Seeking War to the End of the World

Exclusive: Despite the disastrous Iraq War, neocons still dominate Official Washington’s inside-outside game, government policymakers coordinating with think-tank opinion leaders to keep world tensions high and money flowing to military projects, a process personified by Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland, says Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

If the neoconservatives have their way again, U.S. ground troops will reoccupy Iraq, the U.S. military will take out Syria’s secular government (likely helping Al Qaeda and the Islamic State take over), and the U.S. Congress will not only kill the Iran nuclear deal but follow that with a massive increase in military spending.

Like spraying lighter fluid on a roaring barbecue, the neocons also want a military escalation in Ukraine to burn the ethnic Russians out of the east, and the neocons dream of spreading the blaze to Moscow with the goal of forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin. In other words, more and more fires of Imperial “regime change” abroad even as the last embers of the American Republic die at home.

Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan. (Photo credit: Mariusz Kubik, http://www.mariuszkubik.pl)

Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan. (Photo credit: Mariusz Kubik, http://www.mariuszkubik.pl)

Much of this “strategy” is personified by a single Washington power couple: arch-neocon Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and an early advocate of the Iraq War, and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who engineered last year’s coup in Ukraine that started a nasty civil war and created a confrontation between nuclear-armed United States and Russia.

Kagan, who cut his teeth as a propaganda specialist in support of the Reagan administration’s brutal Central American policies in the 1980s, is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post’s neocon-dominated opinion pages.

On Friday, Kagan’s column baited the Republican Party to do more than just object to President Barack Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal. Kagan called for an all-out commitment to neoconservative goals, including military escalations in the Middle East, belligerence toward Russia and casting aside fiscal discipline in favor of funneling tens of billions of new dollars to the Pentagon.

Kagan also showed how the neocons’ world view remains the conventional wisdom of Official Washington despite their disastrous Iraq War. The neocon narrative gets repeated over and over in the mainstream media no matter how delusional it is.

For instance, a sane person might trace the origins of the bloodthirsty Islamic State back to President George W. Bush’s neocon-inspired Iraq War when this hyper-violent Sunni movement began as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” blowing up Shiite mosques and instigating sectarian bloodshed. It later expanded into Syria where Sunni militants were seeking the ouster of a secular regime led by Alawites, a Shiite offshoot. Though changing its name to the Islamic State, the movement continued with its trademark brutality.

But Kagan doesn’t acknowledge that he and his fellow neocons bear any responsibility for this head-chopping phenomenon. In his neocon narrative, the Islamic State gets blamed on Iran and Syria, even though those governments are leading much of the resistance to the Islamic State and its former colleagues in Al Qaeda, which in Syria backs a separate terrorist organization, the Nusra Front.

But here is how Kagan explains the situation to the Smart People of Official Washington: “Critics of the recent nuclear deal struck between Iran and the United States are entirely right to point out the serious challenge that will now be posed by the Islamic republic. It is an aspiring hegemon in an important region of the world.

“It is deeply engaged in a region-wide war that encompasses Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Gulf States and the Palestinian territories. It subsidizes the murderous but collapsing regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and therefore bears primary responsibility for the growing strength of the Islamic State and other radical jihadist forces in that country and in neighboring Iraq, where it is simultaneously expanding its influence and inflaming sectarian violence.”

The Real Hegemon

While ranting about “Iranian hegemony,” Kagan called for direct military intervention by the world’s true hegemonic power, the United States. He wants the U.S. military to weigh in against Iran on the side of two far more militarily advanced regional powers, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose combined weapons spending dwarfs Iran’s and includes with Israel a sophisticated nuclear arsenal.

Yet reality has never had much relationship to neocon ideology. Kagan continued: “Any serious strategy aimed at resisting Iranian hegemony has also required confronting Iran on the several fronts of the Middle East battlefield. In Syria, it has required a determined policy to remove Assad by force, using U.S. air power to provide cover for civilians and create a safe zone for Syrians willing to fight.

“In Iraq, it has required using American forces to push back and destroy the forces of the Islamic State so that we would not have to rely, de facto, on Iranian power to do the job. Overall, it has required a greater U.S. military commitment to the region, a reversal of both the perceived and the real withdrawal of American power.

“And therefore it has required a reversal of the downward trend in U.S. defense spending, especially the undoing of the sequestration of defense funds, which has made it harder for the military even to think about addressing these challenges, should it be called upon to do so. So the question for Republicans who are rightly warning of the danger posed by Iran is: What have they done to make it possible for the United States to begin to have any strategy for responding?”

In Kagan’s call for war and more war, we’re seeing, again, the consequence of failing to hold neocons accountable after they pushed the country into the illegal and catastrophic Iraq War by selling lies about weapons of mass destruction and telling tales about how easy it would be.

Instead of facing a purge that should have followed the Iraq calamity, the neocons consolidated their power, holding onto key jobs in U.S. foreign policy, ensconcing themselves in influential think tanks, and remaining the go-to experts for mainstream media coverage. Being wrong about Iraq has almost become a badge of honor in the upside-down world of Official Washington.

But we need to unpack the truckload of sophistry that Kagan is peddling. First, it is simply crazy to talk about “Iranian hegemony.” That was part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rhetoric before the U.S. Congress on March 3 about Iran “gobbling up” nations and it has now become a neocon-driven litany, but it is no more real just because it gets repeated endlessly.

For instance, take the Iraq case. It has a Shiite-led government not because Iran invaded Iraq, but because the United States did. After the U.S. military ousted Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, the United States stood up a new government dominated by Shiites who, in turn, sought friendly relations with their co-religionists in Iran, which is entirely understandable and represents no aggression by Iran. Then, after the Islamic State’s dramatic military gains across Iraq last summer, the Iraqi government turned to Iran for military assistance, also no surprise.

Back to Iraq

However, leaving aside Kagan’s delusional hyperbole about Iran, look at what he’s proposing. He wants to return a sizable U.S. occupation force to Iraq, apparently caring little about the U.S. soldiers who were rotated multiple times into the war zone where almost 4,500 died (along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis). Having promoted Iraq War I and having paid no price, Kagan now wants to give us Iraq War II.

But that’s not enough. Kagan wants the U.S. military to intervene to make sure the secular government of Syria is overthrown, even though the almost certain winners would be Sunni extremists from the Islamic State or Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front. Such a victory could lead to genocides against Syria’s Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other minorities. At that point, there would be tremendous pressure for a full-scale U.S. invasion and occupation of Syria, too.

That may be why Kagan wants to throw tens of billions of dollar more into the military-industrial complex, although the true price tag for Kagan’s new wars would likely run into the trillions of dollars. Yet, Kagan still isn’t satisfied. He wants even more military spending to confront “growing Chinese power, an aggressive Russia and an increasingly hegemonic Iran.”

In his conclusion, Kagan mocks the Republicans for not backing up their tough talk: “So, yes, by all means, rail about the [Iran] deal. We all look forward to the hours of floor speeches and campaign speeches that lie ahead. But it will be hard to take Republican criticisms seriously unless they start doing the things that are in their power to do to begin to address the challenge.”

