An aide’s remark comparing the consistency of Mitt Romney’s positions to lines on an Etch a Sketch toy suggests his presidency would follow a course designed to win him a second term, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. In that, Romney’s neocon foreign policy advisers may see hope for a muscular “new American century.”
After learning that U.S. national security official John Brennan would address Jesuit-run Fordham’s graduating class, ex-CIA analyst (and Fordham alum) Ray McGovern protested in a letter to the Fordham Ram. McGovern cited Jesuit principles of truth and justice — and Brennan’s role in the “dark side” of the “war on terror.”
Joseph Kony, the brutal commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has been introduced to millions through a video on YouTube. But that denunciation of his war crimes skirts his claim to be motivated by Christianity, an omission not applied to violent extremists who embrace Islam, notes Mamoon Alabbasi.
The U.S. press corps has embraced the integrity of the International Atomic Energy Agency as central to the case for bombing Iran. But WikiLeaks documents revealed how the IAEA’s new leader is a pawn of the West, and Gareth Porter explains at Inter Press Service how the IAEA has escalated the confrontation with Iran.
Ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey and other big-name politicians are demanding that an anti-government Iranian group, MEK, be removed from the U.S. terrorism list despite links to recent murders of Iranian civilian scientists. Former FBI official Coleen Rowley offers evidence of Mukasey aiding this terrorist organization.
The “three amigos” – John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham – are the Senate’s top war hawks, widely admired by the Washington Post’s editors and other neocon voices. But the senators also were cheerleaders for the Iraq disaster and other dubious exploits, ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar recalls.
A suspected Israeli-sponsored assassination campaign has claimed the lives of five Iranian scientists supposedly linked to the country’s nuclear program. But the evidence implicating some scientists in nuclear research may be as murky as the suspicions that a weapons program even exists, writes Gareth Porter at Truthout.
Exclusive: President Obama’s choice in 2009 to expand – rather than wind down – the Afghan War now looks to be one of his worst decisions as the conflict drifts toward a bloody defeat. But a key factor behind his misjudgment, the myth of George W. Bush’s “successful surge” in Iraq, lives on, writes Robert Parry.
Even as Israeli leaders focus the world on a possible war with Iran, the neocons are prepping public opinion for another bloody assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, what one article likened to “mowing the grass.” Ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar sees the need for serious peace talks.
Nine years ago, as President George W. Bush and the neocons prepared to invade Iraq, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American woman concerned about the region’s deepening violence, was in Gaza watching Palestinian homes being destroyed – and put her body in the way, her parents Cindy and Craig Corrie recall on the anniversary.
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