How War was Turned into a Brand

Political chaos means Israel is booming like it's 1999 - and the boom is in defence exports field-tested on Palestinians
Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president's chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hizbullah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith. At a glance, things aren't going well for Israel. But here's a puzzle: why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it's 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China's?

Retired British Generals Slam US Over Iraq

"A second retired British general slammed the United States over its Iraq policy, saying in a newspaper interview published Sunday that it had been 'fatally flawed.' Major General Tim Cross, the most senior British officer involved in the postwar planning, said he had raised serious concerns about the possibility of Iraq falling into chaos, but said former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the warnings."

Secret Report: Corruption Is 'Norm' Within Iraqi Government

A Baghdad embassy study says Prime Minister Maliki is blocking corruption probes, his government is partly controlled by criminal gangs, and the U.S. is doing little to clean up the mess.
The most effective diplomats, like the most effective intelligence officers and foreign correspondents, possess empathy.  They have the intellectual, cultural and linguistic literacy to get inside the heads of those they must analyze or cover.  They know the vast array of historical, religious, economic and cultural antecedents that go into making up decisions and reactions.  And because of this—endowed with the ability to communicate and more able to find ways of resolving conflicts through diplomacy—they are less prone to blunders.

This article by Professor Hossein-zadeh is a masterpiece which illuminates how the military-industrial-political complex works. It shows why it is a far greater threat today than when President Eisenhower warned about it in his farewell speech in 1961. Its short term success depends on the creation of new enemies and threats. These are used to justify wars, increasing military power, arms racing and military spending. In the long run this run-away situation will degrade and may destroy America . So long as this system rules it will gain momentum and strength and be more difficult to reverse. Always new enemies and crisis will be invented to curb popular pressures for change and reform. And the American people can always be fooled into submission by an array of threats, crisis, lies and tricks invented by highly skilled manipulators and propagandists. I think a useful analogy might be to compare the US to a speeding locomotive, out of control with the driver paralysed due to a heart attack. The throttle is jammed in maximum speed position so the locomotive is accelerating. Eventually it goes off the rails or blows up.

How recent U.S. wars of choice, driven largely by war profiteering, are plundering not only defenseless peoples and their resources abroad, but also the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens and their resources at home.

Scott Ritter as a Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq, was in a position to know how the US and UK subverted the process from the beginning to facilitate their planned war with Iraq. Ritter then shows how the staffing of a future arms control regime under UN control was well advanced, until scrapped by the US and UK who preferred a world at war instead. It is important to realise that the military-industrial complexes of both countries are dependant on a series of wars into the future to maintain the financial health and profits of their armaments research and manufacturing industries. These are fundamental driving elements of Western culture and identity. They cannot maintain their lead in weapons and plans for global domination, without active wars as a catalyst. Scott Ritter opened new doors of understanding and concern with his deep experience of the machiavellian workings of the real policies of the US and UK.

The organization that was at the center of the maelstrom of the Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco, responsible for bringing the world to the brink of war on no fewer than a half-dozen occasions during the 1990s, and then unable to prevent a war in March 2003, has departed the global scene.  It left not with a dramatic flair befitting its former status, but rather with barely a whimper, reduced to nothing more than a historical footnote in the grand tragedy that has become Iraq. 

Sheila Samples has issued a very powerful call to "Impeach Cheney Now" before he is able to initiate even bigger crimes against America and the world.
The US war planned for Iran is next on Cheney's list. If he gets away with this one, we may have past the point of no return.
There would be no going back or investigation. Iran and the Middle East would be in flames with millions dead and dieing. The world would be totally at the mercy of a series of disastrous consequences amid the confusion that would follow. Any ideas of Impeachment then, would just be a joke.
Pre-emptive impeachment action now is the only way future major crimes could be prevented.

Recently, Nova M Radio's Mike Malloy suggested the lethargy that appears to have descended on the American people is more "rage fatigue" than a lack of knowledge or comprehension of the damage wrought by this administration. I agree, although for many of us, rather than fatigue, it's more an inability to "focus" on any single atrocity about which to be enraged. There are just too many incoming horrors at any one time. We are in the throes of a national paralysis....
Dick Cheney must be impeached -- now -- before he lashes out from the dark side, and Iran is aflame; its terrified citizens displaced, dying -- dead.

