Gareth Porter

Cheney Suppresses Iran NIE

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_11_09_porter.mp3]

Gareth Porter discusses his latest article on Iran. How Cheney has delayed the Iran NIE for more than a year because it does not endorse his attacking Iran, the split in the intelligence community with most against the attack and few aspiring rookies toeing the default Cheney line.

MP3 here. (11:44)

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.

Dr. Porter was both a Vietnam specialist and an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and was Co-Director of Indochina Resource Center in Washington. Dr. Porter taught international studies at City College of New York and American University. He was the first Academic Director for Peace and Conflict Resolution in the Washington Semester program at American.

Mark Almond

The Georgia Rose Stinks

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_11_09_almond.mp3]

Mark Almond of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group discusses the story behind the “Rose Revolution,” the current crackdown on dissent in former Soviet Georgia and how Georgia has degenerated since the end of USSR in 1991.

MP3 here. (23:52)

Mark Almond teaches modern history at Oriel College, Oxford. He has visited Georgia 10 times since 1992 on behalf of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group.

Dahr Jamail

Iraq Deliberately Destroyed

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_11_09_jamail.mp3]

Unembedded reporter Dahr Jamail discusses the continuing quagmire in Iraq, how the “surge” was just to appease Americans and buy time, how the decline in murders is due to the ethnic cleansing being complete, U.S. support for Iraqi separatists, U.S. claims of Iranian meddling in Iraq while we have over 300,000 occupiers and possible consequences for U.S. troops in Iraq in the event of war with Iran.

MP3 here. (26:59)

In late 2003, Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.

His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource. He is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr’s dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.

Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. In the MidEast, Dahr has also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.

Greg Mitchell

The War and the Newspapers

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/aw110907gregmitchell.mp3]

Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor and Publisher, discusses non-combat deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, the lack of media coverage of these deaths, the changing views of the editorial pages and reporters before and since the war started and the real consequences for the casualties and their families.

MP3 here. (15:39)

Greg Mitchell is the author of six nonfiction books. His articles – including many on baseball – have appeared in New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, Mother Jones, Sport magazine, Quest, and other publications. Mitchell was a senior editor at Crawdaddy for many years. He lives in Nyack, New York.

US Navy Gets Chinese Surprise

In a report in today’s Daily Mail, A Chinese submarine surfaced in the middle of a recent Pacific naval exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk – a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior NATO officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy. One NATO figure said the effect was “as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik” – a reference to the Soviet Union’s first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.

The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other American warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.

The Chinese fleet includes at least two nuclear-missile launching subs. It is not known if the sub in question was one of these.

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the U.S. had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War. He said: “It was certainly a wake-up call for the Americans.

“It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the Americans from interfering or operating in their backyard, particularly in relation to Taiwan.”

Norman Mailer: Against the Empire

The death of author Norman Mailer stills an eloquent voice in defense of the old America — the pre-9/11, pre-neocon -dominated America, which disdained the idea of empire. During the Vietnam war, whilst in attendance at Truman Capote’s famous “Black and White Ball,” he went up to McGeorge Bundy, Lyndon Johnson’s foreign policy advisor, and demanded that he step outside so they could settle accounts like two gentlemen. Here’s an excerpt from his remarkably prescient 2003 op ed:

“There is a subtext to what the Bushites are doing as they prepare for war in Iraq. My hypothesis is that President George W. Bush and many conservatives have come to the conclusion that the only way they can save America and get if off its present downslope is to become a regime with a greater military presence and drive toward empire. My fear is that Americans might lose their democracy in the process.

” … Iraq is the excuse for moving in an imperial direction. War with Iraq, as they originally conceived it, would be a quick, dramatic step that would enable them to control the Near East as a powerful base – not least because of the oil there, as well as the water supplies from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers – to build a world empire.”

He elaborated on his view of the US as a developing world empire in a fascinating interview with the editors of The American Conservative, in which he explains why he called himself a “left-conservative. Here’s a fascinating snippet: 

There is just this kind of mad-eyed mystique in Americans: the idea that we Americans can do anything. So, say flag conservatives, we will be able to handle what comes. Our know-how, our can-do, will dominate all obstacles. They truly believe America is not only fit to run the world but that it must run the world. Otherwise, we will lose ourselves. If there is not a new seriousness in American affairs, the country is going to go down the drain. That, I am fully ready to speculate, is the subtext beneath the Iraqi subtext, and they may not even be wholly aware of it themselves, not all of them.” 

And here’s one for the road: “The White Man Unburdened,” his 2003 antiwar essay in the New York Review of Books.