Antiwar.com Blog

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_10_18_hedges.mp3]

Chris Hedges, veteran war reporter and author of War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning and many other books, discusses the convergence of the Egyptian and American national security states as their puppet military dictatorship kidnaps and tortures people at the best of the U.S. government, the incompatibility of the rule of law and a republican form of government with empire and oligarchy, the “ghost prisons” and “ghost detainees,” held by the U.S. government around the world, the tortured (and false) testimony of Ibn-al Shaykh al-Libi which was used by Colin Powell in his UN speech to justify aggressive war against Iraq, how Mamdah Habib was threatened with rape by an animal, the perhaps thousands of victims of these crimes, his article about American war crimes in Iraq (soon to become a book), the Egyptian war against domestic dissidents, the long term consequences of abandoning law and the American population’s preference for Amusing Ourselves to Death.

MP3 here. (26:00)

Chris Hedges has been a war reporter for 15 years most recently for the New York Times. He is author of What Every Person Should Know About War, a book that offers a critical lesson in the dangerous realities of war. He’s also author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_10_18_danner.mp3]

Mark Danner, writer for the New York Review of Books and author of The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War’s Buried History, discusses George Bush’s faith in himself as revealed by the recently disclosed transcript of his meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Aznar in February, 2002, and how it keeps getting innocent people killed, the narratives of “enhanced interrogations” and “weapons inspections” that make torture and aggressive war acceptable and “legal,” Bush’s belief, in spite of all evidence, that everything he does is right no matter what, the relevance of his former life as a cheerleader to his mindset today, the infighting between the neocons in the DoD and the State Department and the CIA, the administration’s accusations that racism against Arabs was somehow responsible for European opposition to the war, Bush’s refusal of the option of exile for Saddam, the decision to install the Iranian-backed SCIRI/Da’wa Party types in power and the recent decision to stab them in the back and “redirect” toward the Ba’athists again, the question of whether the Bush/Cheney regime always meant to break Iraq apart and the danger of war with Iran.

MP3 here. (49:40)

Mark Danner, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, and professor at Berkeley and at Bard, writes about foreign affairs and American politics, including Latin America, Haiti, the Balkans and the Middle East. He speaks and debates widely about America’s role in the world.

Chris Deliso, longtime Antiwar.com columnist and proprietor of Balkanalysis.com has written a new book called The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West.

Check out his speech, “New Information and Key Trends Regarding Islamic Extremist Groups in the Balkans,” given on October 5, 2007 in Athens, Greece, at the University of Indianapolis international campus.

You didn’t think U.S. support for the Mujahideen ended with Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan… did you?

Hell no. Bill Clinton brought them to Europe.

According to a Houston Chronicle analysis of the third-quarter finance reports, Ron Paul once again leads in donations from those who list the military as their employer. He is followed by Barack Obama, and then by John McCain.

Paul also led among military contributions in the second-quarter reports.

The Houston Chronicle analysis says the average size of Paul’s contributions from military sources is $500, much higher than his average overall donation. More than a third of Paul’s military-related contributions came from Army affiliates; a third came from the Air Force; and a fourth from Navy donors. The rest came from affiliates of the Marines and other branches.

One of the contributors to Paul’s campaign was Lindell Anderson, 72, a retired Army chaplain from Fort Worth, who donated $100 to the Texas lawmaker. “As a Christian, I think he speaks to a theme that the United States shouldn’t be the policeman of the world,” said Anderson.

Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with the non-partisan Cook Political Report, speculated that Paul might be an attractive candidate for military personnel who oppose the war, “but don’t want to cross the line and vote for a Democrat.”

Texas A&M political science professor George C. Edwards III attributed support for Obama among the military to the factors that he attracts support from many black voters, and blacks are a bigger proportion of the military than their overall share of the national population.

Analysts said the ability of Paul and Obama to rake in as much money from military employees as they did suggests there is a certain degree of dissatisfaction with the Iraq campaign among veterans and those in uniform.
At the Texas headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Austin, state adjutant Roy Grona said military personnel do not vote as a bloc. “There’s probably a lot of veterans that aren’t happy with the war in Iraq,” he said.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_10_17_mgoodman.mp3]

Melissa Goodman an attorney in the ACLU’s National Security Program, discusses the U.S. military’s expanded role in spying on Americans, how the FBI and DoD have used hundreds of thousands of National Security Letters (NSL’s) to circumvent the law to that end, how NSL recipients have been gagged from speaking out, the Supreme Court’s decision to decline to hear a torture case on the grounds that it would expose state secrets, how the FISA court’s location inside the Dept. of Justice building symbolizes their relationship and how the government’s claims of “State Secrets Privilege” has been used to cover-up their lies since it’s first use over 50 years ago.

MP3 here. (32:47)

Melissa Goodman is a Staff Attorney on the ACLU’s national security project and litigates cases concerning surveillance, excessive government secrecy, torture and detention, and the freedoms of speech and association. Most recently, she has been counsel in the ACLU’s lawsuits challenging warrantless NSA surveillance, the Patriot Act, the government’s practice of ideological exclusion, and the CIA’s abduction and detention of Khaled El-Masri, a victim of the CIA’s practice of “extraordinary rendition.” Goodman is a graduate of New York University College of Arts and Science, and New York University Law School.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_10_16_mayfield.mp3]

Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield discusses his persecution at the hands of the FBI, their holding him as a “material witness” in order to deny him basic due process, the false accusations linking him to the March 2004 train bombing in Madrid, Spain, how the FBI refused to budge on their crazy conspiracy theory until the Spanish authorities proved his innocence beyond doubt, the government’s use of “sneak and peek” warrants against him and his family, the chilling effect on the attorney-client privilege from new Justice Department “guidelines” and the prosecution of Lynn Stewart and how his lawsuits against the government have led a federal district court judge to strike two provisions from the PATRIOT Act.

MP3 here. (24:56)

Brandon Mayfield is an attorney in Portland, Oregon, not a terrorist.