Antiwar.com Blog

Kurdish writer Kamal Karim is to be retried for the crime of defaming Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani.

Karim had been sentenced to 30 years in prison after a trial that lasted one hour. He was convicted in December under a law passed by the Kurdish regional parliament in 2003.

His crime was to accuse the Kurdish political leader of corruption in an article on the website Kurdistanpost.

The reason that the appeal was granted is that such cases usually only draw a 5-year sentence.

Kurdish leaders promised to help deliver democracy and freedom of the press in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, who oppressed the Kurds for decades.

If anybody out there needs to catch up or get a good refresher course in who lied us into war in Iraq and how, may I recommend this great article by former DIA officer W. Patrick Lang, “Drinking the Kool-Aid” from the summer of 2004? It is a detailed retelling of the activities of the neoconservatives in the office of the vice-president, the Office of Special Plans, the Policy Counter-Terrorism Evaluation Group and the way they accomplished their end-run around the regular intelligence agencies in order to make grown men frightened enough of Iraq to warrant invasion.

Please note also that accused Niger uranium forger and pardoned Nicauragua harbor miner Duane “Dewey” Clarridge is featured as working with the Iraqi National Congress/Rendon Group, and was the origin of the plan, referred to in this piece by David Corn about his meeting with “Prince of Darkness” Richard Perle, to invade Iraq with only 40,000 thousand men – except in Clarridge’s earlier version it was only going to be 5,000 INC “soldiers” and a couple of special forces guys.

Boy, now that would have been a real cakewalk, huh?

Hey everybody! This is great. You’ve got to hear it.

Hour One Hour Two

We all know (hopefully) from reading Dr. Gordon Prather 3 times a week here at Antiwar.com and World Net Daily (and even from rags like the Washington Post) that if the government of Iran began to enrich uranium for nuclear bomb making purposes right now, it would take them 10 years to make one simple gun-type nuke (Prather’s term) (and nevermind the delivery system). In other words, all the hype about some imminent nuclear danger is a pack of lies.

Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., the great witness to the Office of Special Plans, has said repeatedly that she believes one of the principal reasons for the invasion of Iraq was that in the year 2000 Saddam Hussein had begun demanding Euros instead of dollars as payment for “his” oil.

Now there is this incredible article by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D., along the lines of Dr. Prather’s piece this weekend speculating that the reason the neocons and the Israeli government keep asserting Iran will have nukes and require bombing by March is because they are about to open a new oil and gas exchange – the Iranian Bourse, and will be demanding payment in Euros.

This is bad news for the US dollar because the Saudis et al. demand dollars for their oil and the powers of the Earth must therefore hold large amounts of US currency. Iran, a state run by people who for some reason aren’t happy with us, plan to demand Euros in their new exchange. That could lead to the government banks of the world to diversify their holdings and a flooding of the US with our government’s paper money that has been held in those foreign accounts. Then comes inflation – bad inflation.

The War Party may have decided that the time is now for pushing the nuke program lie and striking while the getting’s good.

This article by Professor Petrov lays it all out.

Why is it so hard to understand that the threat to the dollar is the 2.5 Trillion dollar budget every year- much of it new money created out of nothing? They bankrupt America with incredible rates of spending on wars to maintain dollar dominance and create the problem in the process.

Israel, oil companies, the military-industrial complex, crazy born again war-for-God types – in the end, it’s really all about the state isn’t it?

Here is what should be Bush’s official portrait, made with the faces of the fallen.

Thomas Woods, over at the LRC Blog has put out a call for great antiwar speeches in American history, so here’s a good one I remember reading in the New American.

In an article called “Minding Our Own Business,” Steve Bonta quotes a speech given in 1898 by Representative Richard P. Bland, a Democrat from Missouri, during the congressional fight over the annexation of Hawaii. Bland said that those promoting the American empire,

“boldly assert on this floor that Hawaii is necessary to us in our new policy. This new policy is defined as being the permanent occupation of the Philippine Islands, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and whatever other territory we may conquer during this war, and more still, they tell us that we must make alliances with England and Japan to the end that we may participate in carving up and parceling out the Chinese Empire…. Such a policy as this is intended and is urged by its promoters for the purpose of building up in this country a centralized power of wealth with big standing armies and navies to protect this plutocratic control…. You are on the road to imperialism, with a large Navy and standing armies and oppressive taxation and adopting a military government instead of republican institutions and constitutional liberty.”

Bonta says that Republican James F. Stewart of New Jersey answered:

“The silly argument of national isolation, the outgrowth of fear and timidity, is lame and impotent…. Every nation must at all times be prepared to protect its citizens and interests abroad, and in order to do this we must have mid-stations as bases of supply and resort, in order that our just resentment against foreign nations may be sure and certain of management and control…. Gentlemen on the other side, with tearful solicitude for our Constitution, and knowing our tender regard for that majestic instrument, interpose it as a bar…. Our country has arisen from lusty youth to vigorous manhood. We must share the responsibilities as well as the blessings of modern civilization. We must participate in the world’s destiny.”

What are life, liberty, property, peace and reason worth against such claptrap?

Apparently nothing.

Anybody else?