Stephen Lendman

A previous article explained what's at stake. Both parties agree on destroying America's social contract. Fiscal cliff hokum conceals their agenda. Media scoundrels don't explain.

Ongoing debate refers to expiring yearend tax breaks and unemployment benefits. Automatic sequestered/largely discretionary yearend $1.2 trillion in cuts address them for starters. Trillions more will follow.

Bipartisan agreement occurred long ago. Daily reports conceal what's ongoing and planned. Ordinary households will be hardest hit.

Wall Street, war profiteers, other corporate favorites, and America's super-rich can rest easy. Their gain is middle and poor America's loss.

It's baked in the cake and agreed. Final language remains to be reported. Expect something by yearend or sooner. Headline news won't explain what's happening and why it matters.

The New York Times reflects scoundrel media misreporting. It conceals what readers most need to know. Its November 9 editorial headlined "The Fiscal Cliff Opener," saying:

Voters "re-elected a president who promised to fight for higher taxes on the wealthy, for more public investment and for careful cuts in spending."

"Three days later, President Obama challenged Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, right now, and said he would not accept a deal that does not require the wealthy to pay a bigger share."

Stephen Lendman

As issue is destroying social America, increasing the unprecedented wealth disparity, punishing ordinary households, impoverishing growing millions, and providing limitless funding for militarism, imperial wars, and corporate favorites. Also ahead is toughening police state harshness against non-believers. America's at the precipice of full-blown tyranny.

Washington's fiscal cliff debate is doublespeak deception. Republicans and Democrats share guilt. Language refers to expiring year end tax breaks and unemployment benefits. It's also about sequestered/largely discretionary year end $1.2 trillion in cuts coming to address them. Republicans and Democrats share guilt. Backroom double-dealing planned them months ago. The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan. It's perhaps worse now than ever. Details alone remain working out. Both parties are in lockstep on policy. "Thirdworldizing" America is planned.

A previous article said only Republican Nixon could go to China when America had no diplomatic relations. Only Democrat Obama dares end America's decades-long social contract. His mandate is eliminating government's responsibility for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and publicly-funded pensions. Straightaway in office, he attacked social America. He promised deep cuts. He sold out constituents who expected better. He did what they thought impossible.

Another article said he matched Star Trek. He went where no administration went before. Imagine what's ahead in term two. He's unrestrained. He'll throw America's most disadvantaged and middle class under the bus. Expect him to take full advantage. In 2010, his Simpson-Bowles National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRF) recommended deep Medicare cuts, higher Medicaid co-pays, and restrictions on filing malpractice suits, among other ways to end Washington's responsibility for healthcare incrementally.

Philip Giraldi

If there is one word missing from the United States government’s post-9/11 lexicon it is “accountability.” While perfectly legal though illicit sexual encounters apparently continue to rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, leading to resignations, no one has been punished for malfeasance, torture, secret prisons, or extraordinary renditions. Indeed, the Obama administration stated in 2009 that it would not punish CIA torturers because it prefers to “look forward and not back,” a decision not to prosecute that was recently confirmed by Attorney General Eric Holder in two cases involving the deaths of detainees after particularly brutal Agency interrogations. What the White House decision almost certainly means is that the president would prefer to avoid a tussle with the Republicans in congress over national security that would inevitably reveal a great deal of dirty laundry belonging to both parties.

The bipartisan willingness to avoid confrontation over possible war crimes makes the recently completed 6,000 page long Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture an extraordinary document. Though it is still classified and might well never see the light of day even in any sanitized or bowdlerized form, its principal conclusions have been leaking out in the media over the past two weeks. It directly addresses the principal argument that has been made by Bush administration devotees and continues to be advanced regarding the CIA torture agenda: that vital information obtained by “enhanced interrogation techniques” led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. According to the report, no information obtained by torture was critical to the eventual assassination of the al-Qaeda leader, nor has it been found to be an indispensable element in any of the other terrorism cases that were examined by the Senate committee. What exactly does that mean?

Philip Giraldi

The Kagans in Basra, Iraq

The Beltway power couple who boosted the Iraq invasion insist we stay longer in Afghanistan.