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on Feb. 7, 2014. (U.S. State Department photo)

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on Feb. 7, 2014. (U.S. State Department photo)

While it’s true that Kagan is now “just” a neocon ideologue albeit one with important platforms to present his views his wife Assistant Secretary of State Nuland shares his foreign policy views and even edits many of his articles. As she told The New York Times last year, “nothing goes out of the house that I don’t think is worthy of his talents. Let’s put it that way.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’”]

But Nuland is a foreign policy force of her own, considered by some in Washington to be the up-and-coming “star” at the State Department. By organizing the “regime change” in Ukraine with the violent overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 Nuland also earned her spurs as an accomplished neocon.

Nuland has even outdone her husband, who may get “credit” for the Iraq War and the resulting chaos, but Nuland did him one better, instigating Cold War II and reviving hostilities between nuclear-armed Russia and the United States. After all, that’s where the really big money will go toward modernizing nuclear arsenals and ordering top-of-the-line strategic weaponry.

A Family Business

There’s also a family-business aspect to these wars and confrontations, since the Kagans collectively serve not just to start conflicts but to profit from grateful military contractors who kick back a share of the money to the think tanks that employ the Kagans.

For instance, Robert’s brother Frederick works at the American Enterprise Institute, which has long benefited from the largesse of the Military-Industrial Complex, and his wife Kimberly runs her own think tank called the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Gen. David Petraeus posing before the U.S. Capitol with Kimberly Kagan, founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War. (Photo credit: ISW’s 2011 Annual Report)

Gen. David Petraeus posing before the U.S. Capitol with Kimberly Kagan, founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War. (Photo credit: ISW’s 2011 Annual Report)

According to ISW’s annual reports, its original supporters were mostly right-wing foundations, such as the Smith-Richardson Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, but it was later backed by a host of national security contractors, including major ones like General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and CACI, as well as lesser-known firms such as DynCorp International, which provided training for Afghan police, and Palantir, a technology company founded with the backing of the CIA’s venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir supplied software to U.S. military intelligence in Afghanistan.

Since its founding in 2007, ISW has focused mostly on wars in the Middle East, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, including closely cooperating with Gen. David Petraeus when he commanded U.S. forces in those countries. However, more recently, ISW has begun reporting extensively on the civil war in Ukraine. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons Guided Petraeus on Afghan War.”]

So, to understand the enduring influence of the neocons and the Kagan clan, in particular  you have to appreciate the money connections between the business of war and the business of selling war. When the military contractors do well, the think tanks that advocate for heightened global tensions do well, too.

And, it doesn’t hurt to have friends and family inside the government making sure that policymakers do their part to give war a chance — and to give peace the old heave-ho.

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “A Family Business of Perpetual War.”]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

82 comments for “Seeking War to the End of the World

  1. July 28, 2015 at 15:19

    Bile. Her original name was Victoria Noodleman.

  2. Hal Womack
    July 28, 2015 at 06:02

    A moment of reflection will show the true moderation of the slogan: “Hang the Senate!” Witch BTW includes Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul. Stretch some extra rope for the Kagans AFTOC or “After a Fair Trial, Of Course”. How many of us NAG [Normal, Alias “Gentile”] analysts see essentially the same bony hand behind both the 1963 Jack Whack and the WTC Stunt 38 years later, here to mention only two black ops? Where the optimal venue for the free & sustained discussion of such urgent global issues? Cut & paste from my own log = 20150728 TUESDAY:
    ===================
    Day Twenty-One of the First Anniversary of GM’14 aka the Seven Week Slaughter

  3. Silverado
    July 28, 2015 at 03:12

    Those that live by the sword will hopefully die by one and it couldn’t happen to a nicer couple of homegrown terrorists than the Kagans, who represent the criminal element and everything that’s wrong with our present day govt. They represent a greater threat to freedom and liberty in this country than any terrorist and I don’t care where that terrorist is from. These are truly dangerous idealogues with psychopathic and anti social tendencies on a grand scale and should be dealt with accordingly…

  4. Hillary
    July 23, 2015 at 06:00

    “Bernie Sanders on the other hand is a socialist, who believes in Social Democracy, as opposed to Neocon Fascist Democracy.”……as practiced in Washington & Tel Aviv ?
    ….
    In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Sanders said that he was “not particularly religious” but that as a child being Jewish taught him “in a very deep way what politics is about.”
    Sanders like “everyone else” refers to the 50 million deaths in WWII and the Holocaust of 6 million Jews as being a formative influence in his development.

    http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/309920/bernie-sanders-being-jewish-pushed-me-into-politics/#ixzz3gi6Nqq00

  5. Kevin Schmidt
    July 23, 2015 at 03:31

    I guess Obama is a Neocon too, since he started several wars himself. Hillary approves of them, and plans to start a few of her own, so she must be a Neocon too.

    Bernie Sanders on the other hand is a socialist, who believes in Social Democracy, as opposed to Neocon Fascist Democracy.

  6. jaycee
    July 21, 2015 at 11:44

    Kagan is employed by the Brookings Institution, close to the heart of the Washington Establishment. Brookings’ major funders are WASP, not Zionist (Gates Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, etc). That Kagan continues to be employed despite his psychopathic intellectual flaws suggests that what he has to say is useful to the Establishment. Unfortunately for the rest of us, ginning up war and tension is useful and profitable for the US Establishment. As Parry notes, the fomented tensions with Russia have a geo-strategic purpose but also a business purpose: “that’s where the really big money will go – toward modernizing nuclear arsenals and ordering top-of-the-line strategic weaponry.”

  7. Helge
    July 21, 2015 at 06:15

    That Israel and Saudi-Arabia are cooperating is almost on the the scale of the Hitler-Stalin pact from 1939, the idea can only be “we first together clear out all disturbing penetrators in between before we will have a proper go at each other”.

    • dahoit
      July 21, 2015 at 12:22

      Yes,I’m sure the Zionists have the Saudis in their targeting,just waiting until their partnership is exposed and ended with nukes,which of course Israel has and they don’t.What morons,the Saudis.And you can bet the Ziomonster media will then take out the anti Saudi reports they’ve convenienty shelved lately.

  8. July 21, 2015 at 04:53

    I expect Kagan must have won a good few medals for outstanding bravery on the battlefield to feel so comfortable egging his country into perpetual war. He must have been wounded a good few times to be able to look wounded veterans in the eye without blinking. Let’s face it, nobody who hadn’t served their country in war would have the gall to send even more mothers’ sons into battle. But we misjudge him. Kagan plays by different rules to the rest of the world. In neoconservative minds failure is now success. Having been so successful at failing, why shouldn’t it be?

    In military terms battles and wars are lost when they fail to achieve stated objectives. Those objectives must be clearly laid out and achievable within a given time frame.Despite having lost all the costly wars they have instigated neocons bray like victors.

