Antiwar.com Blog

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_06_01_pape.mp3]

Professor Robert A. Pape explains the research behind his book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, why Rep. Ron Paul is correct that groups who engage in suicide terrorism can only recruit in the name of fighting against foreign occupation – rather than devotion to any religion, promises of virgins in Heaven or a plot to take over the world – and why our government’s denial of this fact and its policy of regime change puts Americans in greater danger.

MP3 here.

(My first interview with Professor Pape from July, 2005, and an accompanying article I wrote can be found here.)

Robert A. Pape is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago specializing in international security affairs. His publications include Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House 2005); Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Cornell 1996), “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security (1997), “The Determinants of International Moral Action,” International Organization (1999); “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” American Political Science Review (2003); and “Soft Balancing against the United States,” International Security (2005). His commentary on international security policy has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, as well as on Nightline, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and National Public Radio. Before coming to Chicago in 1999, he taught international relations at Dartmouth College for five years and air power strategy for the USAF’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies for three years. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1988 and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982. His current work focuses on the causes of suicide terrorism and the politics of unipolarity.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_06_01_clemons.mp3]

Steve Clemons, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and keeper of the influential blog The Washington Note, explains Dick Cheney and his neocon cabal’s attempt to make an end run around President Bush and get us into a war with Iran whether he wants to or not, where the “realists” stand, the layers of lower level neocons we’ve never heard of, the “news” of CIA covert action in Iran, Bush’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs and some of the possible consequences if we do go to war.

MP3 here.

Steven Clemons directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, which aims to promote a new American internationalism that combines a tough-minded realism about America’s interests in the world with a pragmatic idealism about the kind of world order best suited to America’s democratic way of life. He is also a Senior Fellow at New America, and previously served as Executive Vice President.

Publisher of the popular political blog The Washington Note, Mr. Clemons is a long-term policy practitioner and entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. He has served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute, Senior Policy Advisor on Economic and International Affairs to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and was the first Executive Director of the Nixon Center.

Prior to moving to Washington, Mr. Clemons served for seven years as Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California, and co-founded with Chalmers Johnson the Japan Policy Research Institute, of which he is still Director. He is a Member of the Board of the Clarke Center at Dickinson College, a liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pa., as well as an Advisory Board Member of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. He is also a Board Member of the Global Policy Innovations Program at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and a member of the board of the Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund.

Mr. Clemons writes frequently on matters of foreign policy, defense, and international economic policy. His work has appeared in many of the major leading op-ed pages, journal, and magazines around the world.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_06_01_lobe.mp3]

Jim Lobe, Washington correspondent for InterPress Service, discusses the situations in DC and in Iraq and how things seem to be playing out: The “surge,” Baker-Hamilton, al Qaeda, Sunni Arabs, Sadr, the Iran factions, the Kurds and the Turks, and the neocons big meeting in the Bahamas and their hopes for sabotaging Rice’s diplomatic efforts.

MP3 here.

Jim Lobe, works as Inter Press Service‘s correspondent in the Washington, D.C., bureau. He has followed the ups and downs of neo-conservatives since well before their rise in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

On Wednesday, an essayist exposed an American architectural firm’s designs for the new United States Embassy currently being constructed in Baghdad, Iraq.

Tom Engelhardt, in his article “The Colossus of Baghdad,” for Antiwar.com May 30th, pointed readers to the plans which had been posted at the Website of the embassy’s designers, Berger Devine Yaeger of Kansas City, Missouri, who took down their entire site after being contacted by State Department employees according to the AFP yesterday.

“Our desire would be that this not be in the public domain,” State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said after officials called the firm of Berger Devine Yaeger within minutes of learning from a reporter that the embassy plans had been posted on its website.

“We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas and this kind of information out in the public domain detracts from that effort,” Gallegos told AFP.

“When it was brought to our attention that these drawings were on their website, they were contacted by department officials and subsequently agreed to take it down,” he said.

The new embassy, which has been compared in size to the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, and, most recently, with Vatican City by Representative Ron Paul in the second Republican presidential debate, has been the subject of much controversy since its construction began.

On Wednesday, Engelhardt wrote:

Imagine this: At $592 million, its proudest boast is that, unlike almost any other American construction project in that country, it is coming in on budget and on time. Of course, with a 30 percent increase in staffing size since Congress approved the project two years ago, it is now estimated that being “represented” in Baghdad will cost a staggering $1.2 billion per year. No wonder, with a crew of perhaps 1,000 officials assigned to it and a supporting staff (from food service workers to Marine guards and private security contractors) of several thousand more. …

Admittedly, it may be hard to take that refreshing dip or catch a few sets of tennis in Baghdad’s heat if the present order for all U.S. personnel in the Green Zone to wear flak jackets and helmets at all times remains in effect – or if, as in the present palace/embassy, the pool (and Ping-Pong tables) are declared, thanks to increasing mortar and missile attacks, temporarily “off limits.” In that case, more time will probably be spent in the massive, largely windowless-looking recreation center, one of over 20 blast-resistant buildings BDY has planned. Perhaps this will house the promised embassy cinema. (Pirates of the Middle East, anyone?)

Though the pictures have been removed from the internet by their publishers, Antiwar.com has obtained a full set.

Click here.

The Desk Murderer types were outraged! Their goons swooped in fast to stop the hemorrhaging of information to the masses. They deleted the page, pulled down the site, and scrubbed the Google cache.

How could it be that someone had publicized plans for America’s new Vatican-Sized embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone?! Oh, no!

Heroic, peace-loving editor Tom Engelhardt Strikes Again!

In his article, “The Colossus of Baghdad,” published here at Antiwar.com on May 30, Engelhardt exposed the plans for America’s new Imperial Center on the Tigris:

[The Missouri-based contractors] can now be classified as architects to the wildest imperial dreamers and schemers of our time. And the company seems proud of it. You can go to its Web site and take a little tour in sketch form, a blast-resistant spin, through its Bush-inspired wonder, its particular colossus of the modern world.

As an outpost, this vast compound reeks of one thing: imperial impunity. It was never meant to be an embassy from a democracy that had liberated an oppressed land. From the first thought, the first sketch, it was to be the sort of imperial control center suitable for the planet’s sole “hyperpower,” dropped into the middle of the oil heartlands of the globe. It was to be Washington’s dream and Kansas City’s idea of a palace fit for an embattled American proconsul – or a khan.

Update: The rest of the pictures can now be found here.

Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation is throwing a heck of a party at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia with a view toward dismantling America’s permanent Warfare State and the threat it poses to our liberty.

The Conference starts this Friday the first of June. All details can be found at the FFF Website here.

The speakers at this conference will include the cutting edge of the libertarian/antiwar movement, including our own Justin Raimondo, Ivan Eland, Jim Bovard and Anthony Gregory:

• Bob Barr
• Daniel Ellsberg
• Joseph Margulies
• Sheldon Richman
• James Bovard
• Bart Frazier
• Joanne Mariner
• Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
• Ted Carpenter
• Anthony Gregory
• Andrew P. Napolitano
• Robert Scheer
• Thomas J. DiLorenzo
• Robert Higgs
• Rep. Ron Paul
• Joseph R. Stromberg
• Richard M. Ebeling
• Jacob G. Hornberger
• Ralph Raico
• Richard Vague
• Ivan Eland
• Karen Kwiatkowski
• Justin Raimondo
• Laurence M. Vance