Often writing as "William Ashton" in the authoritative Jane's Intelligence Review, Mr Selth has described in various articles how Singapore has sent the junta guns, rockets, armoured personnel carriers and grenade launchers, some of it trans-shipped from stocks seized by Israel from Palestinians in southern Lebanon.
Singaporean companies have provided computers and networking equipment for Burma's defence ministry and army, while upgrading the bunkered junta's ability to network with regional commanders — so crucial as protesting monks take to the streets of 20 Burmese cities, causing major logistical headaches for the Tatmadaw, the Burmese military.
The Illusion of Dividing and Conquering in Iraq by Ron Jacobs
If anyone still believes that Iraq is a free and sovereign state, a couple recent moves in Washington should put a rest to that thought forever. The first is the response to the most recent slaughter by the Blackwater mercenaries. The second is the vote on September 26, 2007 in the US Senate that calls for the division of Iraq into semi-autonomous regions that would be decided by the US client government inside Baghdad's Green Zone.
The response to the Blackwater murders from the Green Zone government was strong at first. The Minister of the Interior demanded the exit of the mercenaries from Iraq and possible prosecution of the murderers. Then the pressure from Washington began and the forceful language from the Green Zone Iraqis became considerably more conciliatory. As it stands at this writing, the Iraqi legislature is considering passing a law that would make the private mercenaries fighting Washington's war in Iraq the responsibility of the Pentagon. This would mean that they would answer to the men in uniform wearing lots of medals. It doesn't mean that their murderous actions would be punished, but it would mean that they would have to be sanctioned by the Pentagon. Given that there seems to be very few US military officers of high rank whose careers are not tied to Washington's version of success in Iraq, this change in the command chain seems like it will make very little difference in how the Blackwaters of the war operate.
by Rory Carroll in Caracas Saturday September 29, 2007 The Guardian
Red carpets, brass bands, bear hugs and a hero's welcome: there is at least one part of the Americas that loves Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
South America this week greeted the Iranian president as a brother and benefactor, defrosting him after his icy reception in New York. The leaders of Bolivia and Venezuela embraced Mr Ahmadinejad and blessed Iran's nuclear programme, underlining how much influence Washington has lost over a region it once considered its backyard.
The Iranian president signed a series of energy and trade deals during brief stopovers which extended Tehran's foothold in South America. In contrast to the insults heaped on him in New York, the visitor was feted as a strategic ally in the struggle against gringo imperialism. Cuba and Nicaragua echoed the rhetoric.
There hasn't been any mentions in American media (even by the politcal left) of the past crimes of the United States against Iran.
The United States had toppled the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 and put in his place the puppet Shah. (See this book review of All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss17/booknotes-All.shtml )
During the Iran-Iraq war the United States sold weapons and gave false intelligence to both sides of the conflict. (see http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2292 ) Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger had said about the war, too bad both sides can't lose.
While the American media scolds Ahmadinejad for supposedly denying the Holocaust, you have Americans in denial of the genocide in Iraq.
The United States had helped Saddam Hussein into power (see http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html ) and supported him, strategically and financially, when he was committing his worst atrocities.
Through two invasions, sanctions, and use of chemical weapons, millions of Iraqis have died and millions of Iraqis have fled their homes.
The fact of the matter is that every single administration, since Jimmy Carter have supported and financed the "Islamic terror" network, created during the Carter administration at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, 12 September 2001). al Qaeda is a instrument of US intelligence: a US sponsored intelligence asset. Where was Osama on Septembers 11?
There is evidence that the whereabouts of Osama are known to the Bush Administration.
On September 10. 2001, "Enemy Number One" was in a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi, courtesy of America's indefectible ally Pakistan, as confirmed by a report of Dan Rather, CBS News. (See our October 2003 article on this issue)
He could have been arrested at short notice which would have "saved us a lot of trouble", but then we would not have had an Osama Legend, which has fed the news chain as well as George W's speeches in the course of the last five years.
According to Dan Rather, CBS, Bin Laden was hospitalized in Rawalpindi. one day before the 9/11 attacks, on September 10, 2001.
"Pakistan. Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) told CBS that bin Laden had received dialysis treatment in Rawalpindi, at Pak Army's headquarters.
DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.
This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS`s Barry Petersen. Here is his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.
"The military had him surrounded," says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, "and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time," he says, "I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after." Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, says the military was often there to help before 9/11.