    Perhaps the biggest war the neocons have lost is for the hearts and minds of a good percentage of the American people, let alone a good proportion of its allies and the rest of the world.

    As in many human endeavours, in war it is an accepted truism that where one side fails the other side succeeds. Yet the neocons have let the ‘other side’ taste victory time and time again wihout batting an eyelid. For it to happen once might regarded as bad luck, to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results, as Einstein remarked, is the defintion of insanity.

    Yet it would be grave mistake to view the long list of defeats in solely military terms, they count also as defeats in political, diplomatic and propaganda terms. The neocon’s ‘enemies’ don’t need Fox and CNN to conduct propanda wars on their behalf when people like Kagan and Nuland are so able to conduct them for them. And for all Nuland’s attempts at playing the diplomat, she is paid by U.S. taxpayer to be, she might just as well have declared war on diplomacy itself.

  9. alexander
    July 20, 2015 at 15:53

    Is it time to throw em all in Guantanamo Bay ?

    • Phillip Michaels
      July 20, 2015 at 16:25

      Investigate first. A real investigation will open a floodgate of suddenly cooperative witnesses.

      • Phillip Michaels
        July 20, 2015 at 16:28

        The truth is more important to us as a society than any kind of retribution, since the truth will inform numerous future generations what it means to have sociopaths at the tops of our political and economic hierarchies.

    • dahoit
      July 21, 2015 at 12:18

      How about that South African bay?Teeming with sharks of a different color.

  10. Phillip Michaels
    July 20, 2015 at 15:06

    Reading this article and many of the very cogent comments here gives the impression that as much as we might know about the evil that some Americans clearly do to our own national interest by fostering wars of aggression, there is nothing that we–as normal people–can do. Fortunately, this isn’t true. The Neo-Cons, their political leadership, and their paymasters have all taken a gigantic step too far. The “step too far” was the political policy coup d’etat on 9/11. The “Big Lie”–and lots and lots of little lies–were used on the American People in a way that makes this group extremely vulnerable.

    No action like 9/11 occurs in a historical vacuum. So, the danger for George/Dick and their bosses was to undertake a new keep-our-wars-going coup in the faces of so many citizens burned by the Big Lie of the Kennedy assassination. Groups of citizens have been researching and making a huge effort to uncover the truth of what happened November 22nd, 1963. To a large extent that work is complete. (For anyone who wants to know the probable organizer and main beneficiary of the assassination was Lyndon Johnson.) That private, all-volunteer investigation organized by citizens in combination with the new connectedness given to us by the Internet provided a skeptical view of government investigations of big political events for a significant number in our society. That experience gave us a number of people who were able to survive the withering “You’re with us, or you’re [a terrorist] against us” PR campaign after 9/11. This time the skeptics began organizing much more quickly than ever. Now, only 10+ years after the event, not 50+, we have a pretty good idea of many of the physical facts of 9/11 even if we haven’t connected those events directly to the obvious candidates of interest (the aforementioned Neo-Cons etcetera).

    We know that the biggest 9/11 lie is visible for anyone who can remember those videos of the three–yes, three–buildings exploding to the ground at the World Trade Center (WTC) on 9/11. They all somehow supposedly fell symmetrically into their own footprints. They didn’t fall over in large chunks or come cascading down in pieces asymmetrically, as an asymmetrically-damaged structure would be expected to do. Instead, two of the buildings, the 110-story Twin Towers–with tens of thousands of tons of undamaged steel and concrete below the crash sites, somehow came crashing straight down into the path-of-most-resistance. If that wasn’t unbelievable enough, they both came down at very near free fall acceleration speeds, meaning the tops of the buildings fell as if there was nothing intact beneath them. Add to this the fact that the third building, Building 7, came down at free fall for at least 8 floors, supposedly (according to the investigating government agency, NIST) because of the failure of a single column damaged by office fires.

    Unlike Johnson’s Big Lie which blamed the murder on either Lee Harvey Oswald or the Russians, take your pick, this time the lie was that it is possible for the first three steel superstructure high-rises in history to collapse symmetrically from very short-lived office fires at free fall acceleration. At the point when this obvious lie is acknowledged publicly even in a small way the whole facade will come crashing down. When will that happen? Well there was a perfectly good opportunity in this article to point out that the Neo-Cons are not only evil-policy-influencers, they may well be traitors and murders as well.

    • F. G. Sanford
      July 20, 2015 at 18:57

      Every time I read a comment expressing faith that the JFK tragedy will eventually be exposed, my heart skips a beat. I have to remind myself I’m not a kid anymore. Fifty two years have passed, but for me, it still seems like yesterday. I realize that these feelings are nostalgia for the America I thought I was born in: the innocent certainty that somehow, there would be justice. The bullet fragments in John Connally’s wrist could not have been left by a ‘pristine’ bullet found on a stretcher. That’s the simplest contradiction to the ‘official story’ I can think of. But it’s all a tissue of lies. At least one of the perpetrators is still alive, and his children must also be protected. The real owners of this country will never permit otherwise. There are now just a bunch of nostalgic old men and women like me who remember. We won’t be around much longer. So, don’t get your hopes up. If they could sell those lies, three buildings with two planes is a ‘piece of cake’.

      • Phillip Michaels
        July 20, 2015 at 21:23

        Mr. Sanford, you would enjoy reading “The Man Who Killed JFK, The Case Against LBJ.” Rodger Stone brings together an credible web of facts that place LBJ at the center of the conspiracy. He further points to the murder of Kennedy as the real beginning of the War in Vietnam. Finally, he reminded me me of the most telling evidence against LBJ, the Altgens photo taken at Dealey Plaza one second after the first shot is fired. The photo demonstrates that LBJ was in the floorboards of his limo. One second after the shot is far too quickly… Anyway, read the book if you, like me, have had that assassination under your skin for fifty years.

      • Hillary
        July 21, 2015 at 11:00

        F. G. Sanford may ask the simple question.. Cui Bono ?

        Who benefited from the JFK assassination ? …..Israel got its nuclear bomb.
        http://www.ctka.net/pr700-ang.html

      • dahoit
        July 21, 2015 at 12:17

        The Kennedy assassination had Zionist fingerprints all over it,from Jack Rubenstein,to Abe Zabrudah?(payed off millions for a common interest video)to Arlen specter,the magic bullet theorist.

        • alexander
          July 21, 2015 at 14:49

          Are you suggesting that when Jack Kennedy stated ” The Israelis are going to get the bomb over my dead body”… that is what “actually” happened” !?

          …..He got “dead” and the Israelis got the “bomb” !

    • alexander
      July 21, 2015 at 15:04

      It is interesting that two of the tallest buildings in the world…would both fall perfectly straight down !..
      .What are the odds on that ,anyone?

      Don’t they pay demolition experts millions of dollars to make SURE buildings fall straight down ? isn’t it a real art , a real expertise to do it right ?

      And here, two of the tallest ever built seem to do it perfectly well on there own !

      What a miracle of nature !

