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Today's
Stories
May 21, 2009
Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
The Politics of Bait-and-Switch: Obama and the Environment
May 20, 2009
Michael Hudson
The Toll Booth Economy
Gary Leupp
Courting Hekmatyar: Obama and the Warlord
Michael D. Yates
Work is Hell
Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu Adviser Steps Out of the Shadows
Peter Lee
The World Doesn't Have a Pakistan Nukes Problem ... It Has a David Albright Problem
Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Tamil Tigers?
Peter Zinn
Eulogizing Lawyers
William Loren Katz
Tortured Reasoning; Tortured Results
Gary Lapon
Why Women Need Single Payer
Trudy Bond
Torture, Shrinks and a Groundhog's Day Moment
Website of the Day
Meet the Climate Change Lobby
May 19, 2009
Kristoffer Rehder
Check Point Iraq: a Soldier's Tale
Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis
Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA
Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?
Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv
Mustafa Barghouthi
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?
Andy Worthington
Gitmo:
A Prison Built on Lies
Binoy Kampmark
Britain's Speaker Crisis
John Walsh
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer
David Macaray
Alcohol as Metaphor: Zero Tolerance in the Workplace
Website of the Day
So You Think That Veggie Burger is Organic...
May 18, 2009
Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan
Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan
Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?
Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?
Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban
Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby
Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture
Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor
Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour
Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture
Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol
Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers
May 15-17, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb
David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown
Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off
Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch
Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo
Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis
Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security
Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv
Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming
Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below
Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate
Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists
Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis
Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children
Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW
David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy
Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism
Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story
Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard
David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking
Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant
Charles R. Larson
Double Exile
Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics
Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek
David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost
Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser
Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22
May 14, 2009
Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong
Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic:
Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence
Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President
Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?
Ray McGovern
See No Evil:
Ugly Questions for General Myers
Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism
David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk
Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney
Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options
Sue Udry
The Bybee Question
Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes
May 13, 2009
Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq
Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan
Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel
Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution
Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games
Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship
Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse
William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon
Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?
Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride
May 12, 2009
Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction
Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload
Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship
Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts
Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections
Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman
Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill
Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers
Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?
David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots
Website of the Day
Electronic Police States
May 11, 2009
Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby
Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF
Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?
Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo
John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs
Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"
Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims
David Michael Green
Get Obama
Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing
Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal
Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness
May 8-10, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Dead Souls
Jeffrey St. Clair
Echoes of Amchitka: 40 Years After America's Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues
Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience
Steve Niva
Iraq:
The Return of the Suicide Bombers
Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring
Mike Whitney
Has Bernanke Pulled the Economy Back From the Brink?
Warren Hinckle
DiFi vs. Marilyn Chambers
Serge Halimi
In Praise of Revolutions
Gareth Porter
The Pakistan Conundrum
Sharon Smith
Something Stinks at Whole Foods
Andy Worthington
Obama's New Gitmo Policy: Back to the Bush Era?
Mark Weisbrot
Hillary and Latin America
Rosa Miriam Elizalde Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident: More of the Same?
David Macaray
Recessions and Labor Unions
Missy Beattie
The Real Housewives of War
Ron Jacobs
Mothers and War
Diane Farsetta
About Face on Pentagon Pundits?
Ramzy Baroud
War Without Context
Phelie Maguire
Living Next to Settlers
Robert Fantina
Party of Rush
Kevin Zeese
A Break From the Past in the Drug War?
Margaret Flowers, MD
The Baucus 8: Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer
Dave Lindorff
The Joke's on Us
Richard Rhames
Revenge of the Tundra
Ben Sonnenberg
Let the Right One In:
A Vampire Visits a Welfare State
Kim Nicolini
Sin Nombre: Giving Faces to People Who Don't Have Names
Stephen Martin
The Riotous Action of the Complete Banker
Charles R. Larson
The Commencement Address You'll Never Hear
David Yearsley
Jean Ferrard, Organist Extraordinary
Lorenzo Wolff
Death Cab for Cutie:
Surprisingly Familiar
Poets' Basement
G.S. Heiligschreib and David Farrelly
Website of the Weekend
Zombie Bank
May 7, 2009
Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel
Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War
Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture
Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks
Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?
Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal:
Impeaching the Torture Judge
Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?
Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System
Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?
Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal
Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?
May 6, 2009
Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly
Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You
Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?
Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget
Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis
Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture
Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough:
Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman
David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal
Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings
Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice
Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture
Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?
May 5, 2009
William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama
Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan
Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution
Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic
Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson
Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress
Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies
Fidel Castro
Giving One's All
Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections
Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs
Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"
May 4, 2009
James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case
Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget
Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law
Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough
Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers
David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo
Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp
P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics
Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof
Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay
Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt
Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970
May 1 - 3, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits
Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case
Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille
Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War:
Iraq's Wrecked Environment
C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War
Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite
Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes
Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?
Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged
Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting
Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy
Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist
Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags
Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus
Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start
Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections
Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!
Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent:
Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway
Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland
David Michael Green
The Party's Over
Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle
Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat:
Agriculture and the Environment
Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement
Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option
Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!
David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven
Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection
Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan
Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate
Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe
April 30, 2009
Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time
Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built
Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws
Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics
Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan
Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past
David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question
Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm
Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement
John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?
Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?
Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists
April 29, 2009
Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America
Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul
Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World
Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion
Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats
Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?
Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson
Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?
Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours
Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads
Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"
April 28, 2009
Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism
Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray
Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street:
a Financial Transactions Tax
Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate
Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"
John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn
Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative
Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?
Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda
Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba
Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood
April 27, 2009
Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire
Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11
Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission
Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka
Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut:
The 165-Minute Swoop-In
Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness
Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?
Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?
Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama
Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF
Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced
Website of the Day
American Casino
April 24-26, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial
Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11
Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?
Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?
Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture
Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update
Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis
Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act
Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five
Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh
Greg Moses
The Debt Looters
Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace
Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education
David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters
Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict
Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List
Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico
Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist
Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?
Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves
Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General
Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts
Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"
Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt
Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?
David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace
Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh
Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey
April 23, 2009
Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years
Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture
Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap
Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy
Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded
Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban
Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?
Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con
Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale
Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country
April 22, 2009
Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project
Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists
Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement
Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans
Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics
Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy
Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits
Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School
Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here
Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas
Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe
Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said
April 21, 2009
Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape
Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture
Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit
George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year
Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel
Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers
Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza
Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n
Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk
John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer
David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed
Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere
April 20, 2009
Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever
Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula
Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens
Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes
Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers
Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos:
Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes
Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East
Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad
P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word
Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama
Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?
Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance
Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...
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May 21, 2009
Obama's Trail of Broken Promises
Morphing Dick Cheney
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
A despairing country elected a president who promised change. Americans arrived from every state to witness in bitter cold Obama’s swearing in ceremony. The mall was packed in a way that it has never been for any other president.
The people’s good will toward Obama and the expectations they had for him were sufficient for Obama to end the gratuitous wars and enact major reforms. But Obama has deserted the people for the interests. He is relying on his non-threatening demeanor and rhetoric to convince the people that change is underway.
The change that we are witnessing is in Obama, not in policies. Obama is morphing into Dick Cheney.
Obama has not been in office four months and already a book could be written about his broken promises.
Obama said he would close the torture prison, Guantanamo, and abolish the kangaroo courts known as military tribunals. But now he says he is going to reform the tribunals and continue the process, but without confessions obtained with torture. Getting behind Obama’s validation of the Bush/Cheney policy, House Democrats pulled the budget funding that was to be used for closing Guantanamo.
The policy of kidnapping people (usually on the basis of disinformation supplied by their enemies) and whisking them off to third world prisons to be interrogated is to be continued. Again, Obama has substituted a  “reform” for his promise to abolish an illegal policy. Rendition, Obama says, has also been reformed and will no longer involve torture. How would anyone know? Is Obama going to assign a US government agent to watch over the treatment given to disappeared people by third world thugs? Given the proclivity of American police to brutalize US citizens, nothing can save the victims of rendition from torture.
Obama has defended the Bush/Cheney warrantless wiretapping program run by the National Security Agency and broadened the government’s legal argument that “sovereign immunity” protects government officials from prosecution and civil suits when they violate US law and constitutional protections of citizens. Obama’s Justice Department has taken up the defense of Donald Rumsfeld against a case brought by detainees whose rights Rumsfeld violated.
In a signing statement this month, Obama abandoned his promise to protect whislte-blowers who give information of executive branch illegality to Congress.
Obama is making even more expansive claims of executive power than Bush. As Bruce Fine puts it: “In principle, President Obama is maintaining that victims of constitutional wrongdoing by the U.S. government should be denied a remedy in order to prevent the American people and the world at large from learning of the lawlessness perpetrated in the name of national security and exacting political and legal accountability.”
Obama, in other words, is committed to covering up the Bush regime’s crimes and to ensuring that his own regime can continue to operate in the same illegal and unconstitutional ways.
Obama is fighting the release of the latest batch of horrific torture photos that have come to light. Obama claims that release of the photos would anger insurgents and cause them to kill our troops. That, of course, is nonsense. Those resisting occupation of their land by US troops and NATO mercenaries are already dedicated to killing our troops, and they know that Americans torture whomever they capture. Obama is fighting the release of the photos, because he knows the barbaric image that the photos present of the US military will undermine the public’s support for the wars that enrich the military/security complex, appease the Israel Lobby, and repay the campaign contributions that elect the US government.
As for bringing the troops home from Iraq, this promise, too, has been reformed. To the consternation of his supporters, Obama is leaving 50,000 US soldiers in Iraq. The others are being sent to Afghanistan and to Pakistan, where on Obama’s watch war has broken out big time with already one million refugees from the indiscriminate bombing of civilians.
Meanwhile, war with Iran remains a possibility, and at Washington’s insistence, NATO is conducting war games on former Soviet territory, thus laying the groundwork for future enrichment of the US military/security complex. The steeply rising US unemployment rate will provide the needed troops for Obama’s expanding wars.
Obama can give a great speech without mangling the language. He can smile and make people believe his rhetoric. The world, or much of it, seems to be content with the soft words, which now drape Dick Cheney’s policies in pursuit of executive supremacy and US hegemony.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com |