It should be noted, that the hospital is directly under the jurisdiction of the Pakistani Armed Forces, which has close links to the Pentagon. U.S. military advisers based in Rawalpindi. work closely with the Pakistani Armed Forces. Again, no attempt was made to arrest America's best known fugitive, but then maybe bin Laden was serving another "better purpose". Rumsfeld claimed at the time that he had no knowledge regarding Osama's health. (CBS News, 28 January 2002)...
The CBS report is a crucial piece of information in our understanding of 9/11.
It refutes the administration's claim that the whereabouts of bin Laden are unknown. It points to a Pakistan connection, it suggests a cover-up at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
Dan Rather and Barry Petersen fail to draw the implications of their January 2002 report. They suggest that the US had been deliberately misled by Pakistani intelligence officials. They fail to ask the question:
Why does the US administration state that they cannot find Osama?
Just one note: Remember in September 2004 when Dan Rather was made to leave CBS news after reporting on President G.W. Bush’s military record? He was accused of using forged documents. No one has said anything was forged or false in Rather's Spetemebr 2001 reporting on Osama Ben Laden.
Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned? Journalist Ed Haas’ investigates this,
On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”
A poll earlier this year of more than 1,000 young adult British Muslims found that 36 per cent believe those who convert to another faith should be punished by death.
Pope Benedict is particularly concerned about the persecution of Christians in Iraq since the invasion of 2003.
Before then, there were about 1.2million Christians in the country. But the number has dropped to below 600,000.
Did it bother the Pope when the United States helped bring Saddam Hussein into power? The U.S. and other Western countries supported Saddam, strategically and financially when he was committing his worst atrocities?. Is he concerned about the millions of innocent women, men and children that were killed by bombings in two invasions, the use of chemical weapons by the United States and the sanctions that were placed against the people of Iraq? What about the millions of Iraqis that have fled their homes into the surrounding countries?
While tolerance of others must be addressed by Muslims, it would help if the Pope set the example by speaking up against how Western countries, while preaching human rights and democracy, go around engaging in regime change and supporting brutal kings and dictators who do their bidding? He won't be doing this anytime soon because these mass murders and violations of human rights are what gives him and those living in the West their comfortable lifestyles.
I don't expect he will be addressing the region in which the most killings and rapes are occurring, the predominantly Christian Congo. It is because the United States, Israel, and Europe benefit from the diamonds, other natural resources, and sale of weapons that deaths and suffering of the Congolese does not matter.
Organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Save Darfur Coalition are silent on the role of the United States and other democracies in fueling the violence in Sudan.
For some strange reason these activists are not too concerned about the Congo were a larger number of killings and rapes have occurred. Can it be because the United States, Israel and Europe benefit from the diamonds, other natural resources, and sale of weapons, that the death of millions of black Africans in the Congo is not so tragic? See http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm
The US and Britain have always maintained that the war to oust Saddam Hussein was about weapons of mass destruction - not oil.
US President George Bush said Saddam was a threat to world security because he could sell the weapons on to terrorists.
But Mr Greenspan, a Republican who was boss of the US Federal Reserve for 18 years, said that was not the whole truth, according to a copy of the book seen by Associated Press.
"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil," he is reported to have written.
This story hasn't got the same attention as the killing of the Dutch filmmaker by a Muslim.
The media outlets that reported it did not ask the obvious question: If the American man wanted to punish someone for the Iraq war, why didn't he punish himself, since it is the United States that led the invasion of Iraq and is responsible for most of the deaths and destruction?
Hartmann, a US citizen, first sought-out a Dutch soldier in the southern Dutch city of Roosendaal, but could not find one and turned his axe on a student waiting for a train on a platform at the city's station, said a Dutch news agency.
By Ben Terrall June 19th, 2007 Faleh Abood Umara, General Secretary of the Southern Oil Company Union (affiliated with the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions) worked for the Southern Oil Company in Basra for 28 years. Umara was detained by Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1998 for union activities. In the post-Saddam years he has worked on his union’s negotiating team with both the Oil Ministry and British occupation authorities, defending the rights of oil company workers.
His colleague Hashmeya Mushin Hussein, President of the Electrical Utility Workers Union, is the first woman to head a national union in Iraq. The Electrical Utility Workers are affiliated with the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW).
USLAW (U.S. Labor Against the War ) National Coordinator Michael Eisenscher introduced the speakers, pointing to the roots of Iraq labor unions in the country’s struggle against British imperialism, and the brave efforts of trade unionists under Saddam Hussein. Eisenscher noted that the June 2005 tour of Iraqi labor leaders USLAW coordinated (all three of the labor federations represented on that tour called for an end to the occupation in order to restore peace and end terrorism in Iraq) took place a month before a national meeting of the AFL-CIO, thereby helping achieve passage of a resolution by that U.S. labor body saying troops in Iraq “deserve a commitment from our country’s leaders to bring them home rapidly.” Eisenscher described this as the first time in its 50 year history that the federation took a position in opposition to a U.S. war while it was being waged, contrasting with unfortunate past history that earned it the label “AFL-CIA.” (The federation long served as an echo chamber for Washington’s cold war anti-communism, and helped facilitate brutal repression in Latin America and elsewhere. . . . Since the U.S. high command has announced that it will arm “Sunni insurgents,” allegedly to fight al-Quaida, after years of equipping Shia militias, it doesn’t take much effort to see how Washington might be contributing to fragmentation in Iraq. And as Iraq specialists Antonia Juhasz and Raed Jarrar wrote about the oil law on CounterPunch: “Many Iraqi oil experts are already referring to the draft law as the “Split Iraq Fund,” arguing that it facilitates plans for splitting Iraq into three ethnic/religious regions. The experts believe the law undermines the central government and shifts important decision-making and responsibilities to the regional entities. This shift could serve as the foundation for establishing three new independent states, which is the goal of a number of separatists leaders.” Meanwhile, the Iraq oil law’s granting dominance to multinational oil giants behind the Bush Administration continues to be largely overlooked by the U.S. media and politicians in Washington. Instead, the mostly unquestioned spin from Washington is that the U.S. is working to heal divisions: UPI energy correspondent Ben Lando, who has written extensively about the oil workers’s strike, this week described Lt. Gen Martin as “the latest U.S. government official to push a common but false claim that the controversial draft oil law will lead to a just division of the proceeds from oil sales and pave the way for reconciliation in the war-torn nation.” In fact, under the Iraq oil law still being negotiated, foreign oil giants stand to be the primary beneficiaries of those proceeds. As Antonia Juhasz wrote, “The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the country’s economic development. Complete article is at http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/iraq-union-leaders-speak-out-against-occupation/ Additional information at http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/06/1359232
In this interview with former President Jimmy Carter, on amazon.com( Click here and scroll down to see interview ) about his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, his answer to this question
Q: What has been the importance of your own faith in your continued interest in peace in the Middle East?
is
A: As a Christian, I worship the Prince of Peace. One of my preeminent commitments has been to bring peace to the people who live in the Holy Land. I made my best efforts as president and still have this as a high priority.
But here is an interview with (National Security Advisor to President Carter) Zbigniew Brzezinski at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html (from Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 )
Brzezinski says
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
and
That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
The USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and occupied the country throughout the 1980s. The CIA hired the Mujaheddin (soldiers of God) to expunge the Communists from Afghanistan. The Mujaheddin were trained by Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Directorate, and funded and armed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Egypt, France, Britain, Israel, Iran, Japan, and China. The U.S. spent $5 billion to support the rebels during the 1980s, and used Osama bin Laden, then an ally of the U. S ., to help recruit non-Afghan Muslims to the Mujaheddin.
RAWA has pointed out that there were several democratic-minded groups the U.S. and other countries could have supported if they had wanted to drive out the Communists and help restore independence to Afghanistan. Why did these countries instead back the fundamentalist Mujaheddin? RAWA member Sajeda told Said lt magazine in August that pro-democracy groups would have refused to act as "puppets" for other countries, and would have made it difficult for those countries to "maintain their economic and political interests in Afghanistan."
When the Soviet Union withdrew its army in 1989, the Mujaheddin, under the command of the despotic Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and still funded by the U.S., began shelling Afghanistan's cities, killing thousands of civilians. After the Soviet's puppet regime collapsed in 1992, the country was seized by civil war. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in rocket attacks. The Mujaheddin stopped women from working and attending health courses sponsored by non-government organizations (NGOs). Amnesty International reported that armed groups beat, raped, and murdered women in their homes. Young women were kidnapped as wives for commanders or sold into prostitution. Some committed suicide to avoid this fate, like one young woman who threw herself off a balcony in her house when soldiers came to kidnap her. In March 1994, a 15-year-old girl was repeatedly raped after soldiers killed her father for allowing her to go to school. Many people were victimized for belonging to a certain religious or ethnic group.
Here is a reminder of Judith Miller's contribution to journalism by Jospeh A. Palermo
On April 21, 2003, Judith Miller, now working as an embedded reporter with the U.S. military's MET Alpha, wrote the story, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." In this piece of propaganda, Miller claims without evidence or proof that the Iraqis destroyed or shipped to Syria their vast stockpiles of WMDs. Miller's anonymous source was a guy claiming to be an "Iraqi scientist," and she tells her readers that she "was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried. Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried."
This "Iraqi scientist," who turned out to be bogus, allowed Miller to appear on PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer and have the following exchange:...
I first heard about this in a radio interview with Michael Maren, author of The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity published in 1977. To see a review of the book click here. Here is more current information about this, where one charity organization is begining to see the light.
“...Care, one of the world's biggest charities, has announced that it will boycott the controversial policy of selling tons of heavily subsidised US produced food in African countries. Care wants the US government to send money to buy food locally, rather than unwanted US produced food. The US arm of the charity says America is causing rather than reducing hunger with a decree that US food aid must be sold rather than directly distributed to those facing starvation. In America, the subsidies for corn in particular, help underpin the junk food industry, which uses corn extracts as a sweetener, creating a home-grown a health crisis. The farm lobby meanwhile has a stranglehold on Congress, which has balked at making any changes that would interfere with a system that promotes overproduction of commodities. Critics of the policy say it also undermines African farmers' ability to produce food, making the most vulnerable countries of the world even more dependent on aid to avert famine. ”
Respected friends, over five years passed since the US-led attack on Afghanistan. Probably many of you are not well aware of the current conditions of my country and expect me to list the positive outcomes of the past years since the US invasion. But I am sorry to tell you that Afghanistan is still chained in the fetters of the fundamentalist warlords and is like an unconscious body taking its last breath.
The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the “Northern Alliance”, which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban.
The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our wounded land.
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The gang-rape of young girls and women by warlords belonging to the “Northern Alliance” still continues especially in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. People have staged mass protests a number of times but no one cares about their sorrow and tears. Only a few of the rape cases find their way into the media. One shocking case was that of 11 year old Sanobar, the only daughter of an unfortunate widow who was abducted, raped and then exchanged for a dog by a warlord. In a land where human dignity has no price, the vicious rapist of a poor girl still acts as district chief.
The only protests in Afghanistan the mainstream media reports on are the ones involving the abuse of the Quran or those Muhammed cartoons. Much of the mainstream media does not care to portray Muslims as human beings, who have the same concerns as everyone else. How much attention has Malalai Joya gotten in the mainstream media or from Western feminists? It is because she criticizes both U.S. military actions and the Taliban that she is not well known.
http://www.startribune.com/722/story/1329443.html How come the same amount of attention is not given to the people of the Congo as the gorillas of the Congo? Is it because Western countries benefit from the diamonds and natural resources; as well as the sale of weapons to the Central Africa region? Here are some articles about it, in case you are not aware of it. http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm
I still see websites/blogs ( http://samsonblinded.org/blog/a-cartoon-for-a-cartoon.htm ) that claim the Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Contest was about making fun of the victims of the Holocaust. But as you can see here, it was about making fun of how the Holocaust is used to justify war crimes.
The Holocaust is not the only time a large number of people have died, 3 to 5 million died when the U.S. bombed Vietnam and Cambodia. Millions have died in the Congo and the surrounding countries. The Western media likes to portray it just as tribal and ethnic war fare and they leave out the role of the United States and Israel in fueling the war through political interventions and selling weapons to both sides of the conflicts. In the meanwhile, they exploit the diamonds, minerals and natural resources of the region. Will we ever find out the true number of Iraqis killed as a result of the two invasions and sanctions? The Iraqis are scapegoats for U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. helped Saddam Hussein into power and supported him, financially and strategically, when he was committing his worst atrocities.
Regarding the cartoon controversy, one of the commentators and the web administrator at http://samsonblinded.org/blog/a-cartoon-for-a-cartoon.htm discuss that to get back at Muslims they should make cartoons that show the prophet of Islam as a pedophile. I tried to post a comment that shows the cartoons of the winner of the Iranian contest and I also mentioned a book that discusses Jewish scriptures that makes it acceptable to perform sexual acts on three year olds and younger. But the administrator did not allow my comment to be posted. The name of the book is called Judaism’s Strange Gods by Michael Hoffman. I will quote part of it here. On page 51 it says
Sexual Intercourse with Little Girls is Permissible Ketubot lIb: "If a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl, it is nothing, for having intercourse with a girl less than three years old is like putting a finger in the eye." Though the Talmud's permission for the heinous crime of child molestation is virtually unknown among the public and is never mentioned in the establishment media, among Talmud researchers it is notorious. This portion of tractate Ketubot concerns Halakhic definitions of sexual intercourse. In this particular ruling it is stated that copulation with girls below the age of three cannot be considered sexual activity because, although penetration ruptures her hymen, such intercourse is merely "like putting a finger in the eye," since the hymen at this age will eventually regenerate (just as a finger stuck in an eye will cause the eye to water, yet the eye will heal and return to its former state, so the hymen of a girl under three will rupture during intercourse but will heal later). Once her hymen grows back, the little girl is regarded as lawfully still a virgin. Hence the Talmud recognizes no sexual intercourse as having occurred and therefore exacts no penalty for coitus with a female child of less than three years of age.
