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May 18, 2009
Links May 18 09
  • ‘They are Nazis!’ Neocons blocked early Sunni resistance peace offers in Iraq – Heads in the Sand – (Vanity Fair)
  • Peddling the Arab fear Iran meme – Roger Cohen – Arabs, Persians, Jews – (NYT)
  • The Arab League Secretary begs to differ – Israel poses main nuclear threat, not Iran – (International Reporter)
  • War on Pakistan propaganda – Pakistan Is Rapidly Adding Nuclear Arms, U.S. Says – (NYT/Judith Miller/David Sanger)
  • “Alarms about Pakistan’s nukes come from the same fabricators with hidden agendas who brought us Saddam Hussein’s bogus weapons.” – U.S. stirs a hornet’s nest in Pakistan – (Margolis/The Sun)
  • Overreach – Waziristan next, says Zardari – (Dawn)
  • “The use of drones displays every characteristic of a tactic … substituting for a strategy” – Death From Above, Outrage Down Below – (NYT)
  • The full picture – Losing Pakistan – FB Ali – (SST via FLC)
  • “Sources close to leading Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Namr claim that his followers have declared independence from the Kingdom” – Saudi Shias still ‘discriminated against’ – (PressTV)
  • Suckers rally – S&P 500 Earnings Decline: 90% – (TBP)
  • More people are satisfied in heavily tariffed nations – The happiest taxes on earth – (Market Watch)

Please add your links, views and news in the comments.

Posted by b on May 18, 2009 at 06:28 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Two articles worth reading about the propaganda piece by Goldberg:
Jeffrey Goldberg, Willing Tool of Israel’s Perception Management Campaign for Iran War
Goldberg and the Amalekites

Posted by: Anthony | May 18 2009 7:00 utc | 1

People are satisfied in heavily tariffed nations
I’ll trade gophers for beavers any day.

Posted by: anna missed | May 18 2009 8:41 utc | 2

Obama emphasizes Iran ‘threat’ on eve of Netanyahu visit.
Netanyahu visits the White House: Change we can believe in for U.S.-Israeli relations?
Invasion in the name of humanitarian aid: the US in Afghanistan.

Posted by: andrew | May 18 2009 9:28 utc | 3

“Israel’s Covert War on Iran”, by Richard Sale.

Posted by: andrew | May 18 2009 9:33 utc | 4

I don’t know if this link from Al Ahram has been noted here, nor do I know how significant Muqtada Al-Sadr’s visit to Turkey may be, but it certainly merits some attention.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | May 18 2009 10:17 utc | 5

Thank you for the link Hannah. Turkey’s main interest in Iraq centers on Kurdish separatism and the oil route from Kirkuk. I imagine Muqtada’s visit was connected with that somehow.

Posted by: dh | May 18 2009 15:02 utc | 6

McChrystal, the Pat Tillman cover-up, and torture

What particularly rankles about Obama’s choice of McChrystal, whose background is in the nefarious and shadowy world of “black ops,” is that his actions in the Tillman cover-up feel emblematic instead of exceptional.
When an anonymous Army interrogator “at great personal risk” blew the whistle to Esquire in August 2006 on an extensive torture enterprise at Camp Nama, he described the then unknown McChrystal as being an overseer who knew the ugly truth. Torture at Camp Nama included using ice water to induce hypothermia. It was not a rogue operation unless we consider Generals like McChrystal “rogues.” As Esquire reported:
Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel. “Will [the Red Cross] ever be allowed in here?” And he said absolutely not. He had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there’s no way that the Red Cross could get in–they won’t have access and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating, even Army investigators.

wonderful promotion, Mr. President.

Posted by: Lizard | May 18 2009 16:10 utc | 7

Stan Goff’s article on McChrystal, in addition to asserting that the general’s job in Iraq was to run torture camps, and reminding us of McChrystal’s role in concealing Pat Tillman’s “friendly fire” death, meditates on the evolution of the culture of Special Ops (and he’s been in some of the same units as McChrystal, although not at the same time, and as an enlisted man, not an officer)

When I was there, some years back now, we were mostly reprobates — hyper-profane macho drunks a lot of us — with no time for religion. Over time, reports are indicating, the End Times Weaponized Jesus religion has gained a lot of ground in Special Operations and in the military generally. So now we are growing a culture within the military that doesn’t obey rules (impunity), that kills to prove masculinity, and that fuels bloodlust with a crackpot philosophy that tells them killing Arabs, et al., is a deliverance of God’s justice.

Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | May 18 2009 17:50 utc | 8

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