It's not just the troops that are surging.  War costs are up for American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan* -- way up, more than a third higher than last year.  In the first half of this fiscal year, the Defense Department's "average monthly obligations for contracts and pay is running about $12 billion per month, well above the $8.7 billion in FY2006," says a new report , obtained by DANGER ROOM , from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.
Additional war costs for the next  10 years could total about $472 billion if troop levels fall to 30,000 by 2010, or $919 billion if troop levels fall to 70,000 by about 2013.  If these estimates are added to already appropriated amounts, total funding about $980 billion to $1.4 trillion by 2017.

It was obvious from the beginning in 2003, when independent experts and everyone in the peace movement warned that possession of Iraq's oil was Bush's main reason for making war on Iraq. The media dutifully suppressed peace movement warnings at that time, and still do. Their loyalty is to the Bush regime and repeating its lies. They have a de facto ban on any other explanations of Bush's lengthy conspiracy and wars.

The Howard Government has today admitted that securing oil supplies is a factor in Australia's continued military involvement in Iraq.
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said today oil was a factor in Australia's contribution to the unpopular war, as "energy security" and stability in the Middle East would be crucial to the nation's future.
Speaking ahead of today's key foreign policy speech by Prime Minister John Howard, Dr Nelson said defence was about protecting the economy as well as physical security.

World's Greatest Oil Consumer and Polluter

.... America has become a 'Frankenstein-of-perpetual-war' creature, created by the machinations of Bush's neocon complex. Congress, elected to stop the Iraq war and correct any Administration excesses, and crimes, has lost any will to stop any present or future planned wars. Basically it is very much under the domination of the Bush executive and ideology.

Fighting Wars for Oil to Fight Wars

Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis – either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.
Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That's greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million – and yet it's a gross underestimate of the Pentagon's wartime consumption.

The new surge to 200,000 US troops in Iraq plus thousands of mercenary contractor-soldiers, the biggest US Embassy in the world, permanent US military bases and the Bush administration's new admission that they may occupy Iraq for as long as they occupied South Korea, 60 years, are all hard evidence that the Bush neocon administration never intended to leave Iraq . As seen below the US Democrats reinforce the Bush regime on this, and will keep on funding the war for as long as it takes.
The US and UK may soon make war on Iran to try and add this country to their joint imperial conquest.

Iraq Occupation Coming to a Head Over Oil

The situation in Iraq is coming to a head. Oil workers have been on strike for three days and are being threatened by the Iraqi government and surrounded by the Iraqi military. The Parliament passed a resolution urging an end to the U.S. occupation and has refused to act on the oil law the U.S. is demanding. Both the Democrats in Congress and the Bush Administration have united around the passage of the oil law as the top benchmark for the Iraqi government.

... Americans will be fooled again and swallow any accusation Bush offers, as they did with his litany of lies to justify the war on Iraq. They have not been educated about how the US and other states have used covert 'false flag' operations and then blamed the nation they wish to attack. They have been conditioned to believe a similar litany of lies about Iran and most now regard Iran with fear and hate, as do the Republicans below. The 'false flag' provides them with phony 'justification' for an attack and they will believe Iran did it.

The Real Reason for Bush's Invasion of Iraq is a National Security Secret

American soldiers have been fighting and dying in Iraq since 2003, and Americans do not know why.
All the reasons President Bush gave us for his war are false. Bush said he invaded Iraq “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.”
.... War without cause is murder, not war.

This is a great interview with a long term investigative journalist who knows his Washington subject and their history going back to the 70s and 80s. It gives a new perspective on important events.
One point I question is his assertion that al-Qaeda wants US troops to stay in Iraq so they can be destroyed. I think it may be more true that the CIA and neocons may wish us to think al-Qaeda wants the US troops to stay etc. It is part of US strategy, I believe to stay in Iraq indefinitely and that's one reason they have built new permanent US military bases in Iraq and the biggest US embassy in the world in Baghdad.

Robert Parry of ConsortiumNews.com discusses the need he found to create a new home for investigative reporting back in the 1990s, explains the role of the old Iran-Contra criminals in running the war party today, evidence of George Bush Sr.'s role, the narrative of the “crazy” Iranian regime which was apparently plenty sane enough when this same crew sold them weapons to use against Iraq who the U.S. was also backing in the 1980s, the October Surprise, how Bush claims to follow the advice of his generals as he replaces them with ones sure to “agree” with him that the answer in Iraq is to escalate, why al Qaeda wants the U.S. to stay in Iraq, why they did 9/11 in the first place, the crazy theory that the President has unlimited power over an unlimited area forever, and the media narrative that Bush is some great decisive leader even though he is an idiot and a coward and their suppression of the story of the Florida recount in the election of the year 2000.