A recent op-ed in the Washington Post by Kimberly and Fred Kagan argues “Why US troops must stay in Afghanistan.” The article demonstrates clearly that the number-crunching Kagans know exactly how many combat and support troops it takes to man an army base in Jalalabad and they pile Pelion on Ossa to demonstrate how a residual force of roughly 34,000 US soldiers can “continue to conduct counterterrorism operations in Southeast Asia” after 2014. They conclude “the United States can stabilize Afghanistan if it maintains around 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan into 2014, dropping to over 30,000 thereafter … the idea that the war is inevitably lost is a convenient mask behind which decision makers hide to deflect responsibility for pulling out troops who are making a real difference. We have argued that the current defeatism about Afghanistan is overdrawn and unfounded … .” We cannot “abandon the fight against al-Qaeda and its allies in South Asia.”

But the op-ed also demonstrates that the Kagans continue to be clueless over the question they raise in their title: “why” we Americans are in Afghanistan at all and they fail to demonstrate any understanding of how outside forces can impact on a limited military presence’s viability in a foreign land.

They make the same mistakes in their predictions of the likely course of developments as they did regarding Iraq. Like the Iraqis, the Afghans will have a say in their future and might not like the idea of continuing to grant legal immunity to a foreign occupying force. Nor does it appear that the perpetually rebuilding Afghan army will ever be battle ready, meaning that the American soldiers will become trapped in their bases, hostages to Afghan internal politics. Like it or not local sentiment does matter, even to a superpower, and it can serve to derail the best laid plans of the Kagans and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bill Van Auken

Having first issued threats against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad over unspecified intelligence regarding its chemical weapons, the Obama administration is now warning that these arms may fall into the hands of the “rebels” which Washington itself has backed.

This is the significance of a front-page article published this week by the Washington Post, which reported that, “US officials are increasingly worried that Syria’s weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists, rogue generals or other uncontrollable factions.”

According to the Post, citing unnamed US officials, members of the Islamist militia, al-Nusra, which Washington has formally designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” and charged is an offshoot of Al Qaeda, overran “the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo, where research on chemical weapons had been conducted” and were “closing in on another base near Aleppo, known as Safirah, which has served as a major production center for such munitions.”

While a decade ago, Washington prepared its invasion of Iraq by propagating lies about the regime of Saddam Hussein collaborating with Al Qaeda and a supposed threat he would supply the terrorist organization with “weapons of mass destruction,” today the Obama administration is floating a new and perverse pretext for war. It is raising the specter that its war for regime change in Syria might place such weapons into the hands of the Al Qaeda-linked forces that the US itself has both armed and strengthened in the bid to oust Assad.

Eric Peters

...because here it comes.

The bodies weren’t cold before the slaughter perpetrated by a single homicidal maniac became the basis for calls to slaughter the rights of millions of non-maniacs. That’s us, in case you missed it.

That 27 are dead is horrific, a nightmare. That the deaths of these innocents will be used to demagog gun ownership generally is arguably more so. For our rights – our liberties – are everything. Without them, our lives are nothing more than biological datum. We exist – but we do not live. Because it is not living when your life is controlled by others (those “others” being the people who control the machinery and enforcement apparatus of government) … when your freedom of action is denied, limited, constrained…. not because of any harm you’ve caused. But because someone else caused harm. And worse, because someone else might cause harm. For which you are to be held presumptively responsible.

This is the "logic" (poor word choice there) and the justification used for every abridgement of liberty we’ve suffered in recent memory. Someone might drive drunk. Therefore, anyone who happens to be out driving must submit to being treated as presumptively drunk driving – until they’ve demonstrated otherwise, to the satisfaction of armed and costumed goons. There might be a terrorist at the airport. So millions of innocent people trying to get someplace must submit to being handled – literally – as presumptive terrorists by armed, costumed goons. Purchase “too much” Sudafed – and you are presumed to be a confector of arbitrarily illegal “drugs.” And treated accordingly by armed, costumed goons – despite your having done nothing. That someone else might have done something is sufficient warrant to assume you did – or are about to. And to treat you as if you already had.

Makram Khoury-Machool

December 2012 will mark the 25th anniversary of the first Palestinian Intifada.

A long film, whose end we cannot yet see, began with a long wait at the Gaza taxi stop in Jaffa. For an hour, not even one taxi arrived. A Gaza taxi driver who was stuck with his taxi in Jaffa was not in a hurry to take me. Even on the way he continued to hesitate: “I don’t know if I should have returned to Gaza today. We all know one thing: if Israel Radio’s Arabic service says that the situation is calm, it’s a sign that the opposite is true.” Shortly after 9:30 I got out at Bayt Hanun. I had more than an hour to wait before my meeting with the leader in the center of Gaza City.

