has launched a campaign to demand coverage of a memo recording a meeting at the White House on Jan. 31, 2003.

The Downing Street Memo and seven other leaked documents made clear that Bush had decided on war and decided to lie about WMDs and ties to 9-11, that he was aware that Iraq was not a threat, that no attempt was being made to avoid war, that the focus was on selling the war to the public, and that Bush turned to the UN in hopes of crafting an ultimatum that Saddam Hussein would reject.

Some of the most damning information in the memo came from a report that Richard Dearlove, head of secret intelligence for the UK, made on his recent trip to the United States. Some in the media resisted this information, on grounds that we did not know whom Dearlove had met with. James Risen's recently released book "State of War" reports that Dearlove met with George Tenet at CIA headquarters on July 20, 2002.

When President Bush and Prime Minister Blair were asked about the Downing Street Memo last summer, they did not dispute its authenticity or speak to most of its charges. Their chief response was that they had gone to the United Nations to try to avoid war.

But the new White House Memo reports that Bush told Blair "The U.S. would put its full weight behind efforts to get another (UN) resolution and would 'twist arms' and 'even threaten'. But he had to say that if ultimately we failed, military action would follow anyway.''

Jan. 31, 2003, was also the day that the NSA circulated an internal top-secret memo planning spying on UN Security Council members.

The new memo shows that Bush was hoping to assassinate Saddam Hussein, and that Bush was so desperate to provoke a war that he even proposed painting US planes to look like UN planes and flying them low over Iraq in hopes of getting shot at.

More Information: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/whitehousememo

Also See: Another Memo Gets Underreported in the American Mainstream Media

Deceptions Sell Israel to the American Public

"It is still difficult for many to believe that a deception of such magnitude is possible. Deceptions and false declarations have been the standard in the politics of the powerful, and certainly are in Israel's policy toward the Palestinians from the start." - Tanya Reinhart Israel and Palestine

Deceptions that the American public have been immersed in are extreme with regard to Israel. The misrepresentations are intended to present a particular picture of Israel in the minds of the American people in order to hide the reality of what Israel actually is and what is actually happening and what actually happened in Palestine.

"In my entire experience with American journalism, I have never found anything as extreme, sustained, and omnipresent" - Alison Weir

If you can start to look at the facts, you will see how the basics have been misrepresented to the public. For example, what is presented is something that tries to present what Zionist Jews did in 1948 as reasonable. What is not said is that the rights of the overwhelming majority were violated, 67% of the people of Palestine had their rights violated, they did not want their land chopped up into 7 sections which is what the UN resolution suggested be done.

In this example we can see how the manipulation is done. What the public is usually told is that "The jews accepted, the Arabs rejected" the UN plan. By omitting the key facts, such as the fact that it was a majority, 67% of the people, which did not want their land chopped up into pieces to serve the racist agenda of a minority, 33%. It is simply not reasonable for 33% of a population to demand that religious/ethnic land divisions be imposed upon the populations, this violates basic democracy. So these facts are suppressed and all we hear, and we hear it without the background facts about the rights of the majority, how big that majority was, and how fundamentally unjust the proposal was. And that fact that it was a proposal and that people had every right to reject it. It is a basic democratic principle that the majority of the people get to determine their own fate. It really is a dramatic example, look how it is always presented and then look at what is left out of the typical depiction of what happened in 1948.

Zionist Jews wanted to create a state based on religious/ethnic background thus making the people who are not Jews second class citizens in their own land and the people that the Jews wanted to impose this are were the overwhelming majority of the population living there. The injustice of what happened is suppressed by lies of omission. the American public is not being given all the critical facts. All the public hears is constant propaganda that tries to tie the concept of democracy to Israel while it hides the fact that the creation of Israel was an extreme violation of basic democracy and is a continuing violation of democracy.

The Phrase "Right to Exist" is another Manipulative Trick

"The whole question of recognizing the right of a state to exist was invented solely for Israel. People, on the other hand, have a right to exist. So the people who live on the land - Israelis and Palestinians - have a right to live in security and peace." - Noam Chomsky

In International affairs, nations recognize each other and make agreements, this idea that people must accept the "right" of Israel to be a racist state which maintains a racist quota by refusing to undo the crime of ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of non-Jews is outrageous.

The whole concept is a sleazy and dishonest attempt to link the existence of people with the existence of a discriminatory state based upon a privileged class of people. racism is not a 'right'. The Jews in Israel don't have a right to discriminate agianst non-Jews. let's be crystal clear about what it is that we mean by "Israel" and what this Israel is existing as Ending the Jewish supremacist system is considered "Israel ceasing to exist". Not that ending the supremacist system will lead to "Israel ceasing to exist" but that ending the supremacist system would be by definition "ending Israel".

