Greg Palast

Iraq’s Oil Spoils

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_07_25_palast.mp3]

Greg Palast, investigative reporter for BBC Newsnight and author of Armed Madhouse, explains the oil game in Iraq, the deal behind the U.S. attorney scandal, Hillary Clinton’s shameful corruption and her husband’s pardon of arch-criminal Mark Rich, and the deal struck by Republicans to impeach Bill only for the silly sex scandal instead of his felonious relationship with the Indonesian Riady family billionaires as long as the Democrats promised not to expose the Republican’s felonious connections to the American Koch family billionaires.

MP3 here. (39:05)

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse (Penguin 2006). His first reports appeared on BBC television and in the Guardian newspapers. Author of another New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast is best known in his native USA as the journalist who, for the Observer (UK), broke the story of how Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black Florida citizens from voter rolls before the 2000 election, thereby handing the White House to his brother George. His reports on the theft of election 2004, the spike of the FBI investigations of the bin Ladens before September 11, the secret State Department documents planning the seizure of Iraq’s oil fields have won him a record six “Project Censored” for reporting the news American media doesn’t want you to hear. He returned to America to report for Harper’s magazine.

Justin Raimondo

Neocons: Red on the Inside; Red, White and Blue on the Outside

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_24_07_scott_goyette_show_6raimondo.mp3]

Antiwar.com editorial director Justin Raimondo debunks the War Party’s claims that there is anything conservative about neoconservatism.

MP3 here.

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000). He is also the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (with an Introduction by Patrick J. Buchanan), (Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996).

He is a contributing editor for The American Conservative, a Senior Fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and an Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Gareth Porter

EFPs: Made in Iraq, Not Iran

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_24_07_scott_goyette_show_5porter.mp3]

Investigative reporter and historian Gareth Porter debunks the War Party’s claims that Iran’s government is killing American soldiers and marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, neocrazy media sycophant Michael R. Gordon’s lies on behalf of the Vice-President’s office and its stovepipe, the truth about Iran’s attempted grand bargain of 2003 [.pdf] and the threat of America and Iran’s friends in Iraq turning on U.S. troops in the event of war.

MP3 here.

Gareth Porter is a historian and journalist for InterPress Service. His latest book is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam

Re: Finally, an Alternative to Peace and Freedom!

Matt, here’s what strikes me as the irony. Not only has the Iraq war become increasingly unpopular, but Ron Paul has repeatedly been credited by the MSM for having opposed the war back when we peaceniks were in the minority. If there were ever a time to worry that Ron Paul’s advocacy of peace would hinder “a wider acceptance of the libertarian principles that would promote the general welfare of the American people,” it was maybe four years ago, when most Americans were still favoring the war and we libertarians and other doves were outnumbered. And then it would have only been a short-term concern.
Indeed, the Paul campaign has succeeded like nothing else in recent times that comes to mind in showing people that peace and liberty go together as do statism and war. Ron Paul is getting the credit he deserves and making people wonder, “Why did this man know, back when most Americans didn’t, that this war would be such a disaster — could it have had something to do with his libertarianism?” And there’s Barnett saying, “No, no, no. Libertarianism doesn’t inform us on whether to support or oppose the war. We wouldn’t want to give people the impression that there’s some connection, in principle, between peace and liberty.” If anything is truly hurting the ability of libertarians to increase our ranks it is this muddy picture people have of us. After all, what use is a philosophy against big government if it offers no principled critique of the biggest government failure in the last decade, one that nearly everyone is now sour on?  Thank goodness Ron Paul has been so quick to connect our troubles in terms of civil liberty and economic prosperity back to the issue of war. He has done a lot to reverse the damage of the liberventionists, such that now they see it as necessary to respond to him.
Wars are generally popular at first, only to wane in their popularity as the tragedy continues and its advertised goals go unachieved. Not only is opposing war the only sensible thing for anti-statists to do, it is in the long-term the best strategy in showing people the value of our critique.

Iraq War ‘Shatters the Illusions’ of a Neocon

Rod Dreher, a former National Review champion of the war, explains that the colossal failure of the Iraq War has “shattered his illusions” about government.

Among his reflections:

I no longer implicitly trust governmental institutions, including the military — neither in their honesty nor their competence.

I no longer have confidence in the ability of our military, or any military, to solve deep cultural and civilizational problems through force alone.

Keep reading…

Thanks to Lew Rockwell.

Dr. Gordon Prather

Iran Can’t Make Nukes

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_24_07_scott_goyette_show_1prather.mp3]

Nuclear physicist Dr. Gordon Prather debunks the War Party’s claims about Iran’s nuclear program.

MP3 here.

Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. — ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.