As the effects of global warming increasingly effect the planet, there will be more wars over shrinking food resources and a changed, less hospitable environment. That's the finding of those who study the climate trends and make predictions as indicated below. Climate change has finally become a common public concern. But it has not yet resulted in the big changes needed in human behaviour.

A new report warns that conflicts over water and food could intensify as the climate changes.
For years, the debate over global warming has focused on the three big "E's": environment, energy, and economic impact. This week it officially entered the realm of national security threats and avoiding wars as well.

Paul Wolfowitz is a leading neo-conservative and one of the architects of the illegal war on Iraq. He was appointed by Bush to head the World Bank where he is now in deep trouble, as revealed by this article in the New York Times.
He wants to retain his job in spite of the fact that he is dragging the bank's name through the mud and they want him to resign.

The U.S. Defense Department ordered a contractor to hire a World Bank employee and girlfriend of then-Pentagon No. 2 Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 for work related to Iraq, the contractor said on Tuesday.
A spokeswoman for Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, said the Defense Department's policy office directed the company to enter a subcontract with Shaha Riza, under which she spent a month studying ways to form a government in Iraq.

737 US Bases in 103 countries and a defence budget larger than that of all other nations in the world. That's the US Empire.
The mission is building the US Empire through imperial conquest, using "9/11 and the war on terror" as their mantra, war cry and justification.
US Military Historian Chalmers Johnson dissects this imperial military industrial complex and predicts calamites for what may be next.
" If there weren't terrorists, Bush and Cheney would have had to invent them? " asks Karlin.

I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology. ... The world's balance of power didn't change one iota on September 11, 2001. The only way we could lose the power and influence we had at that time was through our own actions, and that's what we did. -- Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
Has our "leadership" traded democracy for empire? Have their over-bloated egos convinced them that they are the world's newly crowned colonial kings? Author Chalmers Johnson is certainly not given to wearing rose-colored glasses. As he concludes in his newest book, Nemesis: "... my country is launched on a dangerous path that it must abandon or else face the consequences."

Greg Palast spell's out the real motives of the Bush regime. It's Iaq's oil and a secret plan of the Houston oil moguls. From the oil moguls standpoint the Iraq war is going very well and according to plan  - to limit production in order to keep the price of oil as high as possible. Exxon-Mobil reported the highest profit of any corporation in history  a record $10 billion in profit last quarter. As Bush said: "Mission Accomplished".

It's STILL The Oil: Secret Condi Meeting on Oil Before Invasion

Four years ago this week, the tanks rolled for what President Bush originally called, “ Operation Iraqi Liberation ” — O.I.L. - I kid you not.
And it was four years ago that, from the White House, George Bush, declaring war, said, "I want to talk to the Iraqi people." That Dick Cheney didn't tell Bush that Iraqis speak Arabic … well, never mind. I expected the President to say something like, "Our troops are coming to liberate you, so don't shoot them."
Instead, Mr. Bush told, the Iraqis,"Do not destroy oil wells." Nevertheless, the Bush Administration said the war had nothing to do with Iraq's oil.

The slow genocide of US and UK involvement in Iraq even before they backed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, ending in one million killed, was followed by the lst Gulf war, then the starvation sanctions against Iraq which killed millions, and the lie-based US-UK invasion and bombing and occupation of Iraq since 2003. It is a shocking record of Western duplicity, barbarism and deception. Most people in the US-UK had no idea of the murderous extremes their leaders had implemented on the Iraqis. Barry Lando's article is an eye-opener - an astonishing record of mass murder by a series of US-UK leaders mouthing platitudes about 'freedom, liberty and democracy' as they implemented policies which would kill and starve millions of Iraqis and their children. It will ruin the future of millions of the next generation. Their use of DU munitions alone will poison the land, kill and infect the people for endless generations to come.

4 years later: Let's leave the Iraqis alone, shall we?