The streets were empty of people. After a few minutes I saw three army jeeps by the side of the road, and not far from them stood more than ten soldiers who opened fire down one of the side roads. Walking on south, toward Gaza, I passed the soldiers, and suddenly I found myself in no-man’s land. From one side hundreds of demonstrators approached me, throwing Molotov cocktails, stones, and sticks. Behind me were the Israeli soldiers, who were now firing at the demonstrators.

I saw the soldiers firing the guns at their stomachs and pointed straight forward. The bullets passed by me. I heard their whistles. I had not managed to work out how to get away, when I found I was covered with blood. I felt no blow or pain. It was as if someone had poured a bottle of blood over my head. I pulled a red and white kuffiyyah out of my bag and bandaged my head with it.

Meanwhile I moved to the side of the road, away from the center of the conflict. A passing taxi picked me up and took me to Shifa Hospital in Gaza. During the whole journey, I heard bursts of fire.

Stuart Littlewood

Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, has again shown why he should stand down from British politics.

In a speech to Conservative Friends of Israel at a lunch the other day he said – and not for the first time – things that are deeply disturbing to people who expect him to put British interests first. He again compromised himself and this country with ridiculous pledges of support for a foreign military power whose behaviour is beyond the pale and an affront to human decency.

Here are some of his remarks:

“I am a passionate friend of Israel – and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”

In that case you shouldn’t be in British politics, Mr Cameron. You have fallen foul of the Seven Principle of Public Life, especially the principle of Integrity which says quite simply:

“Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organizations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.”

Gilad Atzmon

This week, a new Jewish ‘progressive’ text has been published which you simply must read and circulate around - not because it’s any good, quite the opposite, it is, as usual, just a window into a tribal psychosis and a glimpse into morbid, Jewish, progressive nonsense. The reason you should read and spread ‘Rewriting History, Holocaust Revisionism’ [.pdf] is because it is a delightful journey into Jewish political despair. They are losing the battle and they know it.

‘Hope not hate’, presents itself as a ‘left anti racism’ campaign and claims to ‘celebrate Britain’s diverse society’. So why does it engage in relentless thought-policing? The answer is that, though ‘HOPE not hate’ claims to oppose the British ‘far Right’, if you dig a little and you will find that HOPE not hate and its leader Nick Lowles are integral parts of the Zionist network, dedicated to promoting Jewish tribal politics.

Last year I exposed ‘HOPE not hate’ as a Hasbara unit and as an offshoot of the notoriously Zionist Searchlight magazine. At the time, ‘HOPE not hate’ had exhausted itself in a huge campaign to cancel a performance of mine at a Marxist Arts Festival in Bradford and, in order to have any chance of success, joined forces with the infamous Zionist Board of Deputies of British Jews (BOD) and the openly Islamophobic blog Harry’s Place. Lowels and his HOPEless organisation were both utterly defeated and why, because the Marxists who invited me knew very well who Lowles was and what he stood for.

Again, a few month ago, the ‘anti’ racist Lowles campaigned against a Muslim conference. You get the picture. Zionists to the core, both ‘HOPE not hate’ and Lowles are actually united against anyone and everyone who challenges Jewish power, supremacy and racism.

Stephen Lendman

Ronald Reagan meeting with the Afghan Mujahideen inside
the White House. (Photo: picturesofwar.net)

They're merciless cutthroat murderers. They commit grotesque atrocities. Torture, beheadings, and other monstrous savagery are all in a day's work.

They're Washington favorites. They're recruited, heavily armed, trained, funded and directed in all US regional wars. Ronald Reagan called earlier equivalents "freedom fighters." Some got White House visits.

A March 1983 photo showed Afghan Mujahideen fighters there. Reagan had the following to say about them:

“To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom.”

He called Nicaraguan Contra killers

"our brothers, these freedom fighters and we owe them our help. They are the moral equal of our founding fathers."

History doesn't just rhyme. It repeats in horrifyingly disturbing ways. Wherever America shows up, deaths, mass destruction, and brutal atrocities follow. Countries are ravaged one at a time or in multiples. Millions die. Appalling crimes are committed. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya tasted US-style liberation.

Julie Hyland

Prime Minister David Cameron and Rupert Murdoch

Democracy is a façade behind which plutocrats and their political hirelings operate as a law unto themselves.

On Monday, UK Labour MP Chris Bryant stated that News International’s Management and Standards Committee had stopped cooperating in May with the investigation into phone-hacking and other illegal activities at Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct News of the World.

Using parliamentary privilege, he suggested this was because evidence had emerged that could implicate the billionaire oligarch and his son, James, in criminal practices. News International had been happy to help the police investigation by “chucking overboard” journalists, Bryant said, as long as “the proprietor’s feet didn’t get wet.”