In the 1970's, when the PLO was willing to recognize Israel and agree to peace, the Israelis invented this concept "right to exist"and demanded that the PLO accept that it is legitimate, that it is a 'right', to dispose hundreds of thousands of people because of their religion and to discriminate against people because of their religion.

It is like demanding that a black person say that whites have a right to set up a "white state" and force a percentage of blacks out of the country to create what racists consider a desirable demographic.

People deserve to have equal rights regardless of what religion they are. Do you not realize that the Zionists set up a JEWISH state and not a democratic state? Why do you think it is OK for a minority of a population to ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of people because of their religion? This is exactly what the Zionists did to non-Jews in Palestine!

The misleading story often told is that "Jews declared Israel and then they were attacked." The fact is, from November 1947 to May 1948 the Zionists were already on the offensive and had already attacked Arabs. In the months before Israel was declared, the Zionists had driven 300,000 non-Jews off their land. In the months before Israel was declared, the Zionists had seized land beyond the proposed Jewish State.

The fact is, Jews were only 33% of the population of Palestine in 1947. Why in the world would you think it is legitimate for Zionist Jews, who were less than 33% of a population, to seize land and carve up the land into 7 parts? Why in the world should 67% of a population ever accept that? These population stats, which highlight just how undemocratic the UN proposal really was, are almost never mentioned in US media.

Do you think it would be OK to change the U.S. into a "WHITE State"?

Do you know that the U.S. is more white than Israel is Jewish? Why do you think it is OK to discriminate against 20% of Israel's population just because they are not Jews? It would be no more legitimate for white Americans to declare America a "White State" than it is for Jews to declare Israel a "Jewish State."

Ending the Jewish supremacist system is considered "Israel ceasing to exist". Not that ending the supremacist system will lead to "Israel ceasing to exist" but that ending the supremacist system would be by definition "ending Israel". Zionists consider the racist foundation to be an essential characteristic of Israel. It would not be Israel if all citizens had equal rights. What this means is that a non-Jew cannot call for equal rights without being accused of calling for the "destruction of Israel". What isn't told is that ending the discrimination means that Israel ends since Israel is a system of discrimination. To end the discrimination means to end Israel.

Israeli Arabs not only don't have equal rights but the majority of Israeli Jews don't even think they should have equal rights. More than half the Jewish population of Israel - 53 percent - is opposed to full equal rights for Israeli Arabs, according to a survey conducted last month by the Israel Democracy Institute.

What would we think of whites in America who insist that Blacks should not have equal rights? You need to open your eyes to the reality of what Israel actually is. Allowing ALL people, regardless of their religion, to have equal rights means the end of Israel because Israel is a system that denies full equal rights to all people.

The root problem of the Israel and Palestine conflict is that the Jews running Israel are unwilling to allow non-Jews to have equal rights. That is the fundamental problem and cause of the conflict.

This concept 'right to exist' was in fact invented, as far as I can tell, in the 1970s when there was general international agreement, including the Arab states and the PLO, that Israel should have the rights of every state in the international system. And therefore, in an effort to prevent negotiations and a diplomatic settlement, the U.S. and Israel insisted on raising the barrier to something that nobody’s going to accept. Certainly, the Palestinians can’t accept it. They’re not going to accept Israel’s existence but also the legitimacy of its existence and the legitimacy of their dispossession. Why should they accept that? Why should anyone accept it?


An Israeli Jew Tells the Truth About The 'Anti-Semitism" Trick

Shulamit Aloni appeared on Democracy Now. Shulamit Aloni is a former Knesset member who headed the Meretz Party in Israel. She was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy NOW!

Amy Goodman asked her what she thought of the fact that often when people speak out against Israel policies they get labeled "anti-Semitic". Shulamit Aloni answered "well it is a trick, we always use it." Hear Shulamit Aloni interviewed on Democracy NOW here

"One of the blessings of our free society is that we can debate these issues openly, even in a time of war. Most of the debate has been a credit to our democracy, but some have launched irresponsible charges. They say that we act because of oil, that we act in Iraq because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. Some of the most irresponsible comments about manipulating intelligence have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence we saw, and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. These charges are pure politics. They hurt the morale of our troops. Whatever our differences in Washington, our men and women in uniform deserve to know that once our politicians vote to send them into harm's way, our support will be with them in good days and bad, and we will settle for nothing less than complete victory." - President Bush

President Bush is very strongly insinuating that politicians cannot question if he was honest about the pre-war intelligence without being guilty of not supporting the troops.

The Wrongs (not simply the errors) of U.S. Foreign Policies Must be Stopped

There are serious wrongs that are taking place as a result of specific foreign policies. The closest I have seen mainstream TV get to explaining the truth was when ABC's Chris Bury reported: "The US support of Israel tops the list of objections to American foreign policy. Indeed, some of the political grievances outlined by radicals, including Osama bin Laden, are shared even by a mainstream public that detests his murderous methods. In this view the US is not hated for the freedoms we enjoy, as the President suggested, but instead is seen as being hypocritical about them."