  11. Abe
    July 20, 2015 at 14:20

    if they wanted to truly reset relations with Russia, Kerry could fire Nuland, Obama could pull [Marine Corps general “Fighting Joe”] Dunford’s nomination [to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], and both could ask NATO to request a new Supreme Commander [to replace Air Force general Philip Breedlove]. However, as President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his 1961 Farewell Address about the menace of the “military-industrial complex”, Obama and Kerry are powerless to get rid of those who were placed in power by what has now become a “military-intelligence-contractor” complex.

    What is even more troubling is that Breedlove, Dunford, Nuland, and Carter appear prepared to not only take on Russia and China in a new Cold War, but are willing to confront the new “anti-NATO”, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which just wrapped up its summit in Ufa, the capital of the Russian Federation’s autonomous republic of Bashkortostan. If the “gruesome twosome” of Nuland and Breedlove, soon to become the “terrible troika” after Dunford is confirmed by the Senate, have their way, NATO and the United States will not only be willing to face off militarily against SCO members China and Russia but also the new members of Pakistan and India, in addition to charter members Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

    Countering the neo-Cold Warriors
    By Wayne Madsen
    http://www.voltairenet.org/article188199.html

  12. Mike
    July 20, 2015 at 10:38

    Dear Mr. Parry,
    Please stop calling Kagan, Nuland and their like minded people Neo-Cons and call them for what they are, the same old nasty Zionists. They are the same all over the world. They did it in Germany, are still doing it in Palestine, they are doing it in Europe and the United States. They are a cancer that latches on to the host body and does not let go until the host body is completely destroyed. The only cure is to have them amputated. Until we realize that, they will continue to destroy this country.

    • Anonymous
      July 20, 2015 at 11:09

      It seems that neocons and Zionists share exactly same goals and believe that the ends always justifies any possible means.

      What is the difference between what neocons want to accomplish and what Zionists want to accomplish?

  13. Nexus789
    July 20, 2015 at 05:00

    The degenerates in Washington will miscalculate and start a global war. The outcome will be global destruction and the obliteration of the US.

  14. Vesuvius
    July 20, 2015 at 04:47

    The White House could of course fire Kagan and Nuland, on the spot? And hire some other experts for good advice. The fact that Kagan and Nuland are still in the White House’s service is telling the answer to the Big Question: Who really is running the show there?

  15. July 20, 2015 at 03:35

    @ “And what percentage of the top brass is aware of that same undue reality? What would it be that keeps the Generals or Secretary of Defense from speaking up?”

    I can’t give you an exact percentage. But I can observe that despite the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan being blatantly wars of aggression — the “supreme war crime” — I’m not aware of a single general or admiral having resigned rather than participate. And every one of them knew that we had hung German leaders for the same offense. So much for their oatha to “protect and defend the Constitution,” which includes a Treaty Clause that through ratification of the Geneva Conventions and U.N. Charter, requires that the U.S. refrain from wars of aggression.

    Nuff said?

    • Anonymous
      July 20, 2015 at 07:47

      Looks like the US culture and “civilization” has been corrupted to the point we are no longer civilized — our “leaders” wage propaganda wars against democracy at home while scheduling regime change in any country that does not recognize Zionist and American exceptional elitism as the legitimate ruling cabal of the entire world…

    • dahoit
      July 21, 2015 at 11:47

      Didn’t Shinseki? refuse too go along?We don’t hear his name anymore,he must be out on the back pasture.

  16. Anonymous
    July 20, 2015 at 01:42

    Usually I see the glass half full (as a rule I like to think that way). Although with this P5+1 Iran nuke agreement I am running with the caution lights blinking. Already there is negative press over the Ayatollah Khamenei apparently in his speech to his fellow Iranian’s, him calling America ‘Arrogant”. Imagine the nerve of that man. Mean while we have US Senators, pundits, generals, Likud, Netanyahu (I can’t go on) calling for a war with Iran. The first time that Iran will have seemed to give cause, is what I fear most could lead to war. Russia, China, and to some degree France won’t be America’s partners on this mission. By some accounts Russia and China are being encircled at this very moment. Early someone here mentioned the U.S. policy of invasion starting with 1776, and it sure seems that way with the more history you read. My problem is how could any of us make our government purge itself of these ‘dual citizen’ Neocon for lack of a better word ‘Idiots’? The Kagan’s along with so many others must be vanquished out of our U.S. Government. We need a small media not influence by anyone, and yes that even means advertisers. I lol quit, read this link (many other links at end of article)

  17. July 20, 2015 at 01:42

    The origin of the neo-cons is very interesting. They donyt come from the Far Right; they are a derivative of the Left. Their ideology has not emerged from any Far Right tradition. They are, for the most part, followers of a faction of Trotskyites, who split from the Trotskyist movement under the leadership pf Max Shachtman. With the University of Chicago philosopher, Leo Strauss, as their intellectual guru, they joined Shachtman in a small radical organization called the Independent Socialist League. Among the early protégés were two brilliant graduates of the City College of New York (CCNY) Irving Howe and Irving Kristol (two parts of the ‘College of Irvings’ when they were joined by Irving Horowitz). Kristol became the godfather of neo-conservatism, a co-founder of the movement along with Norman Podhoretz. Kristol’s son is the editor-in-chief of the bellwether neocon publication, The Weekly Standard.

    A number of young Shachtmanites began careers in the labour movement, mostly as AFL-CIO staffers. Al Shanker came up through the ranks as a worker, i.e., a teacher, and founded the first teachers’ union, New York City’s United Federation of Teachers. Tom Kahn became a staffer in the AFL-CIO and eventually headed its international affairs department. There he joined Jay Lovestone, the former General Secretary of the U.S. Communist Party, who had moved across the political divide to be an arch anti-communist along with Irving Brown, another CCNY graduate who had moved from the far Left to the anti-communist camp. The AFL-CIO leader, George Meany and ILGWU President David Dubinsky, set up the Free Trade Union Committee during the Second World War to work with the OSS and the Allied Governments in fighting European collaborationist unions during the war and afterwards, as opponents of communist unions during the Cold War. The Shachtmanites fitted in well with these moves rightward and were committed anti-communists by the time of McCarthy.

    One of Shachtman’s many disciples was Carl Gershman, who is now head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) but in his youth was associated with the Young People’s Socialist League and the Social Democrats, USA, both on the far left. The NED is a strange organisation – the beating heart of the neocons. It is a private foundation funded by the U.S. Congress to “Spread democracy”. It has a Democratic Party half in its National Democratic Institute, and a Republican Party half in its International Republican Institute. Madeleine Albright is in charge of the NED Dems while John McCain leads the NED GOP.
    When it was revealed in the late 1960’s that some American voluntary organisations were being covertly funded by the CIA to wage the battle of ideas at international forums, the Johnson Administration concluded that such funding should cease, recommending establishment of “a public-private mechanism” to fund overseas activities openly. That was The origin of the NED.

    While the NED was the heart of the neocons, the brains was The Project for the New American Century (PNAC). It was a neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that focused on United States foreign policy. It was established as a non-profit educational organization in 1997, and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The PNAC’s stated goal was “to promote American global leadership. It was most famous for its letters to Presidents Clinton and Bush demanding ‘regime change’ in Iraq. It was dissolved in 2006 but most of its members had prominent positions in the Bush administration.

    • dahoit
      July 21, 2015 at 11:45

      Marx and Communism were an apple that fell a long way from the tree of greedy do re mi.The trotskites obviously are the reactionary force against wealth sharing and social justice,and are our enemy,line em up and shoot em to Israel via elon musk.(uh,another Ziomole stealing the states wealth in privatization of space).

  18. John
    July 20, 2015 at 00:50

    It’s always worrying to hear how such tribalist people with their paranoid fantasies have so much influence, but keep up the good work of exposing their lies and distortions.

  19. Zachary Smith
    July 19, 2015 at 23:49

    For Israel, this Iran deal means Christmas comes early. More money, more weapons, and a possible benefit I hadn’t considered.

    Jonathan Pollard Likely to be Released Later This Year

    Obama can’t bring himself to prosecute torturers or bankers, but perhaps kissing Netanyahu’s heiny until it’s red – red – red is a doable thing.

  20. Zachary Smith
    July 19, 2015 at 22:56

    The Kagan column in the neocon rag begins with this:

    Yes, it’s a poor deal in many respects, and the Republicans, and some Democrats, who are criticizing it are right to do so.

    Consider the possibility that the man is lying, and the Iran agreement is totally a win/win situation for the neocons. Besides the opportunity to encourage Congress to “object” by increasing the pressure on Syria, getting US troops back into Iraq, and massively increasing the ‘defense’ budget, the neocons have also increased the chances for a successful military strike on Iran. Perhaps the Iran deal is exactly the one they want.

    I was perplexed earlier today when I read that the necon Ashton Carter said “One of the reasons this deal is a good one is that it does nothing to prevent the military option — the U.S. military option, which I’m responsible for.” Why would the man be saying something like that?

    Later I was reviewing the Xymphora site where I found this story: The Iran Deal Strengthens America’s Military Option

    http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-iran-deal-strengthens-americas-military-option-13347

    First, the Arak heavy water reactor won’t be put into operation for a long while. That’s important because bombing a working reactor would be impossible for the US, and very difficult for even the shitty little apartheid nation of Israel. The reactor must be redesigned and partially rebuilt and that’ll take years. That means an attack in the meantime would be completely practical.

    As the article says, the intrusive inspections will give the US many more chances to investigate Iran’s program. Targets can be carefully selected at leisure – no spy satellite uncertainties. The additional time will also permit better weapons to be built for the eventual attack. Even the largest current US bomb – the MOP isn’t really adequate.

    Once again, the neocons may be pulling a Brer Rabbit/Tar Baby trick – howling about an Iran deal which is precisely the one they wanted.

  21. Abbybwood
    July 19, 2015 at 22:26

    According to this article AIPAC is launching a national lobbying blitz against the Iran nuclear deal:

    http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/07/17/pro-israel-aipac-creates-group-to-lobby-against-the-iran-deal/?_r=0

    Their new “tax-exempt” lobbying group, “Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran” needs a major counter action.

    Any ideas, Mr. Parry?

    • James Lake
      July 19, 2015 at 22:50

      Question regarding iran deal. Hope some can answer

      If the US votes against the deal.
      Are the other nations “allowed” to break the sanctions.
      I ask because Germany’s Vice President is leading a business delegation to iran. They obviously assume sanctions are all but over.
      How can the U.S. affect the process and the Israelis behave as if getting the U.S. on side will kill the deal across the board
      Thank you

    • Uncle Sam's concerned brother
      July 19, 2015 at 22:53

      If Even one person had control of enough money they could organize protests, even excercise free speech and pay people to picket the major news networks in major cities or anywhere they might get noticed — it could even become fashionable once the public realizes we’ve all been played for fools and propagandized generation upon generation.

      And picket the government directly — according to the Citizens United ruling we should have a right to free speech if not equal representation.

      Every time I add it all up, I can’t believe no one is out there making sure the public has the opportunity to know why everything is so fouled up with profiteering and special interest war mongers deceitfully running the show to suit themselves and no one else.

      Civil suits should also be filed by anyone, or the survivors, of those who’ve suffered as a result of these extensive propaganda campaigns Israel wages against the US Public and our best interests.

      • dahoit
        July 21, 2015 at 11:35

        Which reminds me;Isn’t palantir from Tolkein?Have his heirs sued these criminals?It’s not in the dictionary,so it must be LOR specific.

    • a.z
      July 20, 2015 at 11:28

      this has astounding roi with no downside. it will either get them what they want-scraping the deal or get them at least an extra billion as hush money for israel while the initial investment recouped because of tax exemption. people from every race and nation must admire the genius of these people

  22. Anonymous
    July 19, 2015 at 21:25

    Mr Parry there is no cold war. Please stop giving weight to Nulands activities by stating this.
    Wait and see the EU go its own way after Greece.
    Bailing out Greece because the U.S. pushed for this is a cost Germany will bear. Ukraine is too costly when compared with loosing Russian markets

    • Uncle Sam's concerned brother
      July 19, 2015 at 22:32

      If low key war by proxy accompanied by a full scale propaganda assault complete with baseless accusations, economic sanctions and constant saber rattling — are not considered a “Cold War”, then maybe you would consider defining those combined activities as a lukewarm hot-war that has the potential to morph into a nuclear exchange.

      What is it in your mind that causes the US to so blatantly violate international law by orchestrating “regime change” in any country that does not consider “America’s interests” as their best interests?

      The nexus of Zionism and neoconservatism is the US government — which the two of them combined have taken control of to the detriment everyone in the world except the relatively minute number of extreme narcissists that personally benefit from the carnage and destruction.

  23. Vierotchka
    July 19, 2015 at 19:23

    I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Kagan has a birthmark in the shape of 666 somewhere on his bloated body, and that Nuland dresses in crimson most of the time… :(

  24. Uncle Sam's concerned brother
    July 19, 2015 at 19:03

    What could be better that having Zionists take over the US government complete with AIPAC and pervasive Zionist media propaganda for the purpose of making Zionist Israel the beneficiary of America’s and the world’s sacrifices in blood and treasure — all for the glory of Zionism?

    As the goals and world views of neocons and Zionists are essentially one in the same, it will be good riddance to both once the American people have the courage to acknowledge the truth and all the destruction and absolute hatred this dynamic duo of deceitfulness has managed to create here on earth.

  25. Bill Bodden
    July 19, 2015 at 18:15

    So, what does this say about Hillary Clinton who promoted Nuland to her current position and John Kerry who has kept her there?

    For some reason, thoughts of Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, and Romanian Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena Ceaușescu, came to mind while reading this article.

    • F. G. Sanford
      July 19, 2015 at 18:40

      I was thinking more along the lines of Ilsa Koch.