Bryant asserted that News International had destroyed a laptop to conceal evidence of an illegal payment by Murdoch’s Sun newspaper in 2005 for photographs of former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein in his underwear. Bryant said that the illegal payment, involving a US soldier in California, meant that “at some point there will be charges brought against senior directors, quite possibly including James and Rupert Murdoch, as part of the body corporate.”

The fact that even a possible criminal prosecution of Murdoch and son was raised only on this single question, and in the United States at that, underscores the fraud perpetrated by the Leveson Inquiry, set up in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.

Wendy McElroy

The TSA agents and their “partners” want your freedom, your obedience, and control of your life.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is tightening its grip on domestic travel. I don't mean the random, unpredictable security checks at bus, subway and train stations which already exist. I mean a coordinated and systematic police control of internal travel within America. Groundwork is being laid.

APPLICATION TO MAKE U.S. INTO AN AIRPORT SCREENING ZONE

The application was tucked away on page 71431 of Volume 77, Number 231 of the Federal Register (November 30). It was surrounded by soporific references to forwarding “the new Information Collection Request (ICR) abstracted below to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA).”

The application for funding from the TSA constitutes a preliminary step toward systematically expanding TSA's authority from airports to highways and almost every other means of public travel. The expansion would erase one of the last remaining differences between the US and a total police state; namely, the ability to travel internally without being under police surveillance. The total police state you experience at airports wants to spill into roads and bus stops, to subways and trains. Or, rather, the TSA wants to solidify and spread the fledgling and erratic presence it already has.

Stephen Lendman

For decades, world leaders let Israel get away with murder. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said enough is enough. It wants Israeli officials held accountable.

It launched a "Palestine to the ICC" campaign. It wants relevant stakeholders involved. They include Palestine, ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, and enough world leaders who matter.

It wants them to "fulfill their responsibilities" to ensure long delayed justice and redress for decades of horrendous Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

The ICC is a permanent tribunal. It was established to prosecute individuals for crimes of war, against humanity and genocide. In 2017, it's jurisdiction extends to criminal aggression. On July 1, 2002, it was established by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It's history isn't encouraging. It serves wealth and power. It's an imperial tool. It targets victims, not perpetrators. It prosecutes individuals Western powers designate.

Jose Luis Moreno-Ocampo was Bensouda's predecessor. He followed American orders and obeyed. He ignored horrendous US crimes of war and against humanity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere. He did nothing about similar Israeli crimes. He rejected Palestine's bid to investigate Israel's Cast Lead criminality. PA officials sought court action under the Rome Statute's Article 12(3).

Gilad Atzmon

The following video is a hard-hitting attempt to expose the link between Israeli barbarism and Jewish cultural and religious teaching. As we all know our Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists (JVP, IJAN, Mondoweiss etc’) insist that Zionism should be regarded as an anomaly within the wide context of Jewish culture and religion. They are clearly spinning.

Israel is the Jewish State. It kills and slaughter in the name of the Jews, its airplanes and tanks are decorated with Jewish symbols, its crimes are, unfortunately, consistent with some bloodthirsty Old Testament and Talmudic verses. As I mention before, some Orthodox Jews interpret those vile verses differently. However, Israel clearly transforms Deuteronomy into a murderous practical reality.

This film points at the deeply non-ethical core that is embedded within cultural, secular and nationalist Jewish discourse. This is a very disturbing film but I believe that it is essential to watch and discuss these matters in an open manner. More than anyone else, Jews should watch these images and self-reflect. Zionism is clearly a problem, but it isn’t ‘the problem’.

As I pointed out in my latest book, The Wandering Who?, time is ripe for us to address issues to do with Jewish culture and its influence within the West. Time is ripe to speak about Jewishness and Jewish secularism. Time is ripe to expose the matrix of Jewish power and lobbying within politics and media. When you watch this sickening images bear in mind that 80% of the British Tory MPs are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel. Try to ask yourself what is it that they love so much about the Jewish State?

Barry Grey

In the latest scandal involving the criminal activities of major banks, the US Justice Department on Tuesday announced a $1.9 billion settlement with British-based HSBC on charges of money laundering on a massive scale for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

The deal was specifically designed to avert criminal prosecution of either the bank, the largest in Europe and third largest in the world, or any of its top executives. Even though the bank admitted to laundering billions of dollars for drug lords, as well as violating US financial sanctions against Iran, Libya, Burma and Cuba, the Obama administration avoided an indictment by means of a “deferred prosecution agreement.”

