Bill Van Auken

The lying and glorification of the Iraq war—which gave the world the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the siege of Fallujah, the massacre in Haditha and countless other war crimes—is not just a matter of electoral calculations.

President Barack Obama used his speech to US troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina Wednesday to embrace the nine-year war in Iraq that he had ostensibly opposed and to declare the destruction of the country a “success.”

Obama exploited a captive audience of 3,000 soldiers assembled at the largest US Army base in the world as part of a cynical attempt to use the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, which is to be completed by the end of this month, to promote his own reelection campaign.

The speech appeared to have been written by someone who threw out Abraham Lincoln’s famous adage and adopted the view that you can “fool all of the people all of the time.”

The Democratic president presented the complete withdrawal of American forces as an “extraordinary achievement” for his administration, while telling the troops that it was necessary to “remember everything that you did to make it possible.”

The reality is that the withdrawal of America’s armed forces from Iraq is not the deliberate outcome of US policy, but rather the unavoidable result of Washington’s failure to negotiate a new Status of Forces agreement to permit the administration’s favored plan, which was to leave behind as many as 20,000 troops.

That failure was based on the refusal of the Iraqi government, and indeed all of the major political forces in the country, to accede to Washington’s demand for blanket immunity for US troops from Iraqi law. Mass popular opposition, based on the bitter experiences of the Iraqi people over nearly nine years of US occupation, with all of its death and brutality, made any such agreement impossible.

Stephen Lendman

Crumbling like the Tower of Babel...

Fundamental change is possible. The mother of all struggles lies ahead. Sustained resistance gets results. Given the alternative, is anything less than social justice acceptable?

Europe's underpinnings can only hold so long. Years of entrapment under euro straightjacket rules means eventual dissolution and collapse.

Throwing more money at out-of-control debt problems buys delay only. Instead of swallowing painful solutions, EU leaders keep repeating the same mistakes, heading dire conditions to catastrophic ones.

In fact, reactions to last week's summit were decidedly negative. On December 14, the Financial Times (FT) headlined, "Doubts about eurozone fiscal deal grow," saying:

The euro selloff against the dollar "showed the strain of efforts to force through austerity policies and impose tough new spending rules."

Moreover, concerns emerged among at least four non-euro countries over whether legal considerations would force them to join Britain and opt out.

Czech Republic Prime Minister called the Brussels deal little

"more than a blank sheet of paper....I think that it would be politically short-sighted to come out with strong statements that we should sign that piece of paper."

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said a referendum at this stage would fail. An unnamed Brussels diplomat wants "some clarity on what this treaty might include. There are so many unanswered questions," he added.

In fact, there's lots more troubling than he explained. Moreover, nothing from Brussels augurs well for working households across Europe. More on that below.

Nonetheless, other countries also expressed concerns, including Hungary and Sweden, saying they won't relinquish control of their corporate tax policy. What about their people policy? Only harder than ever hard times are planned.

Stephen Lendman

On December 1, an ACLU of Northern California press release headlined, "FOIA Documents Show FBI Illegally Collecting Intelligence Under Guise of Community Outreach," saying:

"The trust that community outreach efforts aim to create is undermined when the FBI exploits these programs to gather intelligence on the very members of the religious and community organizations agents are meeting with."

"The FBI should be honest with community organizations about what information is being collected during meetings and purge any improperly collected information."

Instead, FBI agents illegally collected names, ID information, opinions of community event attendees, as well as sponsoring groups, including their goals, activities, names and positions of leaders, and their racial, ethnic, and national origin.

The FBI Directorate of Intelligence Domain Management program maintains the information to "assess threats, vulnerabilities, gaps and new opportunities for intelligence collection."

In fact, community outreach programs are a way to establish communications, mutual understanding and trust between government agencies and public groups. Using them for covert intelligence gathering shows authorities operate lawlessly for their own purposes.

In fact, FBI documents reveal Privacy Act violations in gathering information about individuals' First Amendment activities.

John Pilger

US soldiers terrorizing an Iraqi family. (© Sean Smith)

On 22 May 2007, the Guardian's front page announced: "Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq." The writer, Simon Tisdall, claimed that Iran had secret plans to defeat American troops in Iraq, which included "forging ties with al-Qaida elements". The coming "showdown" was an Iranian plot to influence a vote in the US Congress. Based entirely on briefings by anonymous US officials, Tisdall's "exclusive" rippled with lurid tales of Iran's "murder cells" and "daily acts of war against US and British forces". His 1,200 words included just 20 for Iran's flat denial.

It was a load of rubbish: in effect a Pentagon press release presented as journalism and reminiscent of the notorious fiction that justified the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003. Among Tisdall's sources were "senior advisers" to General David Petraeus, the US military commander who in 2006 described his strategy of waging a "war of perceptions... conducted continuously through the news media".

The media war against Iran began in 1979 when the west's placeman Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, a tyrant, was overthrown in a popular Islamic revolution. The "loss" of Iran, which under the shah was regarded as the "fourth pillar" of western control of the Middle East, has never been forgiven in Washington and London.