The numbers of casualties of U.S. wars since Sept. 11, 2001 have largely gone uncounted, but coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative, argues Nicolas J.S. Davies.
By Nicolas J.S. Davies
How many people have been killed in America’s post-9/11 wars? I have been researching and writing about that question since soon after the U.S. launched these wars, which it has tried to justify as a response to terrorist crimes that killed 2,996 people in the U.S. on September 11th 2001.
Samar Hassan screamed after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2005. Credit Chris Hondros/Getty Images
But no crime, however horrific, can justify wars on countries and people who were not responsible for the crime committed, as former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz patiently explained to NPR at the time.
“The Iraq Death Toll 15 Years After the U.S. Invasion” which I co-wrote with Medea Benjamin, estimates the death toll in Iraq as accurately and as honestly as we can in March 2018. Our estimate is that about 2.4 million people have probably been killed in Iraq as a result of the historic act of aggression committed by the U.S. and U.K. in 2003. In this report, I will explain in greater detail how we arrived at that estimate and provide some historical context. In Part 2 of this report, I will make a similar up-to-date estimate of how many people have been killed in America’s other post-9/11 wars.
Mortality Studies vs Passive Reporting
I explored these same questions in Chapter 7 of my book, Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq, and in previous articles, from “Burying the Lancet Report… and the Children” in 2005 to “Playing Games With War Deaths” in 2016.
In each of those accounts, I explained that estimates of war deaths regularly published by UN agencies, monitoring groups and the media are nearly all based on fragmentary “passive reporting,” not on comprehensive mortality studies.
Of the countries where the U.S. and its allies have been waging war since 2001, Iraq is the only country where epidemiologists have conducted mortality studies based on the best practices that they have developed and used in other war zones (like Angola, Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda). In all these countries, as in Iraq, the results of comprehensive epidemiological studies revealed between 5 and 20 times more deaths than previously published figures based on passive reporting.
Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the ‘War on Terror’ , a report published by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) in 2015 found that the 2006 Lancet study was the most comprehensive and reliable mortality study conducted in Iraq, based on its study design, the experience and independence of the research team, the short time elapsed since the deaths it documented and its consistency with other measures of violence in occupied Iraq. That study estimated that about 601,000 Iraqis were killed in the first 39 months of war and occupation in Iraq, while the war had also caused about 54,000 non-violent deaths.
In the other countries affected by America’s post-9/11 wars, the only reports of how many people have been killed are either compiled by the UN based on investigations of incidents reported to local UN Assistance Missions (as in Iraq and Afghanistan), or by the UN or independent monitoring groups like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Iraq Body Count (IBC) and Airwars based on passive reports from government agencies, health facilities or local or foreign media.
These passive reports are regularly cited by UN and government agencies, media and even by activists as “estimates” of how many people have been killed, but that is not what they are. By definition, no compilation of fragmentary reports can possibly be a realistic estimate of all the people killed in a country ravaged by war.
At best, passive reports can reveal a minimum number of war deaths. But that is often such a small fraction of actual deaths that it is highly misleading to cite it as an “estimate” of the total number of people killed. This is why epidemiologists have instead developed scientific sampling methods that they can use to produce accurate estimates of war deaths through statistically valid mortality studies.
The huge disparities epidemiologists have found between the results of mortality studies and passive reporting (between 5:1 and 20:1) have been consistent across many different war zones all over the world. In countries where Western governments are not responsible for the state of war, there has been no political controversy over these results, and they are regularly cited by Western officials and media.
But Western politicians and media have dismissed and marginalized the results of mortality studies in Iraq for political reasons. The U.S. and U.K.’s responsibility for the state of war in Iraq means that the scale of the slaughter is a serious matter of political and criminal responsibility for senior officials who chose to ignore legal advice that the invading Iraq would be “a crime of aggression”.
In 2006, British officials were advised by Sir Roy Anderson, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense, that “The (Lancet) study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to ‘best practice’ in this area…”
President George W. Bush in poster by Robbie Conal (robbieconal.com)
The BBC obtained copies of emails in which British officials admitted that the study was “likely to be right,” and “the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.” But the same officials immediately launched a campaign to discredit the study. President George W. Bush publicly declared, “I don’t consider it a credible report,” and the subservient U.S. corporate media quickly dismissed it.
In “Playing Games With War Deaths” in 2016, I concluded, “As with climate change and other issues, UN officials and journalists must overcome political pressures, come to grips with the basic science involved, and stop sweeping the vast majority of the victims of our wars down this Orwellian “memory hole.”
Some have argued that it is not important to know whether our wars have killed tens of thousands of people or millions, since all deaths in war are a tragic loss of life and we should just mourn them, instead of quibbling over numbers. But as the authors of Body Count noted,
“The numbers relayed by the media should in themselves be terrifying enough… But apparently they are still perceived as tolerable and, moreover, easy to explain given the picture of excessive religiously motivated violence. The figure of 655,000 deaths in the first three war years alone, however, clearly points to a crime against humanity approaching genocide.”
I agree with the authors of Body Count that it makes a difference whether our wars kill millions of people or only ten thousand, as most people in the U.K. and the U.S. seem to believe according to opinion polls.
Most Americans would say that it matters whether Germany’s role in the Second World War led to millions of violent deaths or only ten thousand. Suggesting the latter is actually a crime in Germany and several other countries.
So American politicians, journalists and members of the public who say it doesn’t matter how many Iraqis have been killed are consciously or unconsciously applying a morally untenable double standard to the consequences of our country’s wars precisely because they are our country’s wars.
A War That Keeps Killing
While the 2006 Lancet study of post-invasion mortality in Iraq is recognized by independent experts like the authors of PSR’s Body Count report as the most accurate and reliable estimate of war deaths in any of our post-9/11 wars, it was conducted nearly 12 years ago, after only 39 months of war and occupation in Iraq. Tragically, that was nowhere near the end of the deadly and catastrophic results of the U.S. and U.K.’’s historic act of aggression.
The 2006 Lancet study documented ever-increasing violence in occupied Iraq between 2003 and 2006, and many other metrics indicate that the escalation of violence in Iraq continued at least until the end of the U.S. “surge” in 2007. The tide of mutilated bodies of death squad victims overwhelming morgues in Baghdad did not peak until late 2006 with 1,800 bodies in July and 1,600 in October. Then there was a five-fold increase in the U.S. aerial bombardment of Iraq in 2007, and January 2008 was the heaviest month of U.S. bombing since the invasion in 2003.
This pattern gives credibility to a survey conducted by a respected British polling firm, Opinion Research Business (ORB), in June 2007, one year after the Lancet study, which estimated that 1,033,000 Iraqis had been killed by that time.
The Lancet study estimated that 328,000, or more than half of the violent deaths it counted, had occurred between May 2005 and May/June 2006. So, if the ORB’s estimate was accurate, it would mean that about another 430,000 Iraqis were killed in the year after the 2006 Lancet study was conducted.
While the figure of a million people killed was shocking, the continuing increase in deaths revealed by the ORB survey was consistent with other measures of the violence of the occupation, which continued to increase in late 2006 and 2007.
Violence in Iraq decreased in 2008 and for several years after that. But the Special Police death squads recruited, trained and unleashed in Iraq by the Iraqi Interior Ministry, U.S. occupation forces and the CIA between 2004 and 2006 (rebranded as National Police after the exposure of their Al-Jadiriyah torture center in 2005, then as Federal Police in 2009) continued their reign of terror against Sunni Arabs in the North and West of the country. This generated a resurgence of armed resistance and led to large swathes of Iraq accepting the rule of Islamic State in 2014 as an alternative to the relentless abuses of the corrupt, sectarian Iraqi government and its murderous death squads.
U.K.-based Iraq Body Count (IBC) has compiled passive reports of civilian deaths in Iraq since the invasion, but it had only counted 43,394 deaths by June 2006 when the Lancet study found an estimated 601,000 violent deaths, a ratio of almost 14:1. Just Foreign Policy (JFP) in the U.S. created an “Iraqi Death Estimator” that updated the Lancet study’s estimate by tracking deaths passively reported by Iraq Body Count and multiplying them by the ratio between the mortality study and IBC’s passive reporting in 2006.
Since IBC is based mainly on reports in English-language media, it may have undercounted deaths even more after 2007 as the the Western media’s interest in Iraq declined. On the other hand, as it became safer for government officials and journalists to travel around Iraq, its reporting may have improved. Or perhaps these and other factors balanced each other out, making JFP’s Iraqi Death Estimator quite accurate. It may have become less accurate over time, and it was discontinued in September 2011. By that point, its estimate of Iraqi deaths stood at 1.46 million.
Another mortality study was published in the PLOS medical journal in 2013, covering the period up to 2011. Its lead author told National Geographic its estimate of about 500,000 dead in Iraq was “likely a low estimate.” The study had a wider margin of error than the 2006 Lancet study, and the survey teams decided it was too dangerous to work in two of the 100 clusters that that were randomly chosen to survey.