You can see ABC's or Chris Bury's reluctance to report the truth straight out when the report called the truth a "view" and it downplayed the President lying about why we were attacked by describing it as "the President suggested."

I have not seen any mainstream reporters with the backbone to say that the foreign policies are hypocritical as opposed to "seen as being hypocritical."

Why is the history of modern Palestine such a matter of debate?

Let's Stop a US/Israeli War on Iran
It's More Important Than Halting Nuclear Proliferation
By BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
Former CIA analysts

The peace movements of the entire world should be in crisis mode right now, working non-stop to prevent the U.S. and Israel from starting a war against Iran.

The Iran Crisis: 'Diplomacy' as a Launch Pad for Missiles Air attacks on targets in Iran are very likely. Yet many antiwar Americans are in denial.

How To Prevent Another 9/11
Our government can prevent another 9/11 without firing a shot or spending more billions in a futile attempt to encase America in a protective cocoon. All we need to do is stand resolutely for justice. This requires a halt to U.S. acts of war in Iraq and the suspension of all aid until Israel treats Palestinians justly, either by ending its occupation of their land seized in 1967 or by according them full citizenship in Israel.

Fear reaches far beyond Washington. Citizens capable of expressing moral outrage in newspapers, on television, from pulpits, and in the halls of academia are as silent as the politicians. Is everyone afraid that calling Israel to account will lead to false but painful charges of anti-Semitism?

Paul Findley, a Republican, served in Congress 1961-83, 12 of those years on the House Middle East subcommittee. He is the author of five books, one a 7-week Washington Post bestseller. He resides in Jacksonville, Illinois.

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=48360

odgersm wrote, "He isn't thick he just does not subscribe to all of the conspiracy theories that you do."

It isn't a "conspiracy theory" in fact, the Iran example as I have said, is publicly AND OFFICIALLY admitted to from the State Department. This public admission was not the sole decision of Albright, I don't think you have a handle on how these things work in our government.

odgersm wrote, "Dr Mossadegh did not just simply wish to Nationalize their Oil resources they seized the Angolo-Iranian Oil company and all of its assets. Would it be acceptable to just seize Toyota Or Honda America? "

That isn't correct. "Mossadegh was elected prime minister by a large majority of Parliament ... As the prime minister had anticipated, the British did not take the nationalization gracefully, though it was supported unanimously by the Iranian parliament and by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people for reasons of both economic justice and national pride. The Mossadegh government tried to do all the right things to placate the British: It offered to set aside 25 percent of the net profits of the oil operation as compensation; it guaranteed the safety and the jobs of the British employees; it was willing to sell its oil without disturbance to the tidy control system so dear to the hearts of the international oil giants. But the British would have none of it. What they wanted was their oil company back. And they wanted Mossadegh's head. A servant does not affront his lord with impunity."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Iran_KH.html

What U.S. policy makers did was a crime. You are making excuses for imperialists. Remember the British had invested in the American colonies and didn't like America's Independence.

And it is indicative of a very serious problem when odgersm writes, "And it doesn't matter this was a long time ago and this can not be compared to today. "

That doesn't cut it at all. You need to stop and examine what you are doing, you are making rationalizations just because you have this warped concept of what "America" is and what you are supposed to blindly support. You need to take a step back, your are trying way too hard to twist things in your head to justify actions just because you associate them with "AMerica"

THese policies were wrong and were pushed by men who betrayed the American people and by cowards who were to afraid to stand up and put a stop to it. In the case of the crime agisnt Iran, the CIA man Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt wrote, "In fact, I was morally certain that almost half of those present, if they had felt free or had the courage to speak, would have opposed the undertaking."

For you to say that examples like these don't not matter because they were "a long time ago" shows a very serious problem with your thinking. Step back and look at the situation, stop leaping to make excuses for men that violate basic principles of justice.

A Rogue State is Killing Hope In the Middle East

and gemi_serban writes, "Does the US exploit the middle east for its natural resources? Yes.

Does the US support corrupt and oppressive regimes because it serves their national interests? Yes."

and policy-makers working for the U.S. have installed such regimes and they have killed off people who opposed such oppressive regimes

and you should take a closer look at the claim that these actions "serve national interests." Special interests will always claim that their interests are the nation's interest even when they are not. The reality is that the special interests that actually make U.S. foreign policies are not working in the interest of the American people.

gemi_serban writes, "Should the US be doing so? Debatable."

Unfortunately the debate rarely happens, in the mainstream basically it never happens, because the effective public forum is dominated by rich and powerful special interests.

gemi_serban writes, "Is the US to blame for poverty and oppression in the middle east? NO!!

