Stephen Lendman

Strategy calls for waging winnable wars by exploiting sectarian and ethnic differences.

Fearmongering, propaganda, deception, and hidden truths are weapons of war. They're used to convince people they're justified, righteous and vital. When enemies don't exist they're created. No one threatened America since WW II. No one threatens Israel now. Both countries spurn peace. They manufacture threats to wage wars.

AIPAC is a dagger at humanity's heart. It represents lawless Israeli interests. It wields enormous influence in Washington and across America. It pressures Congress to get its way. It menaces global security. It lies to generate fear and regional wars.

■ It claims Syria threatens Israel. It says its government "continues to brutally crush the growing protest movement within the country while maintaining its support for terrorist groups."
■ It cites its chemical weapons. It warns about an alleged "illicit nuclear program."
■ It calls Iran

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"the world's leading sponsor of terror and is racing toward a nuclear weapons capability." "Through its proxy armies of Hizballah in Southern Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iranian regime is supporting terrorists carrying out daily attacks on American troops and Israeli civilians."

Accusations like these and others come straight from its propaganda 101 handbook. Waging war depends first on selling it. Enlisting public support is key. Mind manipulation engineers consent. Enemies are invented. Truth is suppressed. Fear is stoked. National security issues are raised. Patriotism and democratic values are stressed. Dovish voices are silenced. Hawks are featured prominently. All wars are based on lies. Truth promotes peace.

Wayne Madsen

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has assembled as the core of his national security and foreign policy advisory team some of the most right-wing and militaristic members of the Bush-Cheney administration. In many ways, the hawkish Romney advisers represent a virtual Sturmabteiling (SS), or Nazi-like “Storm detachment” of the Republican Party, a vanguard that ensures neo-conservative doctrinal discipline throughout Republican ranks.

In a case of regressive amnesia, a number of Romney’s foreign policy advisers are stuck in the past and continue to speak of the danger posed by the “Soviet Union,” which has not existed for over twenty years. A case in point is Romney foreign policy adviser Richard Williamson, a longtime neo-conservative fixture in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations, including being named special envoy to Sudan in 2008.

Williamson is also a member of the board of the International Republican Institute (IRI), an adjunct of the Republican Party that is partly funded by Central Intelligence Agency funds laundered through the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Williamson is also connected to “democracy” projects funded by hedge fund tycoon George Soros, particularly through Williamson’s affiliation as a trustee with the Soros-funded Freedom House. Williamson, in recent criticism of the Obama administration's policy regarding Syria, stated that Syria is "strategically important to the Soviet Union."

Williamson’s stasis in a historical time warp becomes clearer when his participation in the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) examined. The original Committee was a Cold War era contrivance designed to propagandize the Soviet and communist “threat” to the United States. In 2004, the committee was re-launched after a hiatus of over a decade, but, instead of focusing on communism, the new committee targeted international terrorism. However, the new CPD could not leave its anti-communist baggage in the closet. One of the architects of the new CPD, Peter Hannaford, a former Reagan adviser, said

the reason for restoring the CPD was renewed was that he and other leading neo-cons and pro-Israeli policymakers, including former CIA director James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Kenneth Adelman, Rabbi Dov Zakheim, Michael Rubin, Joseph Lieberman, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Clifford May, John McCain’s 2008 campaign foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann (who also works closely with Soros themed revolution projects), and Newt Gingrich, saw a “parallel between the Soviet threat and the threat from terrorism.”