The most serious problem with the PLOS study seems to be that so many houses were destroyed or abandoned and so many families wiped out or just disappeared, that nobody was left to report deaths in those families to the survey teams. At the extreme, houses or entire blocks where everyone had been killed or had fled were recorded as suffering no deaths at all.
After the extreme violence of 2006 and 2007 and several more years of lower level conflict, the effect of destruction and displacement on the PLOS study must have been much greater than in 2006. One in six households in Iraq was forced to move at least once between 2005 and 2010. The UNHCR registered 3 million refugees within or outside the country, but acknowledged that many more were unregistered. The authors added 55,000 deaths to their total to allow for 15% of 2 million refugee households losing one family member each, but they acknowledged that this was very conservative.
The authors of Body Count calculated that, if only 1% of houses surveyed were empty or destroyed and each of these households had lost two family members, this would have increased the PLOS study’s overall mortality estimate by more than 50%. Ignoring the two clusters that in effect represented the most devastated parts of Iraq must have had a similar effect. The cluster sample survey method relies on the effect of surveying a cross-section of different areas, from the worst affected to many that are relatively unscathed and report few or no deaths. Most violent deaths are often concentrated in a small number of clusters, making clusters like the two that were skipped disproportionately important to the accuracy of the final estimate.
Map of Iraq. Kurdish territory is in the northeast.
Since 2011, a whole new phase of the war has taken place. There was an Arab Spring in Iraq in 2011, but it was ruthlessly suppressed, driving Fallujah and other cities once more into open rebellion. Several major cities fell to Islamic State in 2014, were besieged by Iraqi government forces and then largely destroyed by U.S.-led aerial bombardment and U.S., Iraqi and allied rocket and artillery fire. Iraq Body Count and the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq have collected passive reports of tens of thousands of civilians killed in this phase of the war.
Former Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari told Patrick Cockburn of the U.K.’s Independent newspaper that Iraqi Kurdish intelligence reports estimated that at least 40,000 civilians were killed in the bombardment of Mosul alone. Zebari said that there were probably many more bodies buried in the rubble, implying that the reports he saw were of actual bodies found and buried up to that point.
A recent project to remove rubble and recover bodies in just one neighborhood of Mosul yielded another 3,353 bodies, of whom 20% appeared to be IS fighters and 80% were civilians. Another 11,000 people are still reported as missing by their families in Mosul.
IBC has now updated its death count for the period up to June 2006 to 52,209, reducing its ratio to violent deaths in the 2006 Lancet study to 11.5:1. If we apply the method of JFP’s Iraqi Death Estimator from July 2007 to the present using that updated ratio, and add it to ORB’s estimate of 1.03 million killed by June 2007, we can arrive at a current estimate of the total number of Iraqis killed since 2003. This cannot possibly be as accurate as a comprehensive new mortality study.But, in my judgment, this is the most accurate estimate we can make based on what we do know.
That gives us an estimate of 2.38 million Iraqis killed since 2003, as a result of the criminal American and British invasion of Iraq.
Minimum and Maximum Range
With significant uncertainty underlying this estimate, it is also important to calculate a minimum and a maximum number based on possible variations in the numbers involved.
To arrive at a minimum and maximum number of people that may have been killed in Iraq, we can start with the minimum and maximum numbers of violent deaths that were each established with 97.5% probability by the 2006 Lancet study, which were 426,000 and 794,000. ORB in 2007 gave a narrower range for its minimum and maximum based on its larger sample size, but ORB was not considered as rigorous as the Lancet study in other ways. If we apply the same margins as in the Lancet study to the ORB study‘s main estimate, that gives us a minimum of 730,000 and a maximum of 1.36 million people killed by June 2007.
To update those minimum and maximum figures to the present time using a variation of Just Foreign Policy’s method, we must also allow for changes in the ratio between IBC’s tally of deaths and the actual number of people killed. The ratios of the Lancet study’s minimum and maximum figures to IBC’s revised count for June 2006 are about 8:1 and 15:1 respectively.
These ratios are well within the ratios between comprehensive mortality studies and passive reporting found in other war zones around the world, which have varied from 5:1 to 20:1, as I noted earlier. But maybe IBC has counted more or less of the actual deaths since 2006 than than it did before. It must surely have tried to keep improving the scope of its data collection. On the other hand, in the most recent phase of the war, many people were killed by U.S.-led bombing and shelling in areas ruled by Islamic State, where people were punished or even executed for trying to communicate with the outside world. So IBC’s data for this period may be more fragmentary than ever.
To arrive at a realistic minimum and maximum, we must allow for both these possibilities. IBC’s 8:1 ratio to the Lancet study’s minimum number killed by 2006 may have fallen closer to the historic minimum ratio of 5:1, or its 15:1 ratio to the Lancet study’s maximum number in 2006 may have risen closer to the historic maximum of 20:1. Using a ratio of 6.5:1 to arrive at the minimum number of deaths and 17.5:1 for the maximum allows for a lower minimum and a higher maximum than in 2006, without equaling the most extreme ratios ever seen in other conflicts. That gives us a minimum of 760,000 Iraqis killed since July 2007, and a maximum of 2.04 million.
Adding these figures to the minimums and maximums we calculated for the period up to June 2007 gives us total minimum and maximum figures for the entire period since the U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq in 2003. We can estimate that the number of Iraqis killed as a consequence of the illegal invasion of their country must be somewhere between 1.5 million and 3.4 million. As is generally the case with such statistical ranges, the actual number of people killed is likely to be closer to our main estimate of 2.38 million than to either the minimum or maximum end of this range.
Call for a New Mortality Study in Iraq
It is very important that the public health community provide the world with accurate and up-to-date mortality surveys of Iraq and other post-9/11 war zones.
A new mortality study for Iraq must find a way to survey even the most dangerous areas, and it must finally develop realistic procedures to estimate deaths in cases where entire families have been killed, or where houses or apartments have been destroyed or abandoned. This factor has been identified as a potential flaw in every mortality study in Iraq since 2004, and it is one that only becomes more significant as time passes. This cannot be ignored, and neither should compensating for it be left to guesswork.
Survey teams could compile records of empty and destroyed homes within the clusters they are surveying, and they could ask neighbors about empty or destroyed houses where large numbers of people or entire families may have been killed. They could also survey refugees and internally displaced people to estimate deaths among these populations.
Epidemiologists have overcome very serious dangers and difficulties to develop techniques to accurately measure the human cost of war. Their work must continue, and it must keep developing and improving. They must overcome powerful political pressures, including from the guilty parties responsible for the carnage in the first place, to politicize and discredit their incredibly difficult but noble and vital work.
On the 15th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, the Center for Constitutional Rights in the U.S. renewed its call for the U.S. to pay war reparations to the people of Iraq. This is one way countries that are guilty of aggression and other war crimes have traditionally fulfilled their collective responsibility for the death and destruction they have caused.
In Blood On Our Hands, I concluded my account of the U.S. war in Iraq with a similar call for war reparations, and for war crimes prosecutions of the senior U.S. and U.K. civilian and military officials responsible for the “supreme international crime” of aggression and other systematic war crimes in Iraq.
Coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative for the people of Iraq, the United States, the United Kingdom, and for the whole world. The world will never hold major American and British war criminals accountable for their crimes as long as the public does not understand the full scale and horror of what they have done. And the world will not know peace as long as the most powerful aggressors can count on impunity for “the supreme international crime.”
Nicolas J.S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapter on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.
I remember being in the bomb shelters in the UK in the 40s,I am only here by the grace of god.Despots and idiots run this world.We can only hope the vict ims have moved on to a better world.Maybe this world is only a experiment.Here in Australian we have a half wit has PM .Closing down MANUFACTURING and powerstations but will the idea we sell weapons of death to the despots of this world thus creating employment for the people hes put out of work,then has the check to blame the unemployed.
The 9/11 ‘Truth’ Parlor Game
By Robert Parry
https://consortiumnews.com/2011/011511.html
Robert Parry will always be one of my heroes, but I think he gives the scientific evidence short shrift. I don’t wish to get into a lengthy back and forth on this; there is a wealth of material out there for anyone to peruse and make their own decision.
At the end of his January 2011 article in CN, Parry mentioned “summaries of evidence regarding the 9/11 attacks” that includes “the work done by Popular Mechanics, the National Geographic channel, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology”.
Let’s be clear here:
As an investigative journalist, Parry examined the facts of America’s pre- and post-9/11 wars.
Parry’s criticism of “truthers” (quite correct, in my personal view) and the mention of “summaries of evidence” was by no means an endorsement of the “official story” that appears in such documents as the 9/11 Commission Report (2004).
Parry wasn’t “ignoring” 9/11.
One more important point:
9/11 “truther” speculations and various forms of “conspiracy theory” are frequently posted by internet trolls. The trolls are attempting to discredit independent investigative journalism sites and undermine fact-based analysis.
Recognizing the harm caused by “floating unsubstantiated and bizarre claims”, CN comment policy specifically emphasizes that comments should avoid allegations that are unsupported by facts.
Bellingcat, White Helmets, and the Syria Observatory for Human Rights, plus a whole range of less well known bloggers and self-styled “open-source information” analysts, are no longer playing a supporting role in the ongoing information war that is an important component of hybrid wars.
These fake NGOs are now playing a leading role in what US military doctrine refers to as “shaping the information battlefield” within the “Full Spectrum Dominance” agenda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro1byfe5vUM
Naturally, these entities are not setting the agenda or calling the shots. They have been assigned a number of roles by the political elites.
Bellingcat, White Helmets, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights turn what would otherwise be recognized as propaganda into “breaking news”-style stories that are then run, with reference to the NGO in question rather than the true source of the disinformation, by the mainstream media.
In his report on America’s post-9/11 wars, Nicolas J.S. Davies has listed Rami Abdul Rahman’s Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a U.K.-based propaganda outlet allied with Western-backed armed groups in Syria, as one of several purported “independent monitoring groups”.
Operating out of his home in Coventry, Abdul Rahman has been a major source for propaganda used to sell Western military intervention in Syria.
A New York Times feature article (9 April 2013) titled “A Very Busy Man Behind the Syrian Civil War’s Casualty Count” noted that “one-man band” Abdul Rahman was subsidized by “the European Union and one European country that he declines to identify”.
Dramatic “death toll” claims from Abdul Rahman’s “observatory” are cited by Western mainstream media, “human rights” groups, and “regime change” think tanks like the Atlantic Council.
For example, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights routinely broadcasts “chemical attack” claims from armed groups battling the Syrian security forces.
A recent (20 February 2018) example:
“the hysterical attack of the regime and its allies on the besieged Ghouta”
http://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=85284
The Atlantic Council immediately (21 February 2018) claimed “Assad’s Forces Are Killing Dozens of Children in a Damascus Suburb” and described it as an “unrelenting bombardment”.
As a preface to an interview with Frederic C. Hof on “developments in Syria”, the Atlantic Council cited Abdul Rahman’s operation: “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based monitor group, said the ongoing attack on Eastern Ghouta is the deadliest attack in that location since a chemical attack by the Assad regime in 2013.”
Hof served as Special Adviser on Syrian political transition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012. He was previously the Special Coordinator for Regional Affairs in the US Department of State’s Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, where he advised Special Envoy George Mitchel. Hof had been a Resident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East since November 2012, and assumed the position as Director in May 2016.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) belongs to a network of “regime change” propaganda launderers that includes fake “independent investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins of the Brown Moses and Bellingcat disinformation websites. Higgins and Hof were co-authors of the 2016 Atlantic Council “report” on Syria.
It is clear that none of these “groups” are “independent” of Western “regime change” operations.
Abdul Rahman’s Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is part and parcel of Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis “hybrid war” operations in Syria.
We hope that Mr. Davies will better investigate and more accurately report on Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Mathew-
Thanks for this. I agree completely. It is a shame that more attention isn’t focused on 9/11. Kevin Ryan’s “Dig Within” is excellent as well.
Given current frightening developments vis-a-vis the U.S./U.K./NATO, Skripal false flag, Syrians’ success against terrorist mercenaries, irrational-dangerous steps taken against Russia, etc., there seems no reason to suggest there’s any exaggeration in stating the fate of humanity is dependent on which comes first – 9/11 Truth or nuclear annihilation.
In other words, one might with confidence state the continued ignoring of 9/11 truth equals the most severe existential risk of history and real potential for the extinguishing of civilization.
I agree Jerry. 9/11 is the elephant in the room that everyone ignores, and allowing that to continue to happen gives a green light to all future false flags, and we are hurtling toward Armageddon while the sheeple are hypnotized by bread and circuses.
Mathew Neville,
Thank you very much. It is perhaps impossible to overstate for humanity how important 9/11 Truth revelation is for ending war. Any man or woman on Earth who has personally researched 9/11 to any considerable extent fully understands the paramount importance of getting to the truth. Such is an effort which can be done with very minimal expenditure by simply allowing any man or woman on Earth interested in participating to do so, either in person, via Skype, academic papers, etc. – with the sole requirement being the man or woman has achieved a Ph.D..
After that necessary 1st step of the process comes to its conclusion, the next crucial action is the issuing of subpoenas ….
No matter how many were killed, and it was higher than the estimates, the major significance of the Iraq thing was that the yankee imperium no longer felt constrained by international law, and particularly, war crimes law, any longer. The Afghanistan thing and earlier efforts in the former Yugoslavia had real propaganda pretexts. From Iraq onwards, the yankee state has operated totally extralegally as an international totalitarian bully with only the fear of resistance restricting its intents. The real significance of Iraq is that this is when the yankee imperium claimed total power and no longer felt any necessity of even having colourable international law cover for its many crimes, a process which started, as we now know based on the fraudulent nature of war pretexts, in the Yugoslav wars and, even earlier, in the Kuwait-Iraq war where the US had the war anyway despite Saddam Hussain’s offer to exit Kuwait, and in the aftermath, where the extra-legal sanctions and bombings carried on over the decade between the first and second Iraq wars.
I’m not trying to be disagreeable, but I just don’t see how nailing down the number of dead murdered by war(s) will move us along toward justice and peace. I mean, does the 5 millionth person murdered matter more than the first person murdered mattered? (How many Mozarts and Einsteins has humanity cheated ourselves out of by killing so many children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers?)
Also, since the number 1 cause of death in this world is hunger, and if our purpose is to stop people being killed, then shouldn’t we be urgently searching for the root problem from which springs both the problem of killing people by wars AND killing people by starvation?
Hitler was responsible for the killing of 7million people in 5 years and we call him inhuman, monster, etc. etc., right? So what do you think of someone who kills 26 times as many people (180 million) *every* 5 years? More than 26 times more inhuman, monster, etc. than Hitler, right?
Humans are killing people by starvation at 26 times the rate Hitler killed, and doing it *every* 5 years!
Urgent to the Federation of Galactic Councils
Re: Survival of planet Earth, solar system ExB213, galaxy MaDas/5
Situation critical; very close to destruction; request immediate intervention; inequity factor is 1,000,000,000 [one billion] and rising; most powerful species is victim of bigpicture blindness; cannot see the overall situation; this species has technology and weapons capable of destroying entire planet 60 times over; please send emergency response team ASAP; code 10; need equipment for disabling uranium-based bombs; repeat: extreme inequity increasing exponentially, driving violence to infinity; planet could burn at any moment; species has very confused and imperfect ideas about work and wealth; self-destruction is rampant since reward and sacrifice were divorced; species lacks conscious perception of value of justice and of connection of injustice and war/violence; does not understand war is another form of grabbing; recommend you send 1000 indestructible teachers; species has driven itself mad; most unable to overcome inertia, many vulnerable to psychosis and panic mentality; obedience to custom and convention is solidified; submission to accepted ideas is extreme; sense of alarm at situation is extremely slight; recommend extreme caution; planet is worth saving, has some interesting lifeforms
Hope they get the memo. Poignant. Despite it all…worth saving.
Is that from the hitchhikers guide? Regardless, best comment here. Kudos.
no, it’s mine, Tannenhouser – or rather it is my embellishment of a shy friend’s original “starter”. Thank you (and you, too, Gregory) for the recognition – so helpful to know it reaches people. and thank you also for your posts on the misconceptions being pushed about supposed overpopulation. I absolutely agree.
A must read article at link below.
——————————————————-
Illegal Wars: The New American Way
by Maj. Danny Sjursen Posted onMarch 24, 2018
This article originally appeared at TruthDig.
https://original.antiwar.com/Danny_Sjursen/2018/03/23/illegal-wars-the-new-american-way/
Add in all those killed in East Asia, Latin America, Africa, etc., etc., since 1950 and the US govt’s kill total must be approaching the Hitler-Stalin-Mao level. “Life is cheap in Asia” we were told in VN days and it’s seems to be cheap everywhere else, too, in the eyes of US leaders.
August 7, 2017
Is There No Law When War Criminals Rule?
Is there no law when war criminals rule?
Countries are destroyed by warmongering ghouls
There is no justice, just chaos and death
And millions of people who have nothing left
The evil depredations of those in power
Create hell on earth, as countries they devour
Bloodstained profits accrue to this warring filth
Ethics and morals have long been killed
Slaughtered children die, and many starve
Yemen is an example of what evil has carved
Weapons of death and destruction too
Are supplied by this heinous war criminal crew
These villains of violence in luxury reside
Their helpless victims have nowhere to hide
Misery and mayhem are their hellish lot
As the war criminals destroy everything they sought
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen—these are hell holes of destruction
Victims of the war criminals and their war addictions
Are Iran, North Korea, China and Russia their next bloody fights?
Will more wars bring a nuclear finale with the end in sight?
Is it too late to stop these maniacs that are bereft of sanity?
Will they bring the apocalypse to all of humanity?
