Antiwar.com Blog

Gareth Porter

Neocons Live in Fantasy World

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_10_31_porter.mp3]

Gareth Porter continues his reporting on the coming U.S. attack on Iran. His new article: â€œFor Neocons, Iran Aim Is Still Regime Change,â€ depicts the Neocons flawed assumptions â€“ including their backward-belief that the liberated Shi’ite in Iraq would support the U.S. and destabilize Iran and their “realization” that they’ll just have to bomb the place instead.

MP3 here. (27:25)

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 University.

Training the Iraqi Army

Iraqi Army Training (YouTube)via Intel Dump

The key to mid-east peace is already in the lock

Does the world face what some style as Armageddon because American pro-Israel groups still believe out-dated Israeli “public relations“?

According to Ha’aretz chief political columnist AKIVA ELDAR in an October 8, 2007 Democracy Now! interview, while the Israel lobby is “a very important instrument in order to pursue Israel’s policy… they’re a little bit behind the Israeli government and the Israeli people.” He clarifies: “We have seventy out of 120 members of the Knesset who support a two-state solution based on the ’67 lines.”

Then what’s the problem?

Says Eldar, “…if for forty years, you tell the [American] Jewish community that Israel cannot afford to give up the territories, they are important for Israel’s security, just overnight to tell [them], ‘Sorry, we were wrong. Now, we don’t need those territories,’ …It’s very difficult. I think that we are paying the price of having our PR doing a very good job for many years.”

The continuing “Palestinian problem” then, the core problem in the middle east which underpins the others according to The Iraq Study Group, Jimmy Carter and others, may be laid on the doorstep of too-effective Israeli “public relations,” especially as applied to the United States.

So the neocons, AIPAC, their amen corner, and other assorted groups, riding Israel’s coatails on to what some style Armageddon, are clutching a coat the bulk of Israeli society is no longer wearing.

And there’s an underlying anchoring sub-problem: As many Israelis have noted, it’s much easier for Israelis to criticize Israel and the Israeli government than it is for Americans and American Jews — who are likely labeled “anti-semitic” or “self-hating jews” — even have their livelihoods destroyed.

This roadblock to free and open discussion here in the United States endangers not only those men, women, and children living in the middle east, but people throughout the world.

So, the key to mid-east peace is already in the lock. But who in America has the cahones to turn it?

The Giuliani Lexicon: A Noun, A Verb, and 9/11

Joe Biden justified his presidential campaign by getting off the best line ofÂ Tuesday night’s debates. Opining that Rudy Giuliani is “probably the most underqualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency,” he averred:

“There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence — a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There’s nothing else! There’s nothing else! And I mean this sincerely. He’s genuinely not qualified to be president.”

Someone finally said it: the wannabe Emperor has no clothes.Â

Here‘s the video.
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Luke Ryland

Let Sibel Edmonds Speak!

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_10_30_ryland.mp3]

Luke Ryland, proprietor of the blogs Against All Enemies and Let Sibel Edmonds Speak, discusses the story of former contract FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, her newly announced willingness to defy her gag order in order to get her story out, the stonewalling of the courts and the Congress, her credibility and accusations of criminal activities against various prominent Congressmen, cabinet members, neoconservatives, military industrial complex executives, and lobbyists for Israel and Turkey.

MP3 here. (42:51)

Luke Ryland blogs at Against All Enemies, Let Sibel Edmonds Speak, Kill the Messenger, Disclose Denny, and WotIsItGood4. He lives in Tasmania.

Greg Barker

Showdown With Iran

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/aw102307frontlinegregbarker.mp3]

Greg Barker, producer of the Frontline documentary Showdown With Iran, explains how the Bush/Cheney administration refused to hear Ayatollah Kahmenei’s attempts to make peace, the role of Flynt Leverette and Hillary Mann, the hanging out to dry of the Iranian peace-makers, the current march to war and the neocons’ claim that the Iranians would rise up and help the U.S. attack their government.

MP3 here. (15:26)

Greg Barker produced, wrote, and directed FRONTLINE’s epic two-hour 2004 special Ghosts of Rwanda — the culmination of six years of interviews and research into the social, political, and diplomatic failures that converged in the 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 Rwandans. The Boston Globe called the film “riveting, appalling television … one of [FRONTLINE’s] most powerful programs in years” and the film won honors including the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, the Sidney Hillman Award, a Banff Television Festival Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. Barker’s other projects for FRONTLINE include Campaign Against Terror (2002), which recounts the behind-the-scenes story of the U.S. and world response to 9/11, and The Survival of Saddam (2000), an examination of Saddam Hussein. For the fourth hour of FRONTLINE’s News War series (2007), Barker traveled to the Middle East to examine the rise of Arab satellite TV channels and the growing influence of Al Jazeera. He also produced Part II of FRONTLINE’s four-hour series The Age of AIDS (2006), which won the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton.