Peace and Justice Post

Ewen MacAskill and Daniel Nasaw in Washington
Suzanne Goldenberg in Philadelphia

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday April 22 2008

Hillary Clinton, in her most bellicose comments since the presidential race began, today threatened to obliterate Iran if it launched a nuclear strike against Israel.

Speaking as voters went to the polls in the potentially crucial Pennsylvania primary, she said: “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel).”

Barack Obama immediately accused her of “sabre-rattling”, saying this was the kind of language that had been used by the Bush administration over the last few years and was not helpful.

In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, she was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. She said: “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.”

Continued . . .

Robert Parry | Consortiumnews.com, April 21, 2008

After prying loose 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents, the New York Times has proven what should have been obvious years ago: the Bush administration manipulated public opinion on the Iraq War, in part, by funneling propaganda through former senior military officers who served as expert analysts on TV news shows.

In 2002-03, these military analysts were ubiquitous on TV justifying the Iraq invasion, and most have remained supportive of the war in the five years since. The Times investigation showed that the analysts were being briefed by the Pentagon on what to say and had undisclosed conflicts of interest via military contracts.

Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former Fox News analyst, said the Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’” [NYT, April 20, 2008]

None of that, of course, should come as any surprise. Where do people think generals and admirals go to work after they retire from the government?

If they play ball with the Pentagon, they get fat salaries serving on corporate boards of military contractors, or they get rich running consultancies that trade on quick access to high-ranking administration officials. If they’re not team players, they’re shut out.

Yet, what may be more troubling, although perhaps no more surprising, is how willingly the U.S. news media let itself be used as a propaganda conduit for the Bush administration regarding the ill-advised invasion of Iraq.

Fox News may have been the prototype of the flag-waving “news” outlet that fawned over pro-war retired military officers and mocked anti-war citizens.

But the same imbalance could be found at the major networks, like NBC where then-anchor Tom Brokaw spoke in the first person plural as he sat among a panel of retired brass on the night of the Iraq invasion – March 19, 2003 – and said: “In a few days, we’re going to own that country.”

Continued . . .

By Aaron Glantz, AlterNet. Posted April 22, 2008.

“If you’re suicidal you can’t wait a month… People placed on waiting lists have killed themselves.”

A national class action lawsuit brought by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans went to trial on April 21. The suit, known as Veterans for Common Sense vs. Peake was brought by two veterans organizations who argue the Department of Veterans Affairs is systematically denying hundreds of thousands of wounded veterans needed medical treatment, while forcing them to wait months or even years for the disability benefits they’ve earned.

“We’re dealing with people who are almost totally disabled; people who have lost arms, lost legs in these wars, people who have come home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or physical brain injury,” explained Gordan Erspamer, an attorney with the law firm Morrison and Forrester who is handling the case pro bono. “We can’t have these people waiting for months and years for the treatment they need.”

According to a study released last week by the Rand Corporation, an estimated 300,000 veterans among the nearly 1.7 million who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are battling depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Another 320,000 veterans suffer from Traumatic Brain Injury, physical brain damage which is often caused by roadside bombs.

However, the VA reports only about 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have received health care from the VA system – about 120,000 for mental injuries. That means more than half the American service personnel wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have slipped through the cracks.

Continued . . .

International Herald Tribune, April 21, 2008

BEIRUT:

One of the paradoxes of the complex relationship between the Arab world and the United States relates to the rhetoric and reality of democratic values.

The Bush administration has made democracy promotion a central pillar of its foreign policy in the Middle East at the level of rhetoric, but in practice it pays little heed to behaving democratically in its interaction with the Arab people.

If democracy means the rule of the people, ideally a country’s domestic and foreign policies should reflect the majority sentiments of its citizens.

The Arab world lacks credible democratic systems. Existing institutions like parliaments are controlled in a manner that reflects the will of small powerful elites that dominate the country, rather than accurately expressing public sentiment.

This control has been overcome to a large extent in recent years by good public opinion polls, conducted by local Arab groups as well as established international firms.

One of the major trends that has been repeatedly identified and reconfirmed in polls during the past decade has been the gap between the aims of American policies and Arab public perceptions of the United States.

Arab citizens, individually and collectively, do not have the means to translate their sentiments into policy. But in recent years they have enjoyed more and more opportunities to express their opinions, through mass media outlets and also in public opinion surveys.

One of the most important regular surveys over the past decade is the Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll, conducted by Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland with the respected polling firm Zogby International.

The latest survey, conducted in March, covered a representative sample of over 4,000 people in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (1.6 percent margin of error). It provides a good overview of Arab public opinion on key issues of the day, and deserves study every time it comes out.

This year’s poll revealed strong and widespread opposition to American policies in the region. This is not particularly newsworthy, as this has been known for years, but it is particularly interesting for showing the substantial disdain that defines Washington’s engagement with the Arab world.

I am not surprised that Bush’s democracy-promotion strategy in our region has gotten nowhere, given that American policy tends to totally discount the will of the Arab people as it is expressed in repeated polls.

The three most important topics covered in the latest Telhami/Zogby poll in my view are about Iraq, Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict, which are now pretty much synthesized into a single dynamic in the perceptions of many Arabs.

On Iraq, the poll showed that only 6 percent of Arabs polled believe that the American “surge” has worked. Over 61 percent believe that if the United States were to withdraw from Iraq, Iraqis would find a way to bridge their differences. A massive 81 percent of Arabs polled outside Iraq believe that the Iraqis are worse off than they were before the Iraq war.

Continued . . .

Sott.net
John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt
Prospect
Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:38 EDT

In his essay “A liberal Israel lobby” (Prospect, April 2008), Gershom Gorenberg makes a number of false charges about our book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

First, he claims that we “overstated” the lobby’s influence. “Perhaps the most striking flaw,” he writes, “is that Mearsheimer and Walt accept Aipac’s own claims regarding its power and who it represents.” Our book contains an abundance of evidence demonstrating the lobby’s power, and we did not simply take the word of officials from Aipac (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee). We presented testimony from a wide variety of congressmen, congressional staffers, journalists and former executive branch officials, and we referred to surveys that find Aipac to be among the most powerful lobbies in Washington. We also provided detailed case studies showing how pro-Israel groups have worked to influence US policy towards the middle east. Gorenberg does not offer a single example to show that our accounts were wrong. Nor does he point to a case where we clearly “overstated” the lobby’s influence.

Continued . . .

ABC News, April 22, 2008

By Washington correspondent Kim Landers

A United States Congressional committee is asking the Pentagon to explain whether the increase in convicted criminals being recruited into the US military can be linked to the strains from the Iraq war.

Last year the US Army granted waivers to allow 511 convicted criminals to join up, almost double the number from the year before.

Almost 250 Army and Marine recruits had convictions for burglary while 130 had been charged with drug offences, excluding marijuana.

There were also a handful of waivers given for those convicted of rape and sexual assault, along with terrorist threats, including bomb threats.

The Times, April 22, 2008

Michaelmoore.com, Monday, April 21st, 2008

Friends,

I don’t get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn’t get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.

So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote — and yours — on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?

I haven’t spoken publicly ’til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don’t give a rat’s ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there’s a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word “Democratic” next to the candidate’s name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don’t care if the name under the Big “D” is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I’ve watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name “Farrakhan” out of nowhere, well that’s when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the “F” word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama’s pastor does — AND the “church bulletin” once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Continued . . .