Gemi, U.S. policy makers bare an enormous amount of responsibility for the poverty and oppression in the Middle East. You don't realize what it does to societies when their best men are killed off? Syriana was at its best in depicting this element of U.S. foreign policy, the role of killing off the best hopes for countries in the Middle East. In Syriana, the CIA kills off the progressive prince, you don't understand how that undermines his countries attempts at progress? These things have been done to the countries of the Middle East. We will never know how many progressive activists and future activists, the kinds of people you are pretending didn't exist in the Middle East, have been murdered by CIA actions: U.S. policy makers have killed of attempts at progress:

Take Afghanistan for example:

In August 1979, three months before the Soviet intervention, a classified State Department Report stated:

"the United States's larger interests ... would be served by the
demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this
might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.
... the overthrow of the D.R.A. [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan]
would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that
the Soviets' view of the socialist course of history as being
inevitable is not accurate." (Amongst the "Embassy Documents", op. cit., vol. 30 -- Department of State Report, 16 August 1979.) http://members.aol.com/bblum6/afghan.htm

In Iran, for example, the 1953 coup to oust Mossedeq has been admitted to by the U.S. officially so there is no point in denying it: "In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”" - Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright March 17, 2000 Note that while acknowledging it, the U.S. never apologized for it. Do you have any idea how many Iranians suffered under the Shah? Israel's Mossad and the America's CIA worked with the Shah's secret police, SAVAK, which was ruthless, it tortured and killed many Iranians.

In Iraq, for example, we will never know how many progressive political activists killed off, how many were put on lists by the CIA and handed over by the CIA to the Ba'ath party to be killed. And the CIA was behind putting the Ba'ath party into power in the first place.

Would you have wanted to be one of the Iraqis on the lists that the CIA handed over to the Ba'ath part to be shot? The CIA actively supported the 1963 coup that brought the Ba'ath party to power and the CIA made lists of people it labeled as communists and gave these lists to "the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen". The people on these CIA lists were "jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions." ... the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business." US diplomat James Akins served in the Baghdad Embassy at the time. Mr. Akins said, "I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them ... Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".

What if they were Jews that were rounded up and shot? What if it was Jews whose names we handed over to be killed? You can't see that the actions of these U.S. officials is the same as the Nazis or Nazi collaborators? If someone was talking about people that handed over the names of Jews to be rounded up and shot by the Nazis would you say it is just "liberal propaganda"? http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/01/syriana-isnt-disgusting-leftist.html

Osama bin Laden quotes author William Blum, author of Rogue State, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire and Killing Hope to explain the motive for the attacks on the U.S. Bin Laden said My message to you is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end them.

"What James Risen learned in the course of his reporting can be found in his newly published book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, a wide-ranging investigation of the role of intelligence in the origins and the conduct of the war in Iraq. Risen contributes much new material to our knowledge of recent intelligence history. He reports in detail, for example, on claims that CIA analysts quit fighting over exaggerated reports of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as word spread in the corridors at Langley that the President had decided to go to war no matter what the evidence said; that the Saudi government seized and then got rid of tell-tale bank records of Abu Zubaydah, the most important al-Qaeda figure to be captured since September 11; and that "a handful of the most important al Qaeda detainees" have been sent for interrogation to a secret prison codenamed "Bright Light." One CIA specialist in counterterror operations told Risen, "The word is that once you get sent to Bright Light, you never come back." - 'The Biggest Secret' By Thomas Powers

Cartoons of Mohammed Were Published As a Stunt Intended to Provoke

The cartoons "ran in a newspaper that is repeatedly described as right-leaning, with ties to neocons. ... Most telling may be the cartoon in which a figure stands in front of a blackboard with Arabic writing, translated in the caption: “Jyllands-Posten’s journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs.” In another, a Western man in a turban — most likely the cartoonist — holds up a crude stick figure drawing, as an orange with the label “P.R. stunt” lands on his head. ... the meaning of both these cartoons is clear — this was a deliberately provocative stunt, and the newspaper knew it." - Tom Tomorrow See archive of this article here

Would this newspaper be this disrespectful to Christians as it had been to Muslims? What we do know is that this same newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, refused to print satirical cartoons depicting Jesus Christ giving the reason that they would "cause an outrage":

