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Iraq and the Next U.S. President
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke discusses the future of America's war in Iraq. Holbrooke is a top contender for Secretary of State in a future Democrat administration.

Holbrooke was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs from 1994 through 1996, during which time he led the Bosnian peace talks, which resulted in the Dayton Peace Accords. He then served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, where he was also a member of President Clinton's cabinet. Holbrooke has played a central role in the development of U.S. policy toward the United Nations, the Balkans, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and humanitarian crisis issues such as AIDS. He has received seven Nobel Peace Prize nominations and written a bestselling book, To End War.

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U.S in Libya: Get shot by your own bullets
22 mar  |  By Sean Maguire

There are few people in this world who would defend Gaddafi as a sane and viable leader of Libya; but I think there would be even less that would see the logic in the U.S selling guns to someone as psychotic as him and then parading about as world police.

It's the equivalent of a sheriff giving an outlaw a six-shooter and then acting surprised when he starts popping off the town folk. 

The second one U.S plane gets shot down by one U.S surface-to-air missile, all the military big wigs should get together and make a decision once and for all - "we have to stop shooting at tyrants we've given guns to".

What do you think about Libya? What do you think about the obvious contradictions in U.S foreign policy and how do you think they should be addressed? Tell us and remember...Disqus!  . . read more

Bush Will Be Impeached If He Attacks Iran - From Senator Joe Biden
11 dec  |  I don't think we went to war [in Iraq] because of oil, but the only thing I can fit together with Cheney and his gang is that they're smarter than they're acting. They went to war in the hope they would be able to do two things. One, have a government that sat on a whole bunch of oil that still exists in the world that would be indebted to us. Two, have permanent military bases in Iraq to dominate that part of the world to be able to control oil. Not to steal it for American oil companies, but to be able to control the pricing, control the access of it, a very Machiavellian view. There's nothing idealistic about Cheney.

I don't know what President Bush thinks, but I think he's bought hook, line and sinker the Cheney rationale that the only way for us to be able to be dominant in the 21st century is to use our overwhelming power in the face of the moral disapprobation of the rest of the world, threaten the rest of the world, and that's how we avoid war in the future...

[As for Iran] the president has no constitutional authority to take this nation to war against a country of 70 million people, unless we're attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, I would move to impeach him... I don't say it lightly. I say it because they should understand that what they were threatening, what they were saying... what we were about to do would be the most disastrous thing that could be done at this moment in our history. . . read more

Reinventing the Evil Empire - From Stephen Lendman
29 aug  |  For the West, everything changed but stayed the same, hard-wired and in place. Things just lay dormant in the shadows during the Yeltsin years, certain to reemerge once a more resolute Russian leader took over. If not Vladimir Putin, someone else little different.

Russia is back, proud and reassertive, and not about to roll over for America. Especially in Eurasia. For Washington, it's back to the future, the new Cold War, and reinventing the Evil Empire, but this time for greater stakes and with much larger threats to world peace. Conservatives lost their influence. Neocons are weakened but still dominant. The Israeli Lobby and Christian Right drive them. Conflict is preferred over diplomacy, and most Democrats go along to look tough on "terrorism"...

Not a major media hint that Georgia is a U.S. vassal state. That its military is an extension of the Pentagon. That its aggression was manufactured in Washington. That it's well-supplied and trained by America and Israel. That pipeline geopolitics is central. Beating up on Russia as well. Diverting Moscow from any planned intervention against Iran. Even enlisting Russia's cooperation - not to sell Iran sophisticated S-300 air defense missile systems and agreeing to tougher sanctions in return for perhaps Washington deferring on Georgian and Ukrainian NATO admission and recognizing S. Ossetian and Abkhazian independence. Perhaps more as well to put off greater confrontation for later under a new administration.

Clearly, however, the fuse is lit. It has been for some time. It relates to everything strategic about this vital area with its immense energy and other resources as well neutralizing Russia's power as America's top rival and key Eurasian competitor. [More] . . read more

Military Leaders on Iraq Combat: "Our Mission Has Not Changed"
21 aug  |  Military Leaders on Iraq Combat: "Our Mission Has Not Changed" . . read more
The War on Terrorism: General Casey Foresees Ten More Years
11 sep  |  General George W. Casey, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, discusses the current role of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to "conventional war" tactics, Casey says the armed forces are newly focused on stability operations - and will likely be fighting for another decade.  . . read more
Shooting War
18 dec  |  The year is 2011. The global war on terror is raging out of control. The American economy is deep in recession. The president is popping Prozac. When a suicide bomber blows a Brooklyn Starbucks to bits, hipster videoblogger Jimmy Burns is in the right place at the right time.  . . read more
Joe Biden Tears Into Dick Cheney
15 feb  |  In a much-anticipated Sunday showdown between Vice President Joe Biden and his predecessor Dick Cheney, Biden has drawn first blood. . . read more
Bombs for peace? 'UN completely disgraced in Libya'
22 mar  |  Political writer Diane Johnstone gives her perspective on the ongoing Libyan conflict and the real reason NATO and the U.S are behaving as they are. An interesting analysis but occassionally she just states the obvious like when she says this war is for "regime change".

What do you think about her thoughts? Should the West be fighting such a war? Tell us and remember...Disqus!   . . read more

Iraq, U.S. Neocons and the Israel Lobby
21 dec  |  What is at the heart of the special relationship between the USA and Israel? Does Israel truly represent a strategic U.S. asset in the Middle East? Are the two nations really partners in the same "War on Terror", with the same threats up against them, and the same interests at stake? Author and political scientist John Mearsheimer argues that neoconservative and pro-Israel lobby groups were both greatly influential to the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq. . . read more
The Georgian Farce - From Ron Jacobs
22 aug  |  The sycophantic leader of Georgia - put into place by the CIA and its front organization the National Endowment for Democracy(NED) - looks to Washington for support in his insistence that the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia must remain part of the country he leads. Russia insists on the opposite, just like Washington insisted about the Serbian province of Kosovo in 1999.

Naturally, every politician inside the American Beltway misses the aforementioned contradiction and agrees with Dick Cheney that the Russians must not be allowed to have their way. After all, it is Washington's world now and, even if there is hardly a horse's hair worth of difference between the governments in Washington and Moscow, Moscow can not be allowed to think that it can be Washington's equal on the world stage.

It is in historical moments like this that the citizen can truly see how little they matter. We have two powerful regimes trifling over a piece of territory that most of the world could care less about. Both of these regimes have proven that they are more than willing to kill thousands of people, destroy hundreds of square miles of land and water, and waste billions of dollars in doing so just so they can establish their position in their battle to control their world. It is their world because no matter how it turns out they will profit and we will pay. [More] . . read more

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"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan (1986)