http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=782


Informant: littlebrit1961

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/30/wiran30.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/06/30/ixportal.html


Informant: kevcross5

by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke

Cato Institute

06/28/04

In 2001, an America largely disinterested and uninformed about foreign affairs was convulsed by terrorism from abroad. ... This was the moment when a small, largely unknown group of neoconservatives injected itself decisively into the foreign policy process. These neoconservatives, with origins among formerly left internationalist Democrats, tend to be characterized by a Jacobin, uncompromising set of values. In retrospect, one could not know how susceptible an inexperienced president and a less informed polity would be to the policies that have brought about the risky positions in which the nation now finds itself...

http://www.cato.org/dailys/06-28-04.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Distinguished social scientist and public intellectual Chalmers Johnson, joins host Harry Kreisler for a conversation on the nature of the American Empire and its costs and consequences for the future of American democracy and power in the world...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6379.htm

http://www.adbusters.org/jams/history/flash.html


Informant: vinski2004

by Bill Berkowitz

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June04/Berkowitz0621.htm

George W. Bush has accomplished exactly what he set out to do in launching his aggression: the installation -- of a client state in Iraq, led by a strongman who will facilitate the Bush Regime's long-term (and long-declared) strategic goal of establishing a permanent military "footprint" in the key oil state, while also guaranteeing the short-term goal of opening the country to exploitation by Bush cronies and favored foreign interests...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6336.htm

by Mark Follman

Salon

06/14/04

The U.S. is now waging three wars, says intelligence expert Thomas Powers. One is in Iraq. The second is in Afghanistan. And the third is in Washington -- an all-out war between the White House and the nation's own intelligence agencies. Powers, the author of 'Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda,' charges that the Bush administration is responsible for what is perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of U.S. intelligence... [subscription or ad view required]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/14/coup/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Excerpt

In the words of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind," Memorial Day weekend was all about "War, war, war!" In addition to the real ceremonies, the History Channel and the old movie channels featured nonstop war movies and documentaries.

This was quickly followed by the 60th anniversary of the invasion of Europe. Anyone with an appetite for vicarious war and the remembrances of war should by now be satiated.

Tales of war always make good stories, because they are the classic conflict between the good guys and the bad guys. Which is which depends on which side you are on. Unless you are a professional military man, however, detailed studies of battles, strategies and tactics are of little use. What is useful is that most neglected area of study: the political failures that lead to the wars.

Wars do not arise spontaneously, nor are they instigated by the soldiers who have to fight them. All wars begin in the minds of political leaders in times of peace. They decide they want something, and eventually they decide that the only way to get it is by the use of force. Their mental process is the same as that of the unruly child who, desiring a playmate's toy, bonks his playmate on the head and takes it. In peacetime, adults who do this are called criminals — unless, of course, they are kings or presidents or prime ministers or dictators.

Every political system has the same flaw. The problem with political systems is that most make it difficult to put the wise few in the positions of power.

There is only one just war, and that is war in self-defense. The unjust wars that the United States has been involved in since 1945 are all rationalized as "in defense of freedom." That is a lie used so often that today people say it automatically.

Iraq did not threaten our freedom, nor did it have the means to do so. North Vietnam did not threaten our freedom, nor did it have the means to do so. Ditto for Panama, Grenada, Yugoslavia, North Korea and Afghanistan. Those were all imperial wars. Remember, the only freedom the American armed forces are justified in defending is the freedom of America and Americans. The idea that we are some new Crusader Nation with a mandate from God to deliver the human race from dictatorship is as nutty as Nero. We will have to be lucky not to deliver ourselves into a dictatorship.

While few wars are just wars, all are profitable — though, of course, not to the lads and lassies who fight and die in them. They are profitable to the military-industrial complex. The Iraq War is a multibillion-dollar bonanza for Halliburton Inc., and a lesser bonanza for all the other corporations scooping up the dollars, whether to supply mercenaries or to do jobs unemployed Iraqis ought to be doing.

If there were any sense of decency in the corporate world — which is to say, if frogs could sing opera — the corporations would all cut checks to the families of those young men and women who have been killed or maimed to provide them with their profitable contracts. The corporate world doesn't see it that way, though, and they are cutting checks for the people they consider their true benefactors — the politicians in Washington who made the war profits possible.

It is well and proper to remember the war dead, for they all died innocent of the sins of the politicians who put them in harm's way. That holiday was originated, by the way, by a group of ladies in Columbus, Miss., after the War Between the States. It was first called Decoration Day, because originally it consisted of putting flowers or flags on the graves of the fallen soldiers.

The best way to honor the war dead, however, is to make sure the politicians don't add to their numbers. We are currently doing a poor job of that.


Informant: vinski2004

Messrs. Frum and Perle have entered Cloud Cuckoo land. To combat a few terrorists, they maintain, we must wage war on a good part of the world and strike at one of the world's major religions...

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1526


From Information Clearing House