"On Saturday, Politiken printed a series of caricatures of Jesus on its editorial page. Next to them, the paper reprinted an e-mail exchange from April 2003 in which a leading Jyllands-Posten editor rejected publication of satirical cartoons depicting Jesus Christ. His reasoning? "I don't think the readers of Jyllands-Posten would be pleased with the drawings. I think they would cause an outrage. That's why I won't use them."" - Jyllands-Posten Rejected Jesus Satire - linked on http://thismodernworld.com/2679

http://web.archive.org

""Agents of certain persuasion" are behind the egregious affront to Islam in order to provoke Muslims, Professor Mikael Rothstein of the University of Copenhagen told the BBC. The key "agent" is Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of JP (Jyllands-Posten), who commissioned cartoonists to produce the blasphemous images and then published them in Denmark's leading morning paper last September." - EUROPEAN MEDIA PROVOKES MUSLIMS TO INFLAME ZIONIST "CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS"

"Was the reaction overwrought? Absolutely. Was it predictable? Absolutely. Was it an intentional scheme to provoke Arab anger, and thereby engender Western disgust with the Muslim world? The involvement of Pipes and Rose argues that that is exactly what happened.
Cartoons and Provocation

Archive of article
Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper. In all of the Lexis-Nexis database of stories from the American media on the Mohammed cartoons, there is absolutely no mention of the fact that Rose is a close confederate of arch-Islamophobe Daniel Pipes. Indeed, there is almost no context at all about Rose’s newspaper. Only a brief mention in the Washington Post gave a hint at a fact desperately needed to understand the situation. The Post described the affair as “a calculated insult … by a right-wing newspaper in a country where bigotry toward the minority Muslim population is a major, if frequently unacknowledged, problem.”

How bad is Pipes? He wants the utter military obliteration of the Palestinians; indeed, from the Muslim world ... Pipes’ frequent outbursts of racism – designed to toss gasoline on the neo-cons’ lust for a wholesale conflict of cultures – earned him a Bush nomination to the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded think tank. Rose came to America to commune with Pipes in 2004, and it was after that meeting the cartoon gambit materialized." - More cartoon context

See archive of the article here

Exchange between Tom Murphy and Norma Sherry
Exchange between Tom Murphy and Rob Kall
Exchange between Tom Murphy and ThomasMC

Charles is back to writing things like this: "These kids aren't all 8 year olds. And it doesn't matter the size. They're attacking an army. They should be thankful that rubber bullets is ALL that gets shot at them."

Wow, Charles, what you are doing is really ugly. The facts have already been pointed out to you, so why are you back posting comments that deny the reality of Israeli crimes? So you are basically a denier and you don't give a damn if decent Jews, brave journalists, and honest doctors all attest to the fact that children are being deliberately killed and maimed by Israeli soldiers. You have been told what is really happening with the rubber bullets yet you post more lies.

It has been pointed out to you what an Israeli soldier testified about his commander: "When the company commander gave us a lesson about rubber bullets, he said that you shoot them together in packets of three, and that is almost ineffective because they are too heavy; but if you separate them - it can kill. He added, with a wink: "I'm not hinting at anything… The guys laughed and said to him: 'You are not hinting - you're saying. He didn't correct them."

I posted details here and you are now playing a very ugly game of denial. For others here is a link to the details: http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/10/you-quoted-joseph-farahs-vile-lie.html

http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/01/israel-does-target-civilians-and.html

Below is the original post:

Israeli soldiers often intentionally murder and maim children.

Journalist Chris Hedges and others have witnessed Israeli troops intentionally murdering children. And what Hedges and others have witnessed has been documented by an Israeli human rights group and has been confirmed by Israeli soldiers admissions. Physicians for Human Rights USA, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem all confirm the Israeli policy of targeting civilians.

In the U.S., the media totaly distorts and suppresses the reality. In 2004, when 22 times more Palestinian children were being killed than Israeli children, we found that ABC, CBS, and NBC were reporting Israeli children’s deaths at rates 9 to 12.8 times higher than Palestinian children’s deaths. By omitting the killings of a great number of Palestinian children, ABC, CBS, and NBC were failing to perform their function as new agencies – the reporting of the news. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/index.html

"About half of those sustaining gunshot head injuries were children under the age of sixteen, and 15% of the wounded were women. During this four year period, on average, one child under the age of six was shot in the head every two weeks. These and other violations of the military regulations did not lead to the prosecution of the violators, the provision of remedial measures, or reparations for the injured." http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/10/you-quoted-joseph-farahs-vile-lie.html

A notable example was a lengthy investigative report in the New York Times Magazine by Michael Finkel, who responded directly to Israel's claims that its soldiers shot only when they were under threat. In a striking passage about the clashes at Karni Crossing, a checkpoint on a road leading from the Israeli settlement of Netzarim in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip into Israel, Finkel recounts: "I spent two weeks at Karni during daylight hours, and in my time there, the Israeli Army fired live ammunition almost every day. Sometimes only two or three shots, sometimes a dozen or more. On occasion the shots were fired when cars or buses needed to enter or exit the settlement, at other times I could ascertain no reason for the shooting. Not once did I see or hear a single shot from the Palestinian side. Never during the time I spent at Karni did an Israeli soldier appear to be in mortal danger. Nor was either an Israeli soldier or settler even slightly injured. In that two-week period, at least 11 Palestinians were killed during the day at Karni." (Source: "Playing War" by Michael Finkel, New York Times Magazine, December 24, 2000)

In October 2001, Harper's magazine published the "Gaza Diary" of journalist Chris Hedges. Hedges' entry for June 17, 2001 provides even more shocking evidence of the wanton and deliberate killing of Palestinian children by Israeli soldiers at Gaza's Khan Yunis refugee camp.