The agreement was in keeping with the policy of the US government of shielding top bankers from any accountability for illegal activities that led to the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and ushered in the global recession. Not a single leading executive of a major bank has been prosecuted, led alone jailed, for fraudulent activities that triggered the present crisis, leading to the destruction of millions of jobs and the decimation of working-class living standards in the US and around the world.

Under the protection of the state, the frenzied speculation and swindling continue unabated, underpinning record profits for the banks and bigger-than-ever seven-figure compensation packages for top bankers.

Stephen Lendman

Propaganda wars precede hot ones. Conflicts and other forms of violence are glorified in the name of peace. Doublespeak duplicity claim it. Wars are waged to prevent it. Ongoing ones assure more ahead. Unconscionable death counts rise. America, Israel, key NATO partners, and regional allies bear full responsibility. Humanity hangs in the balance. Humanitarian intervention and responsibility to protect (R2P) mask ravaging one country after another. Slaughter and mass destruction are called liberating struggles. Plunder is for economic development. Exploitation and dominance are called democracy building.

Media scoundrels invert truth for public support. When America goes to war or plans them, they march obediently in lockstep. Administration, congressional and Pentagon propaganda get reported as news and information. Big Lies make headlines. They're repeated ad nauseam. Media scoundrels are so addicted to lying, perhaps their employment contracts mandate misinformation, deceit and distortion while avoiding truth at all cost. What better way to explain scoundrel journalism. Fundamental good reporting principles are spurned. Ethical standards are ignored. The history of sensationalism, yellow journalism, and lying about what matters most in America is long and sordid. It dates back centuries. Accurate reporting is most important when lives, human welfare, and perhaps humanity are on the line.

Television is worst of all. In a June 1950 commencement address, Boston University President Daniel Marsh said, "If the (television) craze continues....we are destined to have a nation of morons." Famed comedian Ernie Kovacs (1919 - 1962) once called it a medium because it's neither rare or well done. He'd be horrified by what goes on now. It fails on all counts.

So do scoundrel print media. They give news, information, and opinion reporting bad names. Long before television arrived, journalist Walter Lippmann called the public "the bewildered herd." In policy matters, they're considered "spectators," not "participants." "The common interests elude public opinion entirely," he said. That's how it should be, he added.

America's privileged class alone should manage policy. Only they need proper education and training. Treat others like mushrooms - well-watered and in the dark. Distract them with bread and circuses. Misinform them with managed and junk food news. Media scoundrels betray the reading and viewing public. They're best served by walking away, tuning out, and choosing credible sources for what they most need to know. Greater numbers now do it. One day perhaps everyone will.

Juan Cole

A Palestinian man kisses the hand of a dead relative in
the morgue of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Palestinian leaders are responding to the aggressive policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, deploying new legal strategies, and, in Gaza, a mass rally reminiscent of Arab Spring protest tactics. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is reportedly considering taking Israel to the International Criminal Court over Netanyahu’s recent announcement that Israel will build 3,000 new dwellings for settlers in the E-1 area of the West Bank. Abbas indicated that this step would be a last resort, but it is a threat to be taken seriously.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal joined a celebration of tens of thousands in Gaza over the weekend and repeated his long-standing opposition to ever giving up an inch of Palestinian land to Israel. Israeli politicians condemned him for refusing to recognize, and wanting to destroy, the Israeli state. Israeli opposition leader Shaul Mofaz of the Kadima Party said that Meshaal should have been assassinated while in Gaza. None of the Israeli leaders who condemned the Hamas leader seemed to grasp that the real threat to Israel comes not from tiny, impoverished Gaza, but from the policies of Israel’s increasingly right-wing politicians.

By denying the Palestinians a state, Israelis are actively destroying the Palestine they agreed to create in the Oslo Accords that Israel signed in 1993.

Israelis prevent Gaza from exporting most of what it makes. The territory is denied an airport or seaport, and severe restrictions are placed on imports, plunging many of the Palestinians there into food insecurity and creating high incidences of anemia. In the West Bank, Israeli authorities are resorting to an ever more robust Israeli apartheid, which the world is signaling it will not accept.

James Petras

Introduction: For the past forty-five years the state of Israel has been dispossessing millions of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, confiscating their lands, destroying homes, bulldozing orchards and setting-up ‘Jews-only’ colonial settlements serviced by highways, electrical systems and water works for the exclusive use of the settlers and occupying soldiers.