Who can stop these evil and loathsome ghouls?
Is there no law when war criminals rule?…
[ more info at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/08/is-there-no-law-when-war-criminals-rule.html
An excellent poem Stephen, which shines with the absolute truth of our situation. The rich and powerful are destroying the Earth and all the humans who are children of it. If we fail to stop them, we are destined for extinction. These evil fiends have usurped all the power of science, and turned into tools for mass murder.
“**** made perfect undercover agents for the Ten, due to their disenfranchisement as people at the margins of society, and their much sought-after professional expertise, especially in medicine and commerce. ”
It was this, given the almost complete infiltration of most western and possibly eastern power centers today. Central bank ownership and all that… yours was nice as well.
Thanks Abe.
When I look at the picture of Samar Hassan above, I am in total disgust at the hypocrisy of those that are responsible for such egregious crimes against humanity. The perpetrators are surely psychopaths lacking in any empathy for their victims. I am reminded of President Obama’s public expression of sympathy for the children murdered in Sandy Hook Comprehensive School, where he shed tears for the unfortunate victims of that despicable crime. If he looked at the picture of Samar Hassan would he not shed a tear for her also. But wasn’t he and others, alas, responsible for such crimes against children and other innocents and can they explain how the can perpetrate such acts and maintain a clear conscience in the process? Unless, of course, they believe that Iraqi children are not equal. But, yet, Samar Hassan could be anybody’s child, she could be my child, she could be Obama’s child. If we believed this to be the case, then such crimes would be incomprehensible and not accepted by all of humanity. But hypocrisy prevails and in the minds of those responsible for the deaths of these innocent people, they must only believe that they are not equal and the death of an Iraqi child is not equal to the death of a child in Sandy Hook Comprehensive School.
Hello Nicholas,
During WWII between 60 and 85 million human beings were murdered by the Allied and Axis powers during a 6 year period. Did you ever think or realize that writing for 501 c3 organizations as you do that you also contribute to war as do all citizen taxpayers of all nations engaged in war along with all of their so called coalition partners. All 501c3 organizations world wide are part and parcel of all wars of aggression because they sign on the dotted line to never legislate against any political party of the government that they are being given a tax exemption by. All 501 c3 organizations that use war as a means for protest, do it only for their own profit and gain, no differently than the Architects of War Worldwide, who do it for profit, power and total control of the worlds natural resources and minerals. Your writing is powerless to change or do anything to stop the status quo you write about because in essence you and every citizen taxpayer is the war machine by rule of law governing taxation.
There exists not one single U.S. citizen taxpayer who wants to speak and write about peace, freedom and love on the one hand and with the other hand finances war via his or her tax contributions, that isn’t a complete and total hypocrite to themselves and others in this world. Consequently, one sees how an entire nation has been rendered polarized and paralyzed by existing government rule of law regarding taxation, to stop the never ending U.S. War Machine that has been going non stop ever since the first Gulf War in 1990.
All U.S. business tax contributions, citizen taxpayer contributions and 501c3 organizations, that you are a part of, keep the death toll of U.S. Hegemony alive and well from decade to decade with no end in sight. Every U.S. citizen taxpayer is the product of their own greed from birth to death that none of them see or wish to understand or comprehend. Consequently, this isolated vacuum, known as the U.S.A. has developed into a military monster that the citizenry feeds endlessly. The U.S.A. is the only nation in the world with more than 1,000 military bases and military facilities located in over 160 foreign nations. The number one product of the U.S.A. is War
and everything that war touches in society. The U.S.A. has no value system, because everything it represents is linked to the destruction, disability and death of war world wide that it dominates for the great lie of war expressed via the false ideology of Democracy, which is in essence involuntary servitude. Or in other words SLAVERY.If the citizen taxpayer doesn’t pay their taxes they will be fined, jailed or both for non compliance. There is no solution to this monster that has evolved since the establishment of the U.S.Constitution many years ago. It will like all Empires, just run it’s course and morph into something else. My point to you personally is, is that you think your on the side of right but in fact you contribute to what your pointing a finger at.!!
Thank you,
Ken Law
501(c)(3) are a force for good as are 1031 like kind exchanges. Check the box Regulations and inversions, are where the devil lies, the nastiest scalawags that you will ever meet.
Ken, advocacy of peace and avoiding imprisonment for tax evasion are not inconsistent. Should reformers be in prison or in hiding instead of reforming? If many citizens evaded taxes, the taxation methods would change to capture their share, as in taxing purchases more. If you have a theory that tax avoidance restores democracy perhaps you can present that.
Mike, great comment! And Stephen Hawking advocated getting humans off this planet, but what did he say about these wars? No, i do not believe that we could support unlimited human populations, even without these wars. And, when the last elephant has been killed by a desperate poacher in Africa, i do not want to be here! We have lost a lot in my lifetime of 75 years already. We are losing other species at alarming rates while these vicious, uncaring overlords dominate. If humans do not change, i positively believe Mother Nature will force them to, and it won’t be pretty!
Jessica: “No, i do not believe that we could support unlimited human populations, even without these wars.”… so true. Jessica…The planet is finite and those that reproduce in numbers have no idea of what’s in store for their children.You can’t throw garbage over your neighbor’s fence without a plague coming back to haunt you. And, yes, it’s a pity that other species need to suffer because of human folly. People need to start thing of themselves as earthlings instead of the primitive notion of nations divided by boundaries.
Jessika…sorry, I misspelled your name, also… People need to start thing(thinking) of themselves as earthlings instead of the primitive notion of nations divided by boundaries.
Population experts understand that overshoot is a fatal tendency in the realm of ecosystems. We are not an exception to that law, as much as we would like to think so. Another example of this is cancer. Beginning with small lesions, the cancer sells begin reproducing wildly, and eventually consume their host, killing it and themselves. Looking at Earth from space, we can discern cities growing to have millions of individuals, and continuing to expand seemingly without limit. These compare in many ways to the cancerous lesions eating up a host entity – the Earth.
The irony of this fatal condition is that the cure is simply for enough individuals to cease having reproductive sexual relations. This solution to a fatal disease costs no money, requires no new technology, and is totally effective. It only requires understanding and compassion to save the lives of countless millions, born and unborn.
Now I expect to hear from the “right to life” crazies, science will make all things possible folks, and those who are just too lazy to learn about the spiritual laws of Life in the Universe.
Those seeking or believing in ‘overpopulation’ myths should make the ultimate sacrifice for the betterment of us all. Again….. the number of humans isn’t the problem, as if our interactions with our environment change so does the ‘holding capacity’. Resource management and wealth disparity are the problems NOT population. Once these two activities are managed properly population growth will flatline. If your experts or your research tells you different you are being lied to. Ask yourself why it’s so called third world populations that grow at higher rates? To liken humanity to cancer reproducing unchecked is desperately infantile fear porn, not to mention intellectually lazy. Humans aren’t the problem, the systems and the lies they have been led to make believe in are, population overshoot being just one. Things happen because of us not for us. Science and technology isn’t, the answer…. it will help and provide solutions along the way if used properly tho. I’m not sure how serious anyone should take the whole ‘spiritual laws of life in the universe’ stuff from one who likens us to cancer. Sure sounds all hopey changey lovey peacey tho.
Thanks to Mr Davies for this article and for many good comments, plus we should add our voices to the Center for Constitutional Rights demanding accountability for the US illegal invasion of Iraq and not just let the “anniversary date” of March 18 be the day to focus. The UN needs to be held accountable for bending to US will.
From what i have read, the chaotic times wrought by Trump’s election reinvigorated antiwar activity but groups have not gotten attention by suppliant press. Also, from what i have read, and i’m no expert, the Iraq war was a resource war, a war for control of oil, as nonsense factory states. Ideology of Israel does become involved since so many deep state members heavily support Israel. I have read that Israel’s taking of Golan Heights from Syria was to get control of water under the caprock. All of these motivations get mixed up together, and as our planet is getting more and more plundered (and populated) over time, conflict is getting even more extreme.
Population overshoot is the enormous elephant somehow unnoticed in the living rooms of our conversations about our planet and it’s problems. People have just given up on thinking how to solve it. It’s part of the endless resources forever myth that underlies capitalism. Our myths guarantee enormous suffering, and our eventual extinction.
Overshoot, holding capacity, overpopulation are myth’s propagated by the same people you claim to rail against….the real problem is resource management and wealth disparity. Earth can support probably double its population if it’s done properly.
How are we doing with the billions we have now? Not so well unless you happen to be part of the top billion, and even then not so good unless you are toward the top of that billion. And of course in your dreams they will all have cars etc. And the planet will be burning. More the merrier for the great bonfire of the vanities eh? Of course we will all be getting fresh vegetables from the gardens on the moon. And choice beef from the Martian ranches…….. And somehow science will find a way to make us all millionaires without ever having to do a lick of work. Lord take me to the promised land!