Hedges writes how the Israelis bait the children: "... a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker. "'Come on, dogs,' the voice booms in Arabic. 'Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!' "I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: 'Son of a bitch!' 'Son of a whore!' 'Your mother's ****!' "The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. Three ambulances line the road below the dunes in anticipation of what is to come. "A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos."

"Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. "Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered -- death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo -- but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."

There can be no doubt that Israeli troops have been targeting innocent Palestinian civilians for death from the beginning of the uprising. This understanding was also reflected in UN Security Council Resolution 1322, passed on October 7, 2000, which "Condemns acts of violence, especially the excessive use of force against Palestinians, resulting in injury and loss of human life."

In making the moral superiority claim, Israel's apologists are either shamelessly denying the irrefutable evidence cited above and are simply lying, or they are asserting that some forms of murder are morally superior to other forms of murder.

From a B'Tselem report: "A conscript soldier who gave testimony to B'Tselem told of a procedure in a particular area of the West Bank during which IDF jeeps were sent as a provocation to areas of friction with Palestinians in order to serve as bait for throwers of stones and petrol bombs. ... What bothers me is had the jeeps not have entered, there would have been no disturbances of the peace."

(The rubber-coated metal bullets in theory are supposed to be non-lethal and their use is supposed to adhere to the IDF's own stated regulations. The rubber-coated metal bullets are not supposed to be aimed at the head.)

From the B'Tselem report: For many years, the IDF has been using rubber-coated metal bullets for dispersal of demonstrations in the Occupied Territories. B'Tselem has repeatedly warned against the IDF's widespread use of these bullets and the erroneous treatment of them as non-lethal, despite their great destructive potential and the large number of casualties, including many children, resulting from their use.

"Over the course of the intifada, B'Tselem documented many incidents in which shooting took place in contravention of the regulations and with no real attempt to prevent killing and causing grave bodily injuries. An inquiry undertaken by Physicians for Human Rights (U.S.A.) at the beginning of the intifada demonstrated that many Palestinians sustained head and eye injuries from rubber bullets. The organization determined that such injuries bear testimony to the illegal use of this means.

(The rubber-coated metal bullets come in packets of three and are meant to be fired as a packet so they go slower in order for them to remain non-lethal, you are not supposed to separate the bullet packet)

From the B'Tselem report: One conscript soldier informed B'Tselem that "I do not know a single soldier who does not separate the parts of the bullet

Another soldier told B'Tselem: "When the company commander gave us a lesson about rubber bullets, he said that you shoot them together in packets of three, and that is almost ineffective because they are too heavy; but if you separate them - it can kill. He added, with a wink: "I'm not hinting at anything… The guys laughed and said to him: 'You are not hinting - you're saying. He didn't correct them. everyone shoots rubber bullets that have been separated.

(B'Tselem documented cases of both the IDF soldiers initiating fire, not merely responding and also of the IDF returning fire but not aiming exclusively at Palestinian sources of shooting.)

A conscript soldier who served in the Gaza Strip stated in his testimony to B'Tselem that: "While I was at the post, there were a number of cases of shooting. I thought that it was an exchange of fire, but afterwards I understood from discussions with other soldiers that it was just soldiers shooting out of boredom. Soldiers at two different positions would coordinate opening fire between them, and afterwards they would say that they were under fire. It is important for me to state that I am not talking about single shots, but very massive shooting.

From conversations with my friends who were at posts in other areas, it became clear to me that it occurs in those places as well. My friends, who were at the post in the Strip. Told me that they emptied entire crates of ammunition out of boredom"

A B'Tselem reports the frequency of cases in which innocent persons were harmed by IDF firing, even though no Palestinians shot from their immediate surrounding area, indicates that there are cases in which soldiers shoot indiscriminately. Even a high-ranking officer in the Bethlehem area told journalist Nahum Barnea: "I don't give my soldiers directives of the type 'don't harm the innocent.' In the situation that has arisen, whoever gives such an order has said the equivalent of 'don't shoot at all.' […] We try to shoot at those whom we have identified, but not always."
extended version here with more details SEE: http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/10/you-quoted-joseph-farahs-vile-lie.html

Also see: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/index.html
B'Tselem's (the Israeli human rights group) report: http://www.btselem.org/Download/200203_Trigger_Happy_Eng.rtf

Link to other post at IMDB about Israel targeting civilians: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365737/board/thread/31311694?d=33114078#33114078

Charles continues with his denial by claiming: "Those that kill or maim children are first investigated by the Military Prosecutor."