The process of Israeli territorial expansion throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem has greatly accelerated in recent years, converting Palestinian-held territory into non-viable isolated enclaves – like South Africa’s Bantustans – surrounded by the Israeli soldiers who protect violent settler-vigilantes as they assault and harass Palestinian farmers at work in their fields, beat Arab children on their way to school , pelt Palestinian housewives as they hang their laundry and then invade and defecate in Palestinian mosques and churches.

The Rage and Rape of Gaza and its Apologists

Israel’s strategic goal is to impose ‘Greater Israel’ on the region: to take over all of historical Palestine, expell the entire non-Jewish population and subsidize ‘Jews-only’ settlements (for settler-immigrants, often from the US and former USSR). While bulldozers and tanks have dispossessed Palestinians in the West Bank for decades, the launching of thousands of missiles and bombs have become the ‘weapons of choice’ for uprooting and eliminating the Palestinians in Gaza. In just eight days, Israel’s latest blitzkrieg resulted in the killing of 168 Palestinians (42 children and 100 civilians), the wounding of 1,235, the destruction of over 1,350 buildings and the further traumatizing of over 1.7 million children, women and men fenced in the world’s largest concentration camp. According to the Israeli Defense Minister, the Jewish State dropped “a thousand times more bombs onto Gaza” than the Palestinians fired back into Israel.

The current Israeli offensive began with the gruesome assassination of a prominent Hamas leader, Ahmed Jabari, and immediately escalated into an assault on the entire Palestinian population of Gaza. Secure in the knowledge that the Palestinians had no capacity to retaliate with similar weaponry, the Israeli High Command ordered the systematic destruction of civilian life, workplaces and densely populated neighborhoods. Over 75% of the casualties have been non-combatants; almost half are children, women and elders.

Stephen Lendman

America's longstanding policy is permanent war. It's the only nation ever to wage them ever year in its history abroad and/or at home. Multiple direct and proxy wars rage now. Obama plans more. He's a war criminal multiple times over. He violates fundamental human and civil rights. He mocks rule of law principles and democratic values. He should be in prison, not high office. He serves wealth, power and privilege. He spurns peace, equity, justice, and basic human needs. He and George Bush made America a police state. It's a hair's breadth from full-blown tyranny. He plans four more years of harsher than ever lawless governance. Another day, another outrage. Headlines announced the latest.

■ The New York Times said "US Will Grant Recognition to Syrian Rebels."
■ The Washington Post headlined "Obama administration formally recognizes Syrian opposition group."
■ The Wall Street Journal said "US Recognizes Syria's Main Rebel Group."

Other headlines said much the same thing. No provision in international, US statute, or constitutional law permits this. What reports omitted matters more than what they said. Washington recognized an illegitimate opposition terrorist coalition as "the legitimate representative" of the Syrian people. It can't be "legitimate" if it's illegitimate. Its members are death squad killers. They're imported from other countries. They commit daily atrocities. They're war criminals. Supporting them reveals America's moral bankruptcy. Obama now recognizes them as Syria's government. Doing so adds more war crimes to Obama's resumé.

Philip Giraldi

Most Americans would prefer to forget that we are approaching the first anniversary of the expulsion of U.S. military forces from Iraq. The Republican Party, which rallied behind George W. Bush to invade the country and occupy it, has suffered from a short memory relating to that misbegotten war even as it agitates for new and similar military interventions. Much of the silence on the subject is certainly due to the fact that most Democrats and nearly all the media were also on board, though perhaps for reasons that did not completely coincide with the Bush neocons’ imperial vision. And after the war began and the occupation took on its misbegotten form under Jerry Bremer, Dan Senor, and a host of neocon acolytes brought on board to reshape the country, the saga ran on and on. As Iraq broke down into its constituent parts due to Bremer’s inept proconsulship, a development that might normally lead to a rethink of the entire project, Pentagon-based neoconservatives instead regrouped, doubled down and contrived the 2007 “surge” to fix things. That the surge was a poorly conceived and executed military dead end and a complete failure to do anything but deepen the divisions within Iraq seemed irrelevant, political partisanship inevitably rushing in to interpret it as a success to provide cover for the foolish politicians, generals and bureaucrats in Washington who had conceived it. As recently as the Republican presidential debates earlier this year the “surge” in Iraq was cited by several candidates as a litmus test for those who believe in the “right kind” of foreign policy. Those who did not believe in the myth of the surge as a subset of American Exceptionalism were outside the pale, most notably Representative Ron Paul.