      • Joe Tedesky
        July 20, 2015 at 01:20

        Quick, get Vicky some rope!

        • dahoit
          July 21, 2015 at 11:31

          Yeah,lock her up for failing to signal,maybe she’ll kill herself.(Murdered by guards)Please?

  26. Abe
    July 19, 2015 at 18:12

    Wherever the US government says it is promoting democracy and freedom, as US Assistant-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland professes about Ukraine, there has been destruction, impoverishment, sectarianism, fighting, and death. Welcome to post-coup Ukraine or Nulandistan. It follows the precedents and traditions of destabilization and violence honoured by US officials like Senator John McCain in the Syrian Arab Republic (McCainistan) and by Hillary Clinton in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Clintonistan).

    Arseniy Petrovych Yatsenyuk, who has illegally taken the post of Ukrainian prime minister with thr support of the US and European Union, was never favoured by the many of the authentic protesters in Euro-Maidan or even the grassroots members of his allies. When, without any election or public discussion, he was arbitrarily given the office of prime minister, many in the Euro-Maidan protest booed him and some even cried “bullet to his head.” His party boss, the infamously corrupt YuliaVolodymyrivna Tymoshenko, was booed too after she arrived. In reality, Yatsenyuk and the other Ukrainian politicians like the ultra-nationalist Svoboda’s Oleh Tyahnybok, appropriated the hopes and dreams of the Ukrainians that were protesting against not only the Ukrainian government of Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych, but the entire corrupt Ukrainian political establishment. Hiding behind the protesters, Yatsenyuk and Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party used the militias of their ultra-nationalist political allies to launch a violent coup in Kiev.

    There is no functioning democracy in Ukraine and with the full support of the European Union and the US government free speech inside Ukraine is under attack by the new regime and its thugs. Yatsenyuk’s coup-installed regime has cracked down on media freedoms, sent the Ukrainian military to attack anti-coup protesters under the pretext of NATO-backed anti-terrorism operations, and started purges and witch hunts all over Ukraine.

    Welcome to Nulandistan: A Multimedia Look at What the US and EU Have Unleashed on Ukraine
    By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
    http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/welcome-nulandistan-multimedia-look-us-eu-unleashed-ukraine/

    • Peter Loeb
      July 20, 2015 at 05:42

      JUSTICE?

      As usual “Abe” provides us with penetrating analyses.

      1. Most dissidents have scrutinized cogently the falsity
      of Zionistic claims. After all, a man who is currently in
      the process of being lynched is not that interested in
      the details and origins of his situation. In many
      books there are brilliant analyses of both the lynching
      and its origins. It is vital to comprehend these.

      2. These dissidents accept the “uniqueness” upon
      which Zionism is predicated despite themselves.

      While there are aspects to the Zionist example of settler
      colonialism which are special to it, it is not at all “unique”.

      To understand this in the context of thousands of years
      demands a complete explication of Michael Prior CM’s
      in THE BIBLE AND COLONIALISM: A MORAL CRITIQUE.
      It is certainly the case that “international law”
      is flexible as the US and Israel have demonstrated time
      and again. To fail to deal with the questions raised by
      Prior is to begin in the middle if not near the end (at the
      point when the target of a lynching is hung, has had his
      genitals cut off and given as souveniers to the authorities
      etc, It does not confront the origins (see Gabriel Kolko
      in MAIN CURRENTS OF MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY)
      nor its place during the millenia. While Prior writes from
      a Christian point of view (he was a Christian theologian)
      he himself limited himself to querries. “I don’t have all
      the answers,” he wrote adding that few others were asking
      the questions.

      3. It makes no sense in my opinion to disassociate the
      “neo-cons” from our current President. They are responsible to
      him. Of course, foreign policy in the abstract has rarely
      been a major focus of US elections until or unless US
      bodies– of “heroic” racist murder—die.

      Israel and its US arm AIPAC have been strong. If they defeat
      the present deal as well they might, it is unknown whether
      it will be acceptable to Americans living far from centers of
      “Jewish communities”. Any change in the US supported
      advance of Zionism would have to come from other sources,
      “external ones”. Has Israel/AIPAC overreached itself?
      Do most Americans in say Iowa or New Hampshire want their
      Representatives to follow the dictates of the lobbies of a
      foreign power? Although it is naive, most see their own
      representative(s) as making up their own minds etc. The
      role that lobbies play is something most do not want to
      know about.

      Whether a Democrat or Republican is elected as President in
      2016 it may take hundreds of years before the Zionist/US
      empire disintegrates just as the Roman Empire did not blow
      away in a day. On an immediate level, one policy can be
      infinitely worse for Palestinians than another.

      We are not talking about Justice here. We are are only
      comparing evils, what is more or less.

      “The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves.” W Shakespeare.

      —-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA

      • dahoit
        July 21, 2015 at 11:29

        And they’ve been broadcasting their Zionist total lies over Iran in ads since last week in trying to overturn Obombas first foreign policy success.It,s good to be the kings huh?
        Lord God Jesus,save US from the monsters!

      • Phillipe de France
        July 22, 2015 at 09:56

        Nice response.

        Scripture states that “Greater” Israel will extend east from The Euphrates, south into the Arabian Peninsula and west to the Nile. Lots of geography. Lots more war. More dead Muslims, more dead Arabs, more dead Americans, more depleted uranium, more poisoned water, more starvation and millions more displaced impoverished people.

        Is the raison d’etre for neo-cons American hegemony or a subterfuge to grant the land promised to them by God? After all Evangelicals and the Zionists are behind the Jewish state and they certainly do not want to earn the enmity of God.

        Are these wars religious, political or both?

  27. Abe
    July 19, 2015 at 18:00

    Amid much hysteria, the notion has been widely peddled in the United States that President Obama’s “new” foreign policy doctrine, announced [in March 2014] at West Point, rejects neo-cons and neo-liberals and is, essentially, post-imperialist and a demonstration of realpolitik.

    Not so fast. Although stepping back from the excesses of the Cheney regime – as in bombing whole nations into “democracy” – the “desire to lead” still crystallizes might is right.

    Moreover, “exceptionalism” remains the norm. Now not so blatant, but still implemented via a nasty set of tools, from financial warfare to cyber-war, from National Endowment for Democracy-style promotion of “democracy” to Joint Special Operations Command-driven counter-terrorism, drone war and all shades of shadow wars.

    In the early 2000s, the model was the physical destruction and occupation of Iraq. In the 2010s the model is the slow-mo destruction, by proxy, of Syria.

    And still, those who “conceptualized” the destruction of Iraq keep rearing their Alien-like slimy head. Their icon is of course Robert Kagan – one of the founders of the apocalyptically funereal Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and husband of crypto-Ukrainian hell raiser Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland (thus their dream of Ukraine as the Khaganate of Nulands, or simply Nulandistan.)

    Kagan has been devastatingly misguided on everything, as in his 2003 best-seller Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, an eulogy of “benign” Americans standing guard against the “threats” (as in Muslim fundamentalism) emanating from a Hobbesian world way beyond the cozy Kantian precinct inhabited by Europe.

