By Flynt Leverett & Hillary Mann Leverett | The Hindu | May 6, 2013
By once again blowing the chance to close a nuclear deal with Iran, the U.S. and its western partners have set themselves up for escalating the conflict with the Islamic republic
Much has been made of the Obama administration’s decision to set up shop in Jordan under the pretense of containing the Syrian conflict and of training so-called moderate elements in the Syrian rebel opposition.
The September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), ostensibly a vehicle for the U.S. to go after the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC., turns out to have been a whole hell of a lot more than that nearly 12 years on. That simple joint resolution has been stretched very thin during the War on Terror.
If, as alleged, the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, it would indeed be a serious development, constituting a breach of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, one of the world’s most important disarmament treaties, which banned the use of chemical weapons.
Bill Keller’s piece in The New York Times yesterday got a lot of attention, and for all the right reasons. The absurdity of the piece wasn’t lost on most people: Keller lays out how terribly wrong he was for supporting the Bush administration’s war of choice in Iraq, and is now asking readers not to collapse in laughter as he speaks with an air of authority on why we should invade, or at least bomb, Syria.
Bolivian President Evo Morales recently announced he has expelled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), saying such “institutions” “continue to conspire.”
USAID, thanks to lots of propaganda, is thought to be a wonderful, almost charitable arm of the U.S. government that aims to promote democratic institutions and economic progress. Instead, it pushes through a staunch, pro-American agenda often at the expense of democratic institutions.
By Sibel Edmonds | Boiling Frogs Post | May 5, 2013
Fars News Agency | May 5, 2013
TEHRAN – Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who once served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, believes that the chemical weapons used in Syria may have been an Israeli “false flag” operation aimed at implicating Bashar Assad’s regime.
By Sheldon Richman | FFF | May 3, 2013
“A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that ‘it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture’ and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.”