That isn't true Charles.

"In light of the overwhelming evidence of systematic abuse and an astounding lack of official investigations into them, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem released a report in May 2005 entitled Take No Prisoners. This report speaks about “the fatal shooting of Palestinians by Israeli Security forces during ‘arrest operations’” when such killing was unnecessary and unjustifiable.

Shortly thereafter, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report entitled Fostering Impunity, which describes the IDF’s failure to investigate the vast majority of the killings of at least 1,600 Palestinians who were killed outside of combat situations. The report determines that this current state of affairs leads to a trigger-happy culture in the IDF ranks and a sense that there will be no punishment for killing or injuring Palestinian civilians." - Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem describe how Israeli soldiers routinely get away with murder

And you ignored the facts I pointed out to you. It has been pointed out to you that the Israeli soldiers are seperating the rubber bullets in order to make the lethal! YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEPERATE THE BULLET PACKETS if you want them to remain non-lethal! "From talking to the guys, it is clear to me that this is ignored, and everyone shoots rubber bullets that have been separated. I don't think that there is anyone who shoots them without separating them. I always ask people about it and they are shocked by the very question. It is clear to them that you shoot them separately." - An Israeli soldier interviewed by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem

An Israeli soldier told B'Tselem that his company commander gave them a lesson about rubber bullets: "if you separate them - it can kill. He added, with a wink: "I'm not hinting at anything… The guys laughed and said to him: 'You are not hinting - you're saying. He didn't correct them."

[ The rubber-coated metal bullets come in packets of three and are meant to be fired as a packet so they go slower in order for them to remain non-lethal, you are not supposed to separate the bullet packet. ]

B'Tselem has repeatedly warned against the IDF's widespread use of these bullets and the erroneous treatment of them as non-lethal, despite their great destructive potential and the large number of casualties, including many children, resulting from their use."

Over the course of the intifada, B'Tselem documented many incidents in which shooting took place in contravention of the regulations and with no real attempt to prevent killing and causing grave bodily injuries. An inquiry undertaken by Physicians for Human Rights (U.S.A.) at the beginning of the intifada demonstrated that many Palestinians sustained head and eye injuries from rubber bullets. The organization determined that such injuries bear testimony to the illegal use of this means. http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/10/you-quoted-joseph-farahs-vile-lie.html

http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/02/charles-is-back-to-writing-things-like.html

Dale Franks comments on Khaled Meshaal's article. Khaled Meshaal wrote, "We shall never recognize the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognize the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else's sins or solve somebody else's problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice."

Dale Franks thinks this is "cognitive dissonance"

Dale,

People deserve to have equal rights regardless of what religion they are. Do you not realize that the Zionists set up a JEWISH state and not a democratic state? Why do you think it is OK for a minority of a population to ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of people because of their religion? This is exactly what the Zionists did to non-Jews in Palestine!

The misleading story often told is that "Jews declared Israel and then they were attacked." The fact is, from November 1947 to May 1948 the Zionists were already on the offensive and had already attacked Arabs. In the months before Israel was declared, the Zionists had driven 300,000 non-Jews off their land. In the months before Israel was declared, the Zionists had seized land beyond the proposed Jewish State.

The fact is, Jews were only 33% of the population of Palestine in 1947. Why in the world would you think it is legitimate for Zionist Jews, who were less than 33% of a population, to seize land and carve up the land into 7 parts? Why in the world should 67% of a population ever accept that? These population stats, which highlight just how undemocratic the UN proposal really was, are almost never mentioned in US media.

Do you think it would be OK to change the U.S. into a "WHITE State"?

Do you know that the U.S. is more white than Israel is Jewish? Why do you think it is OK to discriminate against 20% of Israel's population just because they are not Jews? It would be no more legitimate for white Americans to declare America a "White State" than it is for Jews to declare Israel a "Jewish State."

Ending the Jewish supremacist system is considered "Israel ceasing to exist". Not that ending the supremacist system will lead to "Israel ceasing to exist" but that ending the supremacist system would be by definition "ending Israel". Zionists consider the racist foundation to be an essential characteristic of Israel. It would not be Israel if all citizens had equal rights. What this means is that a non-Jew cannot call for equal rights without being accused of calling for the "destruction of Israel". What isn't told is that ending the discrimination means that Israel ends since Israel is a system of discrimination. To end the discrimination means to end Israel.