Like I said the problems are resource management and wealth disparity. No bonfire, no burning. The tech is on the shelf right now. Mars can wait until something better than E=Mc2 comes along. You know nothing of my dreams, they include work tho:)
Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq “1,455,590”Number of U.S. Military Personnel
Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq 4,801
Information Clearing House http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
October 29, 2015
“The 21st Century WAR CRIMES: Millions Dead, Millions of Refugees, Soldiers Dead and Maimed, Countries Destroyed, Children Contaminated, and the War Criminals are FREE.”
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2015/10/the-21st-century-war-crimes-millions.html
Let’s hope that the standards Mr Davies seeks to have applied to the US in regard to Iraq will be applied in equal measure to Putin in regard to Ukraine. And that Mr Davies will advocate such a course of action as forcefully as he is advocating it here in regard to Iraq. As we say in Ireland, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!
Applied to Putin, but not applied to the Nuland and McCain supported Nazis? Like you say, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!
Counting the deaths is all very well, indeed valuable, but an analysis of the true motives behind the invasion of Iraq and subsequent slaughter of the population in a desperate attempt to install a US-controlled puppet regime is lacking. This is important because this agenda persisted unchanged from the GW Bush Administration right into the Barak Obama Administration. The Trump Administration is notably incompetent at this game, although I don’t doubt the insiders are most upset and would like to get back on track with their murder, rape and steal agenda. That, after all, is what American foreign policy is really about.
Go to any search engine (DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, etc. – Google last, if you must) and enter ‘the economic agenda behind the Iraq War’. You’ll find very little if any corporate media discussion, nor much in the private foundation-financed ‘progressive media’, nor in the alt-right circus. It’s mostly foreign sites who discuss this, plus some books. For example:
The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time Paperback – May 8, 2007
by Antonia Juhasz
Nahfeez Ahmed, who was fired from the Guardian for incurable honesty, wrote that
“. . . as Whitehall documents obtained by the Independent show, the US and British sought to privatise Iraqi oil production with a view to allow foreign companies to takeover. Minutes of a meeting held on 12 May 2003 said:“The future shape of the Iraqi industry will affect oil markets, and the functioning of Opec, in both of which we have a vital interest.”
A “desirable” outcome for Iraqi’s crippled oil industry, officials concluded, is:
“… an oil sector open and attractive to foreign investment, with appropriate arrangements for the exploitation of new fields.””
This is the most taboo topic in American media coverage of foreign wars, covert operations and regime change games. It has nothing at all to do with humanitarian issues, supporting democracy, leading the free world – no, it’s just like what Hitler and the Nazis did in Poland – invade, murder, rape, steal and bring the loot back home to Wall Street, where it is distributed to the wealthiest 1% in the country – no, the middle class doesn’t get a cut.
This is pure imperial malaise, Byzantine corruption, and what’s happening now is the classic case of collapse of empire – a slow crash, but down it goes, nevertheless, and good riddance to it and all who ride in her corrupt rotten skeleton.
True. Money is the God who demands War. Capitalism is simply a causus belli for piracy and murder.
thank you for excellent posts strongly urging people to “follow the money” – you are spot on.
This is weak. The PLOS study found 405,000 excess deaths and conservatively added another 55,000 for the period up to 2011. About 60 percent were violent deaths, which is about 2 to 3 times IBC’s numbers for the period. It might be low, but we are supposed to think that the true figure up to this point is about five times higher than the survey. Maybe, but that is not a best estimate. It’s a wild guess based on speculations piled on top of eac other. The authors take the high end of the PLOS estimate range and then elevate them and then assume that similar numbers have died since.
The claim that passive methods are always five to 20 times too low is a factoid often repeated, but I would like to sees list of wars showing that it is always true. In Syria the passive methods have counted over 300,000 dead and the claim is that the true figure is 500,000, but using the ratio of 5 to 20 the Syrian War has killed 1.5 to 6 million people. The 2014 Gaza War didn’t kill 2200. It killed 11,000 to 44,000. This is ridiculous.
What we know is that the Iraq War killed hundreds of thousands and it is possible the death toll is over a million. That is more than enough to demonstrate it was a crime against humanity.
Any objections based on the 2013 PLOS study of Mortality in Iraq are weak, Donald.
The PLOS study was an estimate of direct and indirect deaths attributable to the war in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533
Published in October 2013, the PLOS study was based on interviews of 1,960 households in Iraq. According to the “findings” of the PLOS researchers:
“Based on the responses from adults in the surveyed households who reported on the alive-or-dead status of their siblings, the researchers estimated the total number of deaths among adults aged 15–60 years, from March 2003 to June 2011, to be approximately 376,000; 184,000 of these deaths were attributed to the conflict, and of those, the authors estimate that 132,000 were caused directly by war-related violence.”
The PLOS estimate relied on a small interview sample and statistical calculations that are “associated with substantial uncertainties”.
Specifically, the PLOS researchers “extrapolated from a small representative sample of households to estimate Iraq’s national death toll. In addition, respondents were asked to recall events that occurred up to ten years prior, which can lead to inaccuracies. The researchers also had to rely on outdated census data (the last complete population census in Iraq dates back to 1987) for their overall population figures. Thus, to accompany their estimate of 460,000 excess deaths from March 2003 to mid-2011, the authors used statistical methods to determine the likely range of the true estimate.”
The “smart weapons” manufacturers and state perpetrators of the Iraq War, the Syrian War, and the Gaza War all have a decided propaganda interest in advertising statistical claims of “low crude death rates” and broadcasting allegations that other mortality studies “overrepresent deaths”.
If the Israeli-Saudi-US Axis troika of serial violators of international law is permitted to launch its next, most spectacular wars of aggression, it unlikely anyone will be available afterward to conduct the body count.
The objections based on the 2013 PLOS study of Mortality in Iraq are weak, Donald.
The PLOS study was an estimate of direct and indirect deaths attributable to the war in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533
Published in October 2013, the PLOS study was based on interviews of 1,960 households in Iraq. According to the “findings” of the PLOS researchers:
“Based on the responses from adults in the surveyed households who reported on the alive-or-dead status of their siblings, the researchers estimated the total number of deaths among adults aged 15–60 years, from March 2003 to June 2011, to be approximately 376,000; 184,000 of these deaths were attributed to the conflict, and of those, the authors estimate that 132,000 were caused directly by war-related violence.”
The PLOS estimate relied on a small interview sample and statistical calculations that are “associated with substantial uncertainties”.
Specifically, the PLOS researchers “extrapolated from a small representative sample of households to estimate Iraq’s national death toll. In addition, respondents were asked to recall events that occurred up to ten years prior, which can lead to inaccuracies. The researchers also had to rely on outdated census data (the last complete population census in Iraq dates back to 1987) for their overall population figures. Thus, to accompany their estimate of 460,000 excess deaths from March 2003 to mid-2011, the authors used statistical methods to determine the likely range of the true estimate.”
Those humanitarian “smart weapons” manufacturers and state perpetrators of the Iraq War, the Syrian War, and the Gaza War all have a decided propaganda interest in advertising statistical claims of “low crude death rates” and broadcasting allegations that mortality studies “overrepresent deaths”.
If the Israeli-Saudi-US Axis troika of serial violators of international law is allowed to launch any more spectacular wars of aggression, it is unlikely there will be anyone available afterward to count bodies or conduct interviews.
The experience of epidemiologists working in war zones around the world that “passive reporting” has only captured 5% (as in Guatemala) to 20% of actual deaths is well established. It was cited by Physicians for Social Responsibility in its Body Count report, and was cited to me by Les Roberts, the lead author of mortality studies in Rwanda, the DRC and Iraq, in 2005. It is very possible that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has done a bit better than that, and I will address that in later parts of this report. This would not apply to Israeli assaults on Gaza, where the contained area and duration of the attacks make it much easier to count the dead.
Mr. Davies,
Once again you have referenced Rami Abdul Rahman’s Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a U.K.-based propaganda outlet allied with Western-backed armed forces battling the government of Syria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kwd-8lJUhI
In your report, you incorrectly describe the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and other outlets as “independent monitoring groups”.
Consortium News readers deserve an immediate correction to Part 1 of your report (above) and a note of explanation.
We hope you will address the matter of grossly inflated civilian mortality claims coming from the Syrian armed opposition (previously discussed in a number of reports on Consortium News since 2013, e.g. the so-called “siege of Aleppo”) in later parts of this report.
Thank you.
And, um, when might we expect you to “address that”, Mr. Davies?
What an excellent piece & thank you Nicolas J.S. Davies & Consortium News.
I wonder if war casualties include the deaths of veterans who commit suicide at an alarming rate over the years &
the effects resulting from exposure to depleted uranium.
Let us not forget the “New Pearl Harbor” mentioned in the Project for the New American Century, that neo-conservative proposal which encouraged the invasion of Iraq in the first place & “the supreme international crime.”.