    Then, in The Return of History and the End of Dreams (2008), the “evil” was not Muslim fundamentalism anymore (too shabby), but the emerging of those vast autocracies, Russia and China, antithetical to Western democracies. But with The World America Made (2012), the paradisiacal shining city on the hill would once again triumph, more than capable to see those autocracies off; after all, the only reliable guarantee of global peace is American exceptionalism.

    Kagan still commands the attention even of the otherwise aloof Commander-in-Chief, who avidly consumed The World America Made before his 2012 State of the Union Address, in which he proclaimed “America is back”.

    It’s enlightening to flash back to Kagan writing in the Weekly Standard in March 2011, sounding like an awestruck schoolboy praising Obama; “He thoroughly rejected the so-called realist approach, extolled American exceptionalism, spoke of universal values and insisted that American power should be used, when appropriate, on behalf of those values.”

    Any similarity with Obama’s “new” foreign policy doctrine is, indeed, intentional.

    Return of the living (neo-con) dead
    By Pepe Escobar
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-030614.html

  28. john
    July 19, 2015 at 17:45

    No ! No ! . This is a nice Jewish family from the loins of their father Abraham ….remember you must bless them or their god Yahweh will curse you

    • Abe
      July 19, 2015 at 18:06

      …with U.S.-supplied earth-penetrating weapons or a U.S.-supplied coup d’etat.

    • Phillipe de France
      July 22, 2015 at 09:32

      Spot on…spot on. I always thought Christianity was about liberty not license. Evangelicals seem to have an unwritten list of sins that are acceptable to God and another that are not.

      As an adult child of Evangelicals it is distressing to constantly hear of how we must support the Jews and Israel lest we lose God’s blessing. A Christian must stand for one un-Christian nation while waging unrelenting war on other un-Christian nations. The logic and reasoning escapes me. Any attempt to challenge this narrative is met with derision and accusations of doubting God.

      The United States is supposed to be unique nation built upon a foundation of liberty. We are to be as a beacon of hope to those which land on our shores. Instead we have become a nation of war mongers, lusters after our own pleasures and avaricious meddling busy bodies. In other words, we are exactly like the nations we wage war upon.

      Thomas Jefferson: “We are not a nation that goes abroad to seek monsters to destroy but, a nation that seeks commerce and free trade”. A Christian nation we are not!

  29. Abe
    July 19, 2015 at 17:41

    Nuland and Kagan both subscribe to the old doctrine of “manifest destiny” which [the now-notorious “Project for a New American Century”] document was based on. According to this, America must remain the undisputed leader of the world, because that is the reason for America’s existence. As a diplomat she has been employed to serve America’s interests, but, like many official US representatives, she has taken the view that the US interest is the only one, there is no such thing as a general or even broader interest, as her famous “Fuck the EU” remark last year testifies.

    In late February Germany’s Der Spiegel described her as “America’s Riot Diplomat”— a sobriquet which can mean both that Nuland acts disruptively, and that she creates actual riots (as on the Maidan in Ukraine). Its “Politics” column stated that Nuland poses a threat to America’s allies (including Georgia and Azerbaijan, the countries she has just visited), and that while her current remit is to solve the crisis of Ukraine and its relations with Russia, “In the crisis, Nuland herself has become the problem.”

    So why was such a person visiting Georgia and Azerbaijan at the same time former US favourite Saakashvili was taking up a new appointment in Ukraine to prevent him being extradited to face criminal charges in Georgia? As always, there is no coincidence about these things occurring at the same time.

    Victoria Nuland’s “Secret” Coup d’etat in Georgia
    By Henry Kamens
    http://journal-neo.org/2015/03/04/victoria-nuland-s-secret-coup-d-etat-in-georgia/

  30. July 19, 2015 at 17:33

    I will just say that Kagan and his wife Cookie Nudelman are deep subversives of this country
    in service to the ZIONIST ENTITY……..imho.

    So what else would you expect from them?

    …and for good measure I will point out that My Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is
    a NeoLib/NeoCon and a Straussian from the U of Chicago……who serves the same entity.

    2LT Dennis Morrisseau USArmy [armor – Vietnam era] retired. POB 177 W Pawlet, VT 05775 802 645 9727 [email protected]

    • Uncle Sam's concerned brother
      July 19, 2015 at 17:56

      Mr. Morrisseau,

      Thanks for stating your honest opinion.

      If there were truth and justice being recognized in domestic US and international law, the Kagan’s and Nuland’s of the world along with all their accomplices in overthrowing the US government in order to serve Zionism, would be prosecuted in US and international courts and likely would view what remains of their lives in human form from the inside of prison cells…

    • Uncle Sam's concerned brother
      July 19, 2015 at 20:59

      If anyone has any idea; I’m curious to know: what percentage of active US military personnel knows how excessive the undue influence Israel has over our US foreign/military policies actually is?

      And what percentage of the top brass is aware of that same undue reality? What would it be that keeps the Generals or Secretary of Defense from speaking up? I know Chuck Hagel and Petraeus spoke up one time and then essentially aquiessed to silence seemingly for the sake of contiuing their careers. Has our collective military all sold duty and honor bound patriotism and loyalty to the US citizens for the sake of keeping their career as traitors enriching themselves?

      Beyond a certain threashold, the idea that a dissenting voice can do more good from the inside than from the outside is not credible — at some point standing by, while all of this is going on, is tacit approval, as well as quid pro quo, looking the other way while getting paid…

    • July 19, 2015 at 22:39

      You’re lying. That’s a smear against Bernie Sanders and you have nothing to back it up.

      • Uncle Sam's concerned brother
        July 19, 2015 at 23:02

        Bernie has overwhelmingly backed whatever is proposed by Israel or their agents including the slaughter in Gaza just last Summer of over 2200 Palestinians.

        In all fairness to Mr. Sanders, what US politician in office says the truth about all the Trillions Israel has cost the US to date while deceitfully claiming to want peace as they simultaneously manufacture excuses to collectively punish Palestinians and illegally take more Palestinian land?

        • July 20, 2015 at 01:57

          In all fairness, Bernie Sanders did not support the fascist Bush administration’s war in Iraq. Hillary did, any so did Netanyahoo.

          • Uncle Sam's concerned brother
            July 20, 2015 at 02:35

            Here are a few quotes from one article talking about Bernie’s voting record on wars up to 2006.

            “Despite his own claims, Sanders has not been an antiwar leader. Ever since he won election to the House, he has taken either equivocal positions on U.S. wars or outright supported them. His hawkish positions — especially his decision to support Bill Clinton�s 1999 Kosovo War — drove one of his key advisers, Jeremy Brecher, to resign from his staff. Brecher wrote in his resignation letter, �Is there a moral limit to the military violence you are willing to participate in or support?�

            So outraged were peace activists over Sanders� support of the Kosovo War that they occupied his office in 1999. Sanders had them arrested. Under the Bush regime, Sanders� militarism has only grown worse. While he called for alternative approaches to the war on Afghanistan, he failed to join the sole Democrat, Barbara Lee, to vote against Congress� resolution that gave George Bush a blank check to launch war on any country he deemed connected to the September 11 attacks.