There was an uproar caused by some when the first Muslim congressman elected, Keith Ellison, compared Bush to Hitler.
"Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler's later seizure of emergency powers. "
Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned? Journalist Ed Haas’ investigates this,
On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”
He said, “the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.”
I don’t know if the military can solve the problems in Iraq, but the least Obama could do is acknowledge that the United States and its allies created the the chaos in Iraq. The U.S., Britain, and its allies #1) bombed the country and destroyed its infrastructure #2) rounds up thousands of Iraqis and jails them without justification #3) makes decisions when elections are to take place and whether the results are valid #4) benefit more from reconstruction projects than the Iraqis #5)can break into jails to release prisoners against the Iraqi’s governments wishes. (Remember when two British men where caught disguised as Arabs carrying explosives and weapons in their car? Their fellow British soldiers broke into the jail they were in and helped them to escape) see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051015&articleId=1089
Lets look at the second ridiculous thing Obama said, “Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven’t done.” The guy doesn’t know what he is talking about. I suggest he read “Deadly Legacy:U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War” at http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm The findings of the report were
Due to the continuing legacies of its Cold War policies toward Africa, the U.S. bears some responsibility for the cycles of violence and economic problems plaguing the continent.
The ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) is a prime example of the devastating legacy of U.S. arms sales policy on Africa.
Although the Clinton administration has been quick to criticize the governments involved in the Congo War, decades of U.S. weapons transfers and continued military training to both sides of the conflict have helped fuel the fighting.
Despite the failure of U.S. polices in the region, the current administration continues to respond to Africa’s woes by helping to strengthen African militaries.
Even as it fuels military build-up, the U.S. continues cutting development assistance to Africa and remains unable (or unwilling) to promote alternative non-violent forms of engagement.
Pool of water estimated to have sprawled over nearly 12,000 square miles
Scientists using radar techniques have peeled away the sandy cloak blanketing Darfur’s parched landscape to reveal an ancient basin that once housed a mega-lake larger than Lake Erie.
“When you go into these deserts and you look at the land, it’s so dry and lifeless you think there has never been anything alive there. Then you look in the past, and you see there were rivers and lakes,” said study team member Farouk El-Baz, director of Boston University Center for Remote Sensing.
Dubbed the Northern Darfur Mega-lake, the large pool of water is estimated to have sprawled over nearly 12,000 square miles during its heyday, with 600 cubic miles of water when filled to the brim.
Hidden pool El-Baz and his colleague Eman Ghoneim, also of the Center for Remote Sensing, discovered the lake by analyzing images from the satellite Radarsat, which used radar waves to penetrate the fine-grained sand in western Sudan, revealing the hidden contours of the lake basin and surrounding rivers.
Jun 5, 2007, 8:51 GMT Amsterdam - A former Dutch UN observer has said Israel was not under siege by Arab countries preceding the Six-Day War, the 40th anniversary of which falls Tuesday, and that the Jewish state provoked most border incidents as part of its strategy to annex more land. Speaking on a Dutch current affairs programme late Monday, Jan Muhren, who was stationed interchangeably at the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1966-67, says neither Jordan nor Syria had any intention to start a war with Israel. from http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1313492.php/Israel_provoked_Six-Day_War_says_former_Dutch_UN_observer
Actually as you will see in the video, that Jan Muhren is not that only one that says this “Moshe Dayan, the famous Israeli war hero has admitted long after the Six-Day war that the majority of incidents (80%) were provoked by Israel.”
The Deceptions of the Six-Day War - DutchTV with English Subtitles
Israel never was in military danger, the Israeli Army was always aware they could overpowered all the Arab armies.
The US CIA was greatly involved in providing Israel intelligence information that greatly helped them win the war in such a short time.
US military personnel, disguised as civilians and on secret missions to which they were sworn to secrecy, helped the Israelis with specific technical and intelligence-gathering operations.
