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  • Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network

    This is an important unnoticed piece that helps piece together the corruption of power during the Bush years that led to the Iraq debacle. It deserves study to help solidify democratic checks and balances to avert this in the future. Democratic systems require constant vigilance in order to checks and balances to work in ever changing circumstances.

    Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
    By Jim Lobe

    wolfowitz rumsfeld

    An excerpt from the article:

    The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith’s domain, was originally created by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official U.S. intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

    Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated

    …

  • LA TIMES REPORTS:Bible Texts Misused in Rumsfeld Reports, Religious Leaders Say

    I spent almost an hour on the phone with this excellent reporter, Manya A. Brachear, who wrote the Los Angeles Times story. The more I studied the pictures the more horrified I became that this man was running the United States military, and that our country was actually engaged in a Christian crusade in the eyes of so many of its soldiers. I am so glad the reporter gathered the responses of the Christian community and I do hope that, as I said in the article, there is a bipartisan Christian effort to put this dark period behind us in the United States.

    Here is an excerpt:

    One passage plucked from the New Testament’s Epistle to the Ephesians instructs believers to “put on the full armor of God.”

    An excerpt from the Old Testament’s Isaiah directs them to “open the gates that the righteous nation may enter.”

    As American

    …

  • FROM ABOMINATION TO OBAMA-NATION: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF GUANTANAMO

    It is not easy to be a nation that advocates and indeed missionizes on democracy and the rule of law. It is the missionizing that causes the conflict with those who may want democracy and the rule of law in their own country but are blind-sided by the glaring American hypocrisies of recent years. Plans are already underway by President elect Obama’s team as to how to end the illegal imprisonment of combatants at Guantanomo, and to return the United States to a nation of laws. Why was this so hard? Was revenge that important? This remains a mystery to me.…

  • AMERICAN STRIKE ON SYRIA: A GIFT FROM CHENEY TO MCCAIN?

    The timing is amazing from a neoconservative point of view, a few days before the American elections. Right now, after years of scrupulously avoiding crossing into Syrian territory, the American military receives instructions to invade a town in Syria and kill 8 people.

    A U.S. military official confirmed late Sunday an American helicopter attack in an area along Syria’s border with Iraq, which left 8 people dead and three people wounded.

    Syria condemned the attack, which it called “serious aggression.”

    We are closer than ever before to serious conversations between Israel and Syria, Syria has recognized an international border with Lebanon for the first time in modern history, and this is horrifying to neoconservatives who ran Washington for the last decade. They need to use force and force only to conquer Iraq, Iran and Syria. And they need to promote a conception of the American presidency that is focused …

  • Aid in Conflict or Aiding Conflict: Whither the Pentagon?

    The world of disaster relief, overseas aid, and development has always had a difficult time with mixed motives. Why does anyone give large sums to poor nations in desperate need of help? Millions of people donate money to thousands of non-governmental organizations precisely in order to help people who are sick, poor, and in disastrous circumstances, especially when natural calamities occur. The motivation is mostly altruistic. But governments are massive donors as well. The problem is that once government gets involved there is always the question of mixed motives, national interests and economic interests mixed with public expressions of altruism. The problem is even more acute when it is not just the government but the military. That is why there are strong objections to the U.S. military getting into the business of aid and disaster relief:

    “Our [foreign] policy is out of whack,” said Kenneth Bacon, a former assistant secretary …

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