            Ever since, he has voted for appropriations bills to fund the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, despite their horrific toll on the occupied peoples as well as U.S. soldiers.

            Sanders has been critical of the war on Iraq, but he has supported pro-war measures — such as a March 21, 2003, resolution stating, �Congress expresses the unequivocal support and appreciation of the nation to the President as Commander-in-Chief for his firm leadership and decisive action in the conduct of military operations in Iraq as part of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism.�

            He also opposes immediate withdrawal from Iraq, despite the fact that a majority of residents in his home city of Burlington voted for such a position in a town meeting resolution in February 2005.”

            http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov06/Smith15.htm

            Why do you suppose Bernie supported Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza last year collectively punishing them for something that took place in the West Bank?

          • July 20, 2015 at 08:52

            Bernie Sanders has said he isn’t a pacifist. As for supporting the war in Kosovo, that was justified in stopping the fascist Serbs who were committing genocide. While I normally side with the Palestinians in their resistance to occupation, the fact is that they were firing rockets into civilian areas of Israel. The Palestinians in Gaza are also led by Hamas, which is full of fanatic, religious screwballs.

          • Uncle Sam's concerned brother
            July 20, 2015 at 10:41

            Ms. Tracy, You sound like the perfect Zionist propagandist blaming the original victims of Zionism for creating Zionist aggression — it wasn’t true in the beginning and it isn’t true now while it was the Zionists that came from Europe intending to take the land by force once their numbers were sufficient and for decades they deceitfully told the world they wanted to coexist with the indigenous people while they planned the massacres and expulsions that finally took place in 1947-48.

            Without Zionist terrorism there would be no Israel today and the same Zionist terrorism and war crimes continue today with Israel’s continuing periodic slaughters and war crimes.

            The jig is up Mary, you and all the other religiously or racially biased and sentimentally blinded supporters of criminal Zionists do not need to tell any more lies for Israel — the world is now seeing you and them for what they are.

            If you are not one of the people I describe above, then you are a victim of Zionist propaganda yourself and are doing your country and the world a grave disservice by further disseminating that propaganda.

          • Uncle Sam's concerned brother
            July 20, 2015 at 11:03

            Also Ms. Tracy, Your description as Hamas being religious screwballs when compared to the history and practices of Zionism, should leave you condemning not only the terroristic beginning of Zionist Israel but also condemning the methods of operations and philosophies they started with are still practicing today.

            Lobbying foreign governments to recognize Zionist war crimes as legitimate — which is what created Israel and continues to this day — search:

            (((Israel lobby controls US government)))

            Then figure in the Zionist control of the Western media, propagandizing the Western public on behalf of Israel — search: (((Israel control Western media)))

            Consider this all working in conjunction with other defaming organizations with the intent to intimidate people from speaking the truth about Israel — like the Anti-Defamation League.

            When you add all of this up Mary, with Israel’s planned massacres, expulsions and continuing land thefts along with the trouble it has cost Israel’s “friends” the US (really Israel’s patsies), there is no one more religiously extreme and than Zionists and the witting and unwitting people who support them.

            Did you know Israel funded Hamas in the early days of Hamas because they were useful to Israel at the time? That is one of Israel’s hallmarks — creating and funding someone to do their dirty work or having the US fund the dirty deeds on Israel’s behalf.

            The sooner Israel with their methods and philosophies fall, the sooner the world will be a better place.

        • Boris M Garsky
          July 20, 2015 at 10:04

          Firstly, Sanders popularity is being deliberately overstated; his popularity being strong in the Jewish and Homosexual communities. Sanders is known for his irascible demeanor and quick temper; not good material for the WH. I believe him to be, possibly, if he gets into the WH, the most dangerous person on earth next to Netanyahu. His record is replete with distortions and lies and I see no reason to believe that his campaign promises are an exception. If elected, which I doubt, he will gut the Iran deal and lead the USA into a war with Iran. He will most certainly ‘up the ante’ in Ukraine, hoping for a full blown regional confrontation with Russia and NATO. Worse yet, he would have control of our nuclear arsenal! 2016 could well usher in the end of America.

        • July 20, 2015 at 13:10

          I’m no Zionist. I believe that the religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are all based on myth and invented by people who had no clue regarding science. It wasn’t their fault — they lived in an era that was pre-science.

          I should also point out that the rulers of Saudi Arabia might now be considered Zionists, since they seem to move in lockstep with Netanyahoo.

          As I stated earlier, I’m a supporter of Bernie Sanders and hope he becomes president of the US.

          • dahoit
            July 21, 2015 at 11:21

            Serbian fascists?Serbia concerns itself with Serbia,or what was once theirs,while the real fascists like Israel and US regard everywhere as theirs.
            You seem to have special venom for Judaisms historical enemies,of which there are a multitude.And why is that?Is it us or they who have a hard time making friends outside of paid off whores.
            Bernie Sanders talks a good one,but when it comes to push and shove time,he goes neocon.And his time on a kibbutz leaves him open to dual loyalty.
            And the only wars these people have experienced first hand,are the bagel and doughnut wars at the table,the fat f*cks.

    • Bruce
      July 20, 2015 at 15:10
    • Broos
      July 20, 2015 at 15:16
    • Bert
      July 22, 2015 at 02:46

      You are right on all accounts.

    • July 28, 2015 at 10:16

      Was never interested in Sanders’ commie sounding platform until I read this exchange of comments. So I went on an Internet prowl to find out if Sanders was Jewish. My Yid Radar’s warning signals were not malfunctioning. Wikipedia lists his religion as “Jewish”. Need we ask if he’s a charter member of that very nasty and Zionist Kagan, Inc.? No. The Kagan Crime Ring has no interest in U.S. Manifest Destiny, at least not the one taught to us in schools. The only manifest destiny they know is the old Talmudic one, Jewish Hegemony over the whole of Goyimdom – the entire planet.

  31. bfearn
    July 19, 2015 at 17:18

    Most people, even most Americans, do not want war especially after they find out how ludicrious it is. In spite of this America has been almost continiously at war since 1776.

    The reason is the relative few like Nuland, Kagan and even Obama who believe that they not only have the right to kill innocent people but they embrace the opportunity.

    There is no hope for these people. They are the well behave sociopaths who contaminate many others with their immorality however all is not lost. People of conscience, who know that problems are never solved with violence, must resist these warmongers.

    “Gene” Debs and many other have set a great example. All we have to do is follow.

    • July 19, 2015 at 22:40

      “If you take out Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region… The task and the great opportunity and challenge is not merely to effect the ouster of the regime, but also to transform the region.” – Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech to Congress, 2002.

      • eric siverson
        July 22, 2015 at 13:32

        I have yet to see the positives of the U.S. destroying Iraq .

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