“We don’t do body counts.” That has been US imperial policy since the arrival of European settlers in the Americas. Historians are still unsure how many Filipinos were massacred by invading US troops between 1898 and 1911. Best guesstimates are based on the boasts of the war criminals themselves like General J. Franklin Bell who said his troops probably killed 1/6 of the population in Luzon island alone. Out of a total population of 8 million, about 1.5 million Filipinos (insurgents and civilians) perished during the Filipino-American war. As General Bell admitted, his troopers killed gooks enthusiastically. But no official US records of grim imperial results. Can you expect a criminal to keep incriminating records of his crime?
It is entirely possible, even likely, that American leadership is responsible for more deaths in Iraq than Saddam Hussein was during his authoritarian rule. And, he was known as what? The “Butcher of Baghdad,” right? So, what does that make the maniacs in Washington? I would say we have to add to THEIR total the dead in the Iran-Iraq war which we instigated by supporting Saddam’s seizure of the Shat al-Arab waterway, and Gulf War I prosecuted by Bushdaddy after his minions suckered Saddam into invading Kuwait for stealing Iraq’s oil. Needless to say, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen add immensely to the grand total. We could also include the Palestinians and Lebanese who are periodically culled with impunity by the Israelis who act with our good blessings, arms and financial support. I have read that at least 5 million human lives have been taken in wars which Washington started or instigated in the Middle East during the past five presidential administrations. What should we call those gentlemen? The Slaughterhouse Five?
More of us Americans need to see, or be made to realize just how horrible war really is. Whether it be carpet bombing a nation who doesn’t have any real Ground Air Defenses, or a small platoon of half crazed soldiers wiping out a Muslim family over nothing, as this is never reported with any amount of specific realism by our corporate owned media is in itself a crime of omission on a grand scale.
Maybe what mikek said on another comment posting is that we have American leaders who at the top are just plain evil. Not evil as in the way of the Wicked Witch, but evil in their indispensable nature as it is to always go towards war first, and peace never. A evil which reeks of Manifest Destiny laced with an exceptional hubris of the worst kind, and dare I mention the profits made with these murders by the millions of innocents? An evil which twist and turns the very contexts of what describes our ailing worlds problems into it’s own brand of the predetermined narrative it is that sets the agenda of every nation it encounters, while hurting the peripheral of countries around it. A nation which continues to deceive even though the rest of the world is on to it. This is called lying with a straight face. There is no greater insult than to know the truth between yourself and an imposing rival, and still your rival tells you the lie.
Would this fit what I’m describing; “Adjective. too clever by half. (idiomatic, of a person, plan, theory, etc.) Shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to be unreliable or unsuccessful.”
Now does that sound like where this mindset will let us?
Joe, In reading all the comments including yours, it feels good that there are people out there who have some humanity left in their hearts.
“Maybe what mikek said on another comment posting is that we have American leaders who at the top are just plain evil. Not evil as in the way of the Wicked Witch, but evil in their indispensable nature as it is to always go towards war first, and peace never.”
With this four or five centuries of plundering, pillaging, killing, and destruction of people and communities all over the World, The West built it’s beautiful Cities, Castles, Mansions, Industrial Civilization, you name it, all what they have. In the process they also acquired most of the World’s most beautiful and bountiful Real Estate – America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, all the islands . . . May be, something happens to the people in this process and deeds they have been involved in, and due the mechanical civilization they developed – they have lost their human hearts and all feelings that go with it. Erich Fromm and others were writing about these subjects during that age of 1950.s and 1960’s. There were these books like “Greening of America” by Charles Reich were being written about it too. I read some of these books at that time.
The West is not happy, they want the whole World back again. This process has to play out. Whether humanity survives or not is not in their minds – the leadership of “The West” and most of its population is immune to it. Babyl-on in his opening comments yesterday said it right.
Bolton’s appointment is not a good omen. The staged chemical false flag event in Salisbury, and blaming Russia a few hours after the incident is no surprise to me. The British have been doing this for centuries now, and the other Western Imperial Powers have been doing it as well. It seems like there must have been coordination among The Western Nations, to get the Wars going in Syria, Iran, and in Ukraine. And they needed a pretext. I do not have any more any illusions left in my mind that Trump is going to work for peace in the World, and not interventions as he promised. It seems like, he is trying to hoodwink Russia; I wonder if he will succeed. Russia’s very existence is at stake.
I have lived among and with people here 24/7, largely out of the life of my own culture for more than fifty two years now. Visiting Michigan during the Fall last year, I talked to my brother-in-law about all this. A Captain in the U.S. Air Force during 1960’s, he retired from Air Force to work in civilian job. They are all “for Life Republicans” and staunch Trump supporters. They were also taught that Russia is the enemy. Now he was completely confused because Trump was saying that we should get along with Russia. They accept what is told to them by the Ruling Establishment on the TV, and in Newspapers – that has been their whole education.
Also, unfortunately the casualty in this is going to be The World Soccer Cup in Russia as well. The West never had this “Human Brotherhood” in their hearts. It is one event every four years where at least all Nations can come together, in spite of their differences. The West will do everything to disrupt it.
Dave it’s always something to look forward too hearing from you, thanks for the reply.
Dave I’m recently reading “Brothers; the Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” by David Talbot. In Talbot’s book he talks about Bobby having Russian diplomats over to his home for barbecue, and drinks. Now could you imagine Rachel or Don Lemon going off the rails if Trump were to duplicate RFK’s hospitality? Wow, the walls would come crashing down.
Thinking of that makes me travel to all these incidents claiming Russian interference, or as in the case of Salisbury England where the UK with the support of the U.S. is making more than enough allegations to this father daughter poisoning being a Russian hit. Don’t forget Dave that over this past year there had been several Russian officials and a Russian military choir all who died, and don’t forget Putin’s chauffeur died a mysterious death also, and on top of that we are picking on Russian sports figures for doping… so Dave where will this all lead to?
Seeing Trump’s new picks such as Bolton, Pompeo, and Haspel, added into all these other events aimed at Russia makes me wonder to who will hit the button first. Remember our button is the biggest.
If our MSM wasn’t so wrapped up with Trump’s swinging sex life, and more news was reported to what really matters then we Americans maybe would come to realize how the hands of the clock just went from 3 minutes til the hour to within seconds of that dreadful happening… oh we are getting there, and yet Americans are being beat down over nonexistent Russian election intrigue, and a real estate tv reality star billionaire’s sex life.
I wish all this was fake news, because then it would explain a lot, instead of it proving to how America has loss it’s ever loving mind. Joe
@Dave P…
” They were also taught that Russia is the enemy. Now he was completely confused because Trump was saying that we should get along with Russia. They accept what is told to them by the Ruling Establishment on the TV, and in Newspapers – that has been their whole education.”
Education is the greatest part of the issue in the US, that does not teach critical/logical thinking. Instead, it’s churning out drone-like people, who will blindly follow the government and the MSM without questions:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2011/04/11/why-united-states-destroying-its-education-system
Unfortunately, these “educated drones” will be around for generations to come and will not challenge the oligarchs’ stranglehold of the country and the world.
The “educated drones” blindly believe that $100K spent on advertisement on Facebook by Russia has made a difference in election, even knowing that HRC, with Israel’s support spent close to $1B on the same election.
The same drones also blindly believe that Russia is the aggressor with its one military base in foreign country vs. 800+ for the US.
The number of people, who had not been indoctrinated for one reason or another, is small and they cannot change this. They can either stay quite or named alt-right, down right fascist, or even worse an agent of Russia that is attacking our freedom and democracy.
The hope is that the world will change that, but even that is just a slim hope. While people are smarter in the rest of the world, their leaders love the the billions thrown around by the US for getting its way. Bribery is the fact of life in the US and it has spread all over the world.
The only realistic hope for change is that the US goes bankrupt, but be careful what you wish for. The US will not go down with fighting and Joe T. is right, “the hands of the clock just went from 3 minutes til the hour to within seconds of that dreadful happening…”
Dave listen to Al, he gets it. Joe
Yes. I agree with you both.
“The Trail of Blood, Bodies, Destruction and Death, That Leads to the War Criminals in Our Midst”
…
“There are monsters in our midst
Did you know they exist?
They plan and plot for many wars
They are Satan’s warmongering whores”….
[more at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/09/the-trail-of-blood-bodies-destruction.html
The US rape and murder of Iraq ranks as one of the most cynical crimes against humanity in all of history. The demonization of the secular, socialist government of Iraq repeats the precedent created at the Nuremberg mock-trials of 1946: the absurd lie that both nations earned the ultimate punishment for being “evil,” in order to excuse the horrific evil that was done to them.
The great catastrophe in Iraq, apart from the annihilation of a sovereign state and the murders and displacement of millions, is the destruction this mad imperial war inflicted on ancient historical sites in the land where our civilization began. It is as if in its death spasms, capitalism is deliberately erasing the traces of the human presence on this unfortunate planet.
Long after Baathism and Wahaabism and capitalism and democracy have been forgotten in history’s rubbish bin, the willful destruction of our human heritage sites will be remembered, and the name of the vandals cursed.