It's time for the Iraqis to cease their bloody sectarian rivalries, disband their ruthless militias and death squads and take responsibility for their country's fate. Why should American boys continue dying to save Iraqis from their own perverse selves?
It's a view expressed by all sides in the U.S. four years after the 2003 invasion. The problem is it shows no understanding of Iraq's nightmarish past and calamitous psychological present. l

This article shows how the nuclear power industry is spending millions on public relations to revise the image of nuclear power from something dangerous, not to be touched,  to something clean, green and desirable. The way the PR companies, and the media, use the industry's ex-Greenpeace spokesman - and will not reveal what they pay him - is most instructive. The comments following the original version are excellent and contain many provoking pros and cons of the debate. Serious nuclear power researchers should read these, and develop counter arguments, if they wish to be able to answer the pro-nuclear lobbyists.

"We just find it maddening that Hill & Knowlton , which has an $8 million account with the nuclear industry, should have such an easy time working the press," concluded the Columbia Journalism Review in an editorial in its July / August 2006 issue.
The magazine was rightly bemoaning the tendency of news outlets to present former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore and former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman as environmentalists who support nuclear power, without noting that both are paid spokespeople for a group bankrolled by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). NEI represents nuclear power plant operators, plant designers, fuel suppliers and other sectors of the nuclear power industry. Hill & Knowlton is NEI's public relations firm, though it's not the only firm working to build support for nuclear power.

Professor Waddell gives a perspective on US policy toward smaller states since 1945. It is a matter of invoking the US war cry 'freedom and democracy' as a cover for invasion, regime change and setting up puppet regimes. The US "regularly brandishes the threat of recourse to "nuclear weapons" and Bush has been allowed to adjust US nuclear doctrines so that he can wage pre-emptive nuclear war, as well as introduce nuclear weapons into conventional conflicts.

. . . The aim of the United States is to protect and reinforce national interests rather than to create a better world for all humankind. It is an "imperial grand strategy" of global dimensions designed to ensure unlimited and uninhibited access, notably to strategic resources, notably energy, and to markets. Rather than to establish a direct colonial presence, the preferred strategy is to create satellite states, and this requires constant, and often repeated, military interventions in countries around the world, irrespective of their political regime. 

This paper provides new insights into why the US will not withdraw troops from Iraq. It is the new imperialism and colonialism and exploiting Iraqi oil that provides enormous profits to the 100,000 private military contractors in Baghdad , and provides billions in profits for the military-industrial complex in the US . Money is the great motivator, with no-bid contracts for chosen Pentagon suppliers. Greater war risks, the slaughter or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, morality and ethics don't matter to people participating in a gigantic profits feeding frenzy in Baghdad and Washington.

Neither the Iraq Study Group nor other establishment critics of the Iraq war are calling for the withdrawal of US troops from that country. To the extent that the Study Group or the new Congress purport to inject some "realism" into the Iraq policy, such projected modifications do not seem to amount to more than changing the drivers of the US war machine without changing its destination, or objectives: control of Iraq's political and economic policies.
In light of the fact that by now almost all of the factions of the ruling circles, including the White House and the neoconservative war-mongerers, acknowledge the failure of the Iraq war, why, then, do they balk at the idea of pulling the troops out of that country?

Professor Lustick's article below, illustrates the amazing growth in the 'War on Terror' industry throughout various sectors of American society. From Congressional estimates of 160 potential terrorist targets in 2003 to 300,000 potential fund-generating targets in 2006. From zero dollars to 650 billion dollars for anti-terrorist expenditures. It's now a huge 'pork barrel' with "thousands of interest groups crowding toward the anti-terrorism trough" according to Lustick. It's like the Tulip craze in the Netherlands in the 1600s. Anti-terrorism has now become a huge industry of vested interests depending on the continuing phoney wars on terror created by the Bush regime and its neoconservatives to justify real invasions, wars and generally enlarging real wars. As with the intended US-planned nuclear war on Iran, proof of any accusations is not required. The accusation is enough backed up by an eager mass media repeating and embellishing every lie.

The official mantra is that we fight in Iraq because it is the "central front in the War on Terror." The exact opposite is the case.
We are trapped in fighting an unwinnable - even nonsensical - "war on terror" because its invention was required in order to fight in Iraq. After years of slaughter in Iraq, the neoconservative fantasy of a series of cheap, fast, neo-imperial victories is dead. But the war on terror lives on, stronger than ever.