Israeli Arabs not only don't have equal rights but the majority of Israeli Jews don't even think they should have equal rights. More than half the Jewish population of Israel - 53 percent - is opposed to full equal rights for Israeli Arabs, according to a survey conducted last month by the Israel Democracy Institute.

What would we think of whites in America who insist that Blacks should not have equal rights? You need to open your eyes to the reality of what Israel actually is. Allowing ALL people, regardless of their religion, to have equal rights means the end of Israel because Israel is a system that denies full equal rights to all people.

The root problem of the Israel and Palestine conflict is that the Jews running Israel are unwilling to allow non-Jews to have equal rights. That is the fundamental problem and cause of the conflict.

This concept “right to exist” was in fact invented, as far as I can tell, in the 1970s when there was general international agreement, including the Arab states and the PLO, that Israel should have the rights of every state in the international system. And therefore, in an effort to prevent negotiations and a diplomatic settlement, the U.S. and Israel insisted on raising the barrier to something that nobody’s going to accept. Certainly, the Palestinians can’t accept it. They’re not going to accept Israel’s existence but also the legitimacy of its existence and the legitimacy of their dispossession. Why should they accept that? Why should anyone accept it?

Mainstream Media Is Once Again Not Reporting Bush and Blair Scheming for Illegal War

"In a case of yet another leaked memo in Britain, one of the United Kingdom's top international lawyers quotes minutes from a January 31, 2003 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush in an updated version of his book, "Lawless World", where it appears the two men made the decision to go to war regardless of what the United Nations decided about passing a second resolution that would have allowed the start of the war."

Report: Bush, Blair decided to go to war months before UN meetings
Bush also allegedly considered painting US plane in UN colors as way to lure Iraq into war.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com"

"Once the US Congress had given President Bush authority to use force, the legality of the war under international law became almost a non-issue. The view from inside the Bush Administration was reflected in the attitude of John Bolton, Under Secretary of State, who dismissed any suggestion that international law could constrain the actions of the US or that domestic constitutional requirements alone were not sufficient to confer legitimacy on the use of force. Any other approach, he wrote, 'will result, over time, in the atrophying of our ability to act independently'. Bush's own view was even blunter. The day after 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld outlined the limits which international law placed on a military response. 'I don't care what the international lawyer says,' Bush retorted, 'we are going to kick some ass.'

Disbelief having been suspended in the US after 9/11, this attitude set the country's mood and went more or less unchallenged. As the troops prepared to cross into Iraq, sensible people like Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and President of the American Society of International Law, could write in the New York Times that a war would be 'illegal but legitimate' (a claim which, to her credit, she rescinded a year later, concluding that the 'invasion was both illegal and illegitimate' ). It was sufficient for the President to declare that Saddam Hussein had to be removed because he was a bad man with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). (After the war, in an interview in December 2003, Bush said that it made no difference whether Saddam Hussein had WMD or the intention of acquiring them.) " - Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules
Philippe Sands

"I think no one would be surprised at the idea that the use of spy-planes to review what is going on would be considered. What is surprising is the idea that they would be used painted in the colours of the United Nations in order to provoke an attack which could then be used to justify material breach. Now that plainly looks as if it is deception, and it raises some fundamental questions of legality, both in terms of domestic law and international law."

" George Bush considered provoking a war with Saddam Hussein's regime by flying a United States spyplane over Iraq bearing UN colours, enticing the Iraqis to take a shot at it, according to a leaked memo of a meeting between the US President and Tony Blair" - Bush 'plotted to lure Saddam into war with fake UN plane'

See: Another Memo Gets Underreported in the American Mainstream Media

"If the public read too much into those links and thought Saddam had a hand in September 11, so much the better." "

"As Why We Fight shows, Wilton Sekzer was stunned when—many months after the invasion—George Bush explicitly said there was no evidence Iraq was involved in 9/11. He felt duped and betrayed. And now not only is his son gone, so is any faith he had in the U.S. government." -I wish THIS was in “Why We Fight

The manipulative and dishonest political war against the American public is waged by politicians serving special interests at the expense of the general public. These guys are willing to lie to us about life and death issues.

I think many people overlook the significance of the big lie that Bush told about 9/11, the lie that al-Qeada attacks us because of our freedoms when the truth is al-Qeada attacked because of specific foreign policies which they want the the U.S. government to stop.

Bush’s lie basically cons many Americans into risking their lives and not knowing why. This is an enormous crime against the American people, I don’t think this fact is given the attention it deserves. Bush’s lie is a disgusting attempt to serve the special agendas that want the specific foreign policies to continue. Bush’s lie prolongs and exacerbates the threat of terrorism against all of us. We need to start mentioning this big lie and not fixate just on the Iraq war. Bush Lied to the American People about 9/11 Terrorists’ Motives http://www.representativepress.org/whylie.html