These lines from Euripides’ play The Trojan Women are a fit summary of what we have allowed to be done in our name
How ye are blind
Ye treaders down of cities, ye that cast
Temples to desolation, and lay waste
Tombs, the untrodden sanctuaries where lie
The ancient dead; yourselves so soon to die!
Nicolas J.S. Davies lists the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Airwars as “independent monitoring groups”. In fact, they are “regime change” propaganda lauderers and anything but “inedependent”.
Information on casualties sourced from Airwars, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and other UK-based propaganda organizations should be approached with extreme caution.
Airwars “understanding” of events in Syria is based on reports collated from “regionally-focused monitoring groups” that include three notorious UK-based propaganda launderers: Rami Abdul Rahman’s Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Fadel Abdul Ghani’s Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), and Eliot Higgins’ Bellingcat.
Airwars reports on bombing on bombing in Syria fabricate a “tale” about “alleged Coalition and Russian civilian casualty incidents”
Airwars is determined to convince its readers that U.S.-led Coalition airpower is less lethal than its Russian counterpart. For example, nowhere does Airwars acknowledge that civilian casualty figures for Aleppo were grossly inflated by Al Qaeda media and their White Helmets propaganda allies.
Unsurprisingly, Airwars receives funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
Airwars receives “geolocation” services from Bellingcat “journalist” Christiaan Triebert. Triebert receives “journalism” training at the War Studies Department of King’s College London where Eliot Higgins is a “Research Fellow”. Bellingcat “open-source investigation” scams get fronted by Triebert when the propaganda is, well, it’s a little too obvious even for the likes of Higgins.
Airwars “Syria researcher” is Kinda Haddad, a media consultant and former BBC reporter. In addition to her work for Airwars, Haddad is the founder of Bubula, a website that purportedly aims to “expand the scope of the debate by introducing the most exciting, diverse and powerful female voices” on the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region.
Haddad’s site featuring “Eastern Women in Western Media” is named after a type of song bird known for its beautiful voice. The label “bulbul” is given to people who are “eloquent”. Haddad gave the name “a feminine spin by adding a letter A at the end of it”, claiming the site will “carry the voices of a group of women from that part of the world”.
Haddad apparently does not believe that any “eloquent” women live in the Syrian Arab Republic. The Bubula “experts” on Syria are exclusively aligned with “opposition” groups, media and NGOs.
For example, Bubula “expert” on Syria Alia Ibrahim is a Senior Correspondent with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya News Channel, based in Dubai Media City, United Arab Emirates. Another Bubula “expert” on Syria, Kholoud Mansour based in Sweden, is a former Senior Fellow at Chatham House, a British think tank devoted to “regime change” in Eurasia.
Airwars has provided primary “analysis” and “narrative” for visual representations produced by Forensic Architecture, a media agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Forensic Architecture purportedly specializes in “modelling dynamic events” and “creating navigable 3D models of environments”, aiming to “present information in a convincing, precise, and accessible manner”.
The media agency produces high-tech graphic presentations of alleged “evidence” on behalf of human rights NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, political groups like the Atlantic Council, and other organizations.
Forensic Architecture has collaborated with Airwars “journalists”, the Atlantic Council’s Bellingcat, and Human Rights Watch in previous dramatic presentations of later debunked claims about bombing in Aleppo.
Forensic Architecture provided “modelling” services for the recent Human Rights Watch report on the 4 April 2017 chemical incident at Khan Sheikhoun
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/syria0517_web_2.pdf
The report states that Human Rights Watch “obtained photos and videos of remnants of the munitions used in the attacks. Specialists in weapons identification and chemical weapons inside and outside the organization analyzed the remnants. Forensic Architecture, a group specializing in spatial analysis, created a model of a crater related to the Khan Sheikhoun attack from videos and photos, allowing for exact measurement of its size.” (HRW report page 10)
The Human Rights Watch report debuted at a 1 May 2017 press conference at the United Nations. Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, repeatedly referred to the new HRW report as “our own investigation”. Responding to questions, Roth stated, “Yeah, I mean, um, we’ve used open source material, we’ve checked this with experts, we’re… we’re quite confident”
However, it is clear from the report that HRW activities were limited to laundering a list of names supplied by “opposition” forces in Al-Qaeda controlled Idlib, and conducting telephone interviews with the “opposition” vetted alleged “witnesses”.
Following its well-established pattern of “investigation”, HRW performed no independent verification of any of the “opposition” claims presented in its report.
The HRW report relied most heavily on information supplied by “opposition” forces and laundered by the Atlantic Council’s Bellingcat group. HRW makes no mention of Bellingcat’s close cooperation with the Atlantic Council “regime change” agenda in Syria.
Bellingcat is repeatedly cited in the HRW report’s footnotes. A photograph in the HRW report refers to “Bellingcat, a group specializing in analyzing information posted online, including videos and photographs” (page 24). HRW makes no mention of the fact that claims by Dan Kaszeta and Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat about previous alleged “chemical attacks” have been repeatedly debunked.
Human Rights Watch relied on Bellingcat to “geolocate” Al Qaeda and White Helmets video and photos of the Khan Shaykhun incident. The report specifically states that “Based on landmarks visible in the photos and videos, Bellingcat geolocated the crater” (HRW report page 28) in the middle of the road in Khan Shaykhun.
Human Rights Watch’s “specialist” on “chemical weapons”: Eliot Higgins’ collaborator Dan Kaszeta of Bellingcat (HRW report pages 29-30)
Human Rights Watch’s “specialist” on “weapons identification”: Hadi Al Khatib of Bellingcat (HRW report page 41).
In addition to posing as a “journalist” at Bellingcat. Al Khatib runs an organization called the “Syrian Archive”, a large database of Al Qaeda and White Helmets videos, allegedly “verified” as “documenting” human rights violations in Syria.
Immediately after citing Kaszeta’s description of a sarin bomb explosion, the Human Rights watch report mentions “modelling” of the crater provided by Forensic Architecture: “Based on photos and videos, Forensic Architecture, an organization specializing in spatial analysis, created a three-dimensional model of the crater.” (HRW report page 30)
Forensic Architecture “modelling” of Airwars and Bellingcat “investigations” provide conspicuous cases of garbage in, garbage out (GIGO).
Apparently it’s highly profitable garbage. Capitalizing on its network of propaganda relationships, Forensic Architecture even got the gig of designing a cool new look for the Airwars website.
In short, Airwars is a “regime change” propaganda project designed to inspire “humanitarian” outrage.
WOW double post. Probly the **** fault:)
Nicolas J.S. Davies lists the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Airwars as “independent monitoring groups”. In fact, they are “regime change” propaganda lauderers and anything but “inedependent”.
Information on casualties sourced from Airwars, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and other UK-based propaganda organizations should be approached with extreme caution.
Airwars “understanding” of events in Syria is based on reports collated from “regionally-focused monitoring groups” that include three notorious UK-based propaganda launderers: Rami Abdul Rahman’s Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Fadel Abdul Ghani’s Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), and Eliot Higgins’ Bellingcat.
Airwars reports on bombing on bombing in Syria fabricate a “tale” about “alleged Coalition and Russian civilian casualty incidents”
Airwars is determined to convince its readers that U.S.-led Coalition airpower is less lethal than its Russian counterpart. For example, nowhere does Airwars acknowledge that civilian casualty figures for Aleppo were grossly inflated by Al Qaeda media and their White Helmets propaganda allies.
Unsurprisingly, Airwars receives funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
Airwars receives “geolocation” services from Bellingcat “journalist” Christiaan Triebert. Triebert receives “journalism” training at the War Studies Department of King’s College London where Eliot Higgins is a “Research Fellow”. Bellingcat “open-source investigation” scams get fronted by Triebert when the propaganda is, well, it’s a little too obvious even for the likes of Higgins.
Airwars “Syria researcher” is Kinda Haddad, a media consultant and former BBC reporter. In addition to her work for Airwars, Haddad is the founder of Bubula, a website that purportedly aims to “expand the scope of the debate by introducing the most exciting, diverse and powerful female voices” on the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region.
Haddad’s site featuring “Eastern Women in Western Media” is named after a type of song bird known for its beautiful voice. The label “bulbul” is given to people who are “eloquent”. Haddad gave the name “a feminine spin by adding a letter A at the end of it”, claiming the site will “carry the voices of a group of women from that part of the world”.
Haddad apparently does not believe that any “eloquent” women live in the Syrian Arab Republic. The Bubula “experts” on Syria are exclusively aligned with “opposition” groups, media and NGOs.
For example, Bubula “expert” on Syria Alia Ibrahim is a Senior Correspondent with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya News Channel, based in Dubai Media City, United Arab Emirates. Another Bubula “expert” on Syria, Kholoud Mansour based in Sweden, is a former Senior Fellow at Chatham House, a British think tank devoted to “regime change” in Eurasia.