The U.S. has allied itself with some of the warlords in Afghanistan who control the poppyfields.
So things are getting back to normal with a flourishing drug industry. A steady supply of opium-based drugs is assured to the U.S. and other international markets. This is one example of the "freedom and democracy" the U.S. is giving to Afghanistan society.
Afghan opium cultivation hits a record:
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit record levels - up by more than 40 percent from 2005 - despite hundreds of millions in counternarcotics money, Western officials told The Associated Press.
see also
C.I.A. & Drugs
New Opium War
The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire: The Bush family's involvement in drug-running is an open secret, but Dick Cheney's direct link to a global drug pipeline through a US construction company is less well known.

For a more comprehensive understanding of U.S. policy on Iran, and Iran's offers of concessions to meet U.S. concerns, the following May 27 article is essential reading.

Iran experts at the State Department had been working throughout 2001 on increasing relations with Mohammed Khatami's Iran. Post 9/11, they immediately realized the strategic value of working with Iran against a common enemy?al-Qaida.

The U.S. has deliberately created  terrorism and chaos in Iraq where there has been none before to justify it's continued military occupation and control of the territory.  There has been little U.S. effort to rebuild what they have destroyed - as they continue to lay waste the country and wantonly kill and imprison the people.. William Blum chronicles the U.S. dismal imperial record in the following article.

National Public Radio foreign correspondent Loren Jenkins, serving in NPR's Baghdad bureau, met earlier this month with a senior Shiite cleric, a man who was described in the NPR report as "a moderate" and as a person trying to lead his Shiite followers into practicing peace and reconciliation. He had been jailed by Saddam Hussein and forced into exile. Jenkins asked him: "What would you think if you had to go back to Saddam Hussein?" The cleric replied that he'd "rather see Iraq under Saddam Hussein than the way it is now."[1]

There is a growing library of well-researched books which explore the details of the 9/11 attack and U.S. government involvement. Also, the accelerating pace of converting U.S. Democracy into a police state using the "war on terror" as a cover and justification. Here are a few short reviews of some of these books.

Ahmed's first book on 9/11, The War on Freedom, was acclaimed around the world for its meticulous compilation of facts about the event. Published just a little over a half year after the attacks, it was the first book to document the inconsistencies and contradictions in the government's official version of what happened. This new book, The War on Truth, was originally intended to be an update of that text, but the amount of new material available warranted an entirely new volume. Though this book retains the analysis and information of the earlier book, it doubles the data and adds extensive new material, including an analysis of the 9/11 Commission Report and wider discussion of US policies toward al-Qaeda. For anyone who remains uneasy about the alignment of reported facts and official narrative, Ahmed's new book is an invaluable resource.
The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation And The Anatomy Of Terrorism by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
also:
The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin
Behind the War on Terror : Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Inside Job: Unmasking the 9/11 Conspiracies by Jim Marrs
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley

The so-called "war on terrorism" is actually a war on the Iraq people and the destruction of their country. From the beginning of the war in 2003. the U.S. reasons to justify this war were known to be lies. There were no WMD, no nuclear weapons programme, no links to al-Qaeda and Osama bin laden, and  no Iraq plans to attack the U.S. or U.K. From the beginning, the war was the most colossal fraud any American administration has every foisted on their own people. After destroying most of the Iraqi infrastructure, the Bush Administration made a big show about rebuilding Iraq and restoring all facilities including, electricity, sewage, bridges, hospitals, water etc. Many billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury were made available for this work. In fact it was never effectively done. Most of the money was siphoned off by corruption, no-bid, cost-plus contracts, shoddy and incomplete work and so on.

After five months of confusion, bickering, dickering, dithering, and strong-arm tactics from Zalmay Khalilzad, our ambassador to Iraq and various high American officials arriving on the fly, Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki has reportedly chosen his cabinet and a government will evidently be established in Baghdad's Green Zone. At the moment, its reach seems unlikely to extend much beyond the American-protected berms and fortifications of that citadel-mini-state. In the meantime, what governmental authority still existed in Iraq seems to be rapidly on the wane -- and not just in largely Sunni areas of the country either. (In parts of Sunni al-Anbar province, however, according to Mathieu Guidère and Peter Harling of Le Monde Diplomatique, control seems to be passing into other "governing" hands: "A formal procedure is in place for lorry drivers to pay an insurance fee [to insurgent groups] that allows them to cross the governorate, as long as they are not supplying the enemy.")

Secret contract deals , fraud, ineptitude and shoddy work costing billions of dollars have been a centerpiece of our troubles in Iraq since the eve of the 2003 invasion.
Suspicions of favoritism began with Halliburton and its small $2 million task order to extinguish possible oil well fires that Saddam Hussein might ignite to dispirit coalition forces. The contract quickly steamrolled into a no-bid multi-billion deal to repair Iraq's oil infrastructure once the March 2003 invasion was complete.

Scott Ritter gives a detailed account of U.S. preparations and plans to strike at Iran before June/05. Obviously this has been postponed for unknown reasons. As Iran will retaliate against U.S. attack, the situation could very easily escalate and involve China and Russia. A sudden global nuclear exchange could result. It's so obvious, why is Europe so compliant and people so passive and silent in the face of global nuclear disaster which would kill and maim billions?

Late last year, in the aftermath of the 2004 Presidential election, I was contacted by someone close to the Bush administration about the situation in Iraq.
There was a growing concern inside the Bush administration, this source said, about the direction the occupation was going.

.....The reasons for wars in which resources are a factor, are usually camouflaged by a screen of propaganda. In the U.S. case it is the blanket phoney justification "war on terrorism" . This covers U.S. global domination plans, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the coming war with Iran, currently justified under the "wars on global terrorism" blanket. The real reasons include the theft of other people's oil resources.. The objective is to control middle east oil, prices and access to oil by competitors of the U.S. Rising oil prices is only the beginning.

It's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major London address, British Defense Secretary John Reid warned that global climate change and dwindling natural resources are combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy. Climate change, he indicated, "will make scarce resources, clean water, viable agricultural land even scarcer" -- and this will "make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely."

Chalmers Johnson is a WWII US Navy vet and a historian of American militarism, ran the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California. He had a long career as a Japan specialist. His two-part article for Tomdispatch is a very valuable insight into what has happened to America and the enormous magnitude of the problems facing it today.

In Part 1 of his interview, Chalmers Johnson suggested what that fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall, end-of-the-Cold-War moment meant to him; explored how deeply empire and militarism have entered the American bloodstream; and began to consider what it means to live in an unacknowledged state of military Keynesianism, garrisoning the planet, and with an imperial budget -- a real yearly Pentagon budget -- of perhaps three-quarters of a trillion dollars. Tom

On Tuesday April 18, Chinese President Hu Jintao landed in the United States and, after a tour of a Boeing plant, made his official way, with all due pomp and ceremony, to the expectable "state banquet" in Washington… no, not at the White House but at the Washington State home of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. In fact, the Chinese leader came to Seattle, Washington, ready to toss money at Microsoft goodies and Boeing jets in an atmosphere as celebratory as money can make things.

Slowly but surely, the grand strategy of the Bush administration is being revealed. It is not aimed primarily at the defeat of global terrorism, the incapacitation of rogue states, or the spread of democracy in the Middle East. These may dominate the rhetorical arena and be the focus of immediate concern, but they do not govern key decisions regarding the allocation of long-term military resources.

Heather Wokusch gives a very good analysis in her following article of how the Bush Administration is inventing a false story about Iran making nuclear weapons to threaten the U.S. and Israel. Even though the US and Israel surround Iran with thousands of nuclear weapons that could destroy Iran in a few hours, if Iran ever attacked either nation. It seems crazy that Americans would believe such drivel, but most of them are well-conditioned by a co-operative mass media to believe whatever the Bush Administration tells them. The purpose is to create a groundswell of public opinion that will support a U.S. war on Iran.

Witnessing the Bush administration's drive for an attack on Iran is like being a passenger in a car with a raving drunk at the wheel. Reports of impending doom surfaced a year ago, but now it's official: under orders from Vice President Cheney's office, the Pentagon has developed "last resort" aerial-assault plans using long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles with both conventional and nuclear weapons.
How ironic that the Pentagon proposes using nuclear weapons on the pretext of protecting the world from nuclear weapons. Ironic also that Iran has complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, allowing inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything," yet those pushing for an attack, the USA and Israel, have not.

BOSTON: The cost of the Iraq war could top $US trillion ($NZ2.91 trillion), far above the White House's pre-war projections, when long-term costs such as lifetime health care for thousands of wounded US soldiers are included, a study said today.
Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes included in their study disability payments for the 16,000 wounded US soldiers, about 20 per cent of whom suffer serious brain or spinal injuries.