International Politics: September 2004 Archives

By Noam Chomsky

09/17/04 "TomDispatch" -- As Colin Powell explained the National Security Strategy (NSS) of September 2002 to a hostile audience at the World Economic Forum, Washington has a ``sovereign right to use force to defend ourselves'' from nations that possess WMD and cooperate with terrorists, the official pretexts for invading Iraq. The collapse of the pretexts is well known, but there has been insufficient attention to its most important consequence: the NSS was effectively revised to lower the bars to aggression. The need to establish ties to terror was quietly dropped. More significant, Bush and colleagues declared the right to resort to force even if a country does not have WMD or even programs to develop them. It is sufficient that it have the ``intent and ability'' to do so. Just about every country has the ability, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. The official doctrine, then, is that anyone is subject to overwhelming attack. Colin Powell carried the revision even a step further. The president was right to attack Iraq because Saddam not only had ``intent and capability'' but had ``actually used such horrible weapons against his enemies in Iran and against his own people''-- with continuing support from Powell and his associates, he failed to add, following the usual convention. Condoleezza Rice gave a similar version. With such reasoning as this, who is exempt from attack? Small wonder that, as one Reuters report put it, ``if Iraqis ever see Saddam Hussein in the dock, they want his former American allies shackled beside him.''

The terrorism of groups and individuals, however horrific, is tiny by comparison with that of states. But the media have no language to describe state terrorism.

John Pilger

09/20/04 "New Statesman" -- The world is dividing into two hostile camps: Islam and "us". That is the unerring message from western governments, press, radio and television. For Islam, read terrorists. It is reminiscent of the cold war when the world was divided between "Reds" and us, and even a strategy of annihilation was permissible in our defence. We now know, or we ought to know, that so much of that was a charade; released official files make clear the Soviet threat was for public consumption only.

From Thomas Buyea
9-17-4

Stanley Hilton was a senior advisor to Sen Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. This courageous man has risked his professional reputation, and possibly his life, to get this information out to people.

The following is from his latest visit to Alex Jones' radio show.

Forwarded with Compliments of Free Voice of America (FVOA): Accurate News and Interesting Commentary for Amerika's Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free.

Who We Are and What We Do

By SASAN FAYAZMANESH

It is now nearly three years since nineteen young men from Saudi Arabia and Egypt opened the Pandora's Box by attacking the World Trade Center and Pentagon with hijacked planes. But the answer to "why did they do it?" still remains unsettled. "They did it because of what we do," some say. Others contend, "they did it because of who we are." Alternatively, the answers appear as "they hate us for what we do," or "they hate us for who we are."

The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

by Michael C. Ruppert

This is a detective story that gets to the innermost core of the 9/11 attacks.
It places 9/11 at the center of a desperate new America, created by specific,
named individuals in preparation for Peak Oil: an economic crisis like nothing
the world has ever seen.

Unraveling the Logic of a Lie

by M. Junaid Alam

www.dissidentvoice.org
September 1, 2004
First Published in Left Hook

Recently the president of the United States was asked if the “war on terror” could be won. His response was markedly free from the aggressive and self-righteous rhetoric that usually defines the outlook of his administration: “I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.” What happened to the swaggering Texan? Had he suddenly slumped out of a depressing meeting with advisers informing him that Iraq was slipping deviously out of American hands and into the arms of Iraqi nationalists? Was he caught in a rare moment of honest reflection about the true nature of a war he has so zealously advocated? An unlikely prospect, no doubt. But just in case Bush did have an epiphany, the ever-reliable warmongers of the Democratic Party galloped onto the scene to remind America that now was the time for killing, not questioning.

By Jim Mullins
Posted September 2 2004

As the declared motives for President Bush's rush to war on Iraq dissolve, one by one, in the glaring light of truth, it becomes clear that his claim that we went to Iraq to bring freedom and liberation to a people suffering from a brutal dictatorship is similarly devoid of reality.