Airwars has provided primary “analysis” and “narrative” for visual representations produced by Forensic Architecture, a media agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Forensic Architecture purportedly specializes in “modelling dynamic events” and “creating navigable 3D models of environments”, aiming to “present information in a convincing, precise, and accessible manner”.
The media agency produces high-tech graphic presentations of alleged “evidence” on behalf of human rights NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, political groups like the Atlantic Council, and other organizations.
Forensic Architecture has collaborated with Airwars “journalists”, the Atlantic Council’s Bellingcat, and Human Rights Watch in previous dramatic presentations of later debunked claims about bombing in Aleppo.
Forensic Architecture provided “modelling” services for the recent Human Rights Watch report on the 4 April 2017 chemical incident at Khan Sheikhoun
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/syria0517_web_2.pdf
The report states that Human Rights Watch “obtained photos and videos of remnants of the munitions used in the attacks. Specialists in weapons identification and chemical weapons inside and outside the organization analyzed the remnants. Forensic Architecture, a group specializing in spatial analysis, created a model of a crater related to the Khan Sheikhoun attack from videos and photos, allowing for exact measurement of its size.” (HRW report page 10)
The Human Rights Watch report debuted at a 1 May 2017 press conference at the United Nations. Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, repeatedly referred to the new HRW report as “our own investigation”. Responding to questions, Roth stated, “Yeah, I mean, um, we’ve used open source material, we’ve checked this with experts, we’re… we’re quite confident”
However, it is clear from the report that HRW activities were limited to laundering a list of names supplied by “opposition” forces in Al-Qaeda controlled Idlib, and conducting telephone interviews with the “opposition” vetted alleged “witnesses”.
Following its well-established pattern of “investigation”, HRW performed no independent verification of any of the “opposition” claims presented in its report.
The HRW report relied most heavily on information supplied by “opposition” forces and laundered by the Atlantic Council’s Bellingcat group. HRW makes no mention of Bellingcat’s close cooperation with the Atlantic Council “regime change” agenda in Syria.
Bellingcat is repeatedly cited in the HRW report’s footnotes. A photograph in the HRW report refers to “Bellingcat, a group specializing in analyzing information posted online, including videos and photographs” (page 24). HRW makes no mention of the fact that claims by Dan Kaszeta and Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat about previous alleged “chemical attacks” have been repeatedly debunked.
Human Rights Watch relied on Bellingcat to “geolocate” Al Qaeda and White Helmets video and photos of the Khan Shaykhun incident. The report specifically states that “Based on landmarks visible in the photos and videos, Bellingcat geolocated the crater” (HRW report page 28) in the middle of the road in Khan Shaykhun.
Human Rights Watch’s “specialist” on “chemical weapons”: Eliot Higgins’ collaborator Dan Kaszeta of Bellingcat (HRW report pages 29-30)
Human Rights Watch’s “specialist” on “weapons identification”: Hadi Al Khatib of Bellingcat (HRW report page 41).
In addition to posing as a “journalist” at Bellingcat. Al Khatib runs an organization called the “Syrian Archive”, a large database of Al Qaeda and White Helmets videos, allegedly “verified” as “documenting” human rights violations in Syria.
Immediately after citing Kaszeta’s description of a sarin bomb explosion, the Human Rights watch report mentions “modelling” of the crater provided by Forensic Architecture: “Based on photos and videos, Forensic Architecture, an organization specializing in spatial analysis, created a three-dimensional model of the crater.” (HRW report page 30)
Forensic Architecture “modelling” of Airwars and Bellingcat “investigations” provide conspicuous cases of garbage in, garbage out (GIGO).
Apparently it’s highly profitable garbage. Capitalizing on its network of propaganda relationships, Forensic Architecture even got the gig of designing a cool new look for the Airwars website.
In short, Airwars is a “regime change” propaganda project designed to inspire “humanitarian” outrage.
I always thought the number of Iraqi deaths numbered in the millions, and close to the number indicated here. We have always low balled the number of dead we have slaughtered, and don’t do body counts. If sanctions imposed on Iraq during the Clinton years could cause the death of 500 thousand children alone, how can a war going on for some 15 years cause only a couple of hundred thousand deaths? I really don’t think the Americans, by and large, give a damn whether the deaths in Iraq are 2 hundred thousand, or more then 2 million. I’m sure our war in Vietnam that killed some 2 million civilians, and a million and a half soldiers on both sides set a precedent, and made death in a war quite acceptable.
The one’s responsible for all this murder don’t care how many they kill, the more the merrier. They only lowball the figures because some in the public might still have enough conscience to be disturbed by the genocide.
Indeed!
“We Don’t Do Body Counts” Says Gen. Tommy Franks: To Counter the Pentagon’s Refusal to Track Civilian Casualties We Talk with the Founders of Iraqbodycount.Net
April 04, 2003
“We” let other people tally up the numbers, then deny those numbers. Neat system!
Of course we need to demand an international tribunal. The atrocities carried out by the US and its vassals has far surpassed past crimes against humanity. It’s long past time for Karma to make its well earned entrance.
Chris Floyd gives voice to the victims’ collective outrage.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/
Thanks; Chris Floyd is eloquent although writing less often.
I may have to bookmark Floyd again. Sample – if it will pass the “nanny” test.
My answer to all that – we ARE “exceptional”, and doing the things demanded by God’s Favorite People can’t be totally bad.
Can it?
Thank you Lois, for the Floyd link. I didn’t care for Kaine the first time that I laid eyes on him. He and Clinton would have killed us all at this point. It was unnecessary, though, for Chris Floyd to add to his piece the now age old qualifier “Now I hate Trump”, yada-yada… So I will now play that game: I despise the new pick for National Security Advisor. I was dreading this happening. PCR stated that if President Trump chooses him for National Security Advisor, prepare to die. Not that it matters…..
War crimes trials are needed, you said it, Stephen, and we’d better get on the bloody horn and protest the WH with Bolton put in. I couldn’t read this article yet, so disgusting to know that i was born into captivity in this horrid nation USA. Just was listening to Phil Ochs’ protest songs while traveling with a friend, sad that Phil got so depressed about American killing and uncaring that he killed himself in 1976. We have got to stop these psychopaths somehow. I’ll try to read this article, but it makes me so angry, this insane, insatiable killing by this monster USA is inexcusable. And on this trip, we saw plastic bags and litter on the interstates in Arizona and Texas, people panhandling everywhere, people with teeth in horrible shape because they can’t afford a dentist. America is rotting from the inside, and the moneyed elites care not. More money for military? Not just insane, but evil!
Good to hear from you Jessika.
Crimes of the magnitude the “leaders” of the American Empire are committing are so monstrous that they are hard to grasp. How can people be so evil as to destroy all human and much other life on our beautiful planet? This is a level of diabolical insanity beyond comprehension.
More info on the perpetrators below:
February 8, 2016
“The United Scoundrels of Atrocities (USA)”
“Most war crimes fall into one of three categories: crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and traditional war crimes. Crimes against peace include the planning, commencement, and waging of aggressive war, or war in violation of international agreements. Aggressive war is broadly defined to include any hostile military act that disregards the territorial boundaries of another country, disrespects the political independence of another regime, or otherwise interferes with the sovereignty of an internationally recognized state….”
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/War+Crimes
There are millions of dead victims of endless illegal wars around the world. Their countries have been bombed by coalitions of war criminals [1] masquerading as protectors and saviours of “democracy.” Millions of victims still alive, after the carnage created by the war criminals are wandering the earth as refugees. Some are living in refugee camps others are drowning or dying in the waters of the Mediterranean trying to escape from the hell on earth that has been perpetrated upon them. The people from these countries once had homes, some had businesses. Their countries were not perfect (which country is?) but mostly they were all living in peace, even though their rulers were criticized as “authoritarian.” Then the powerful conspirators of “regime change” unfolded their diabolical plans and a bloody epidemic of wars were released and “the gates of hell” were opened. I believe there is hellish irrefutable “evidence of a powerful conspiracy to destroy countries.” [1a]…
[read more at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-united-scoundrels-of-atrocities-usa.html
Mr. Davies book is excellent
I believe war crimes trials are needed:
March 20, 2018
“The Wicked and Their Wars”
The whores of war live among us, and some are “people” that have held positions of power in governments past and present. Others are members of “think tanks,” and “war colleges” or are “experts” in the “need for war.” Others, are the bloodthirsty corporate cannibals that make blood soaked profits off death and destruction. These people constantly utter the words, “rule of law democracy, and human rights.” Yet, these same unctuous villains are responsible for the destruction of a number of countries. Some of these countries are Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen, the list goes on and on….
[read more at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2018/03/the-wicked-and-their-wars.html
Your vision is clear Stephen. Thank you.
Off topic
Terrifying news: John Bolton national security advisor
Iranophobe, Russophobe and rabid Zionist warmonger John Bolton has just been appointed national security advisor. Bolton never saw a Washington war he didn’t immediately get raging excitement for.
This guy is one of the most dangerous sociopaths in Washington. He’s downright dangerous. Hopefully someone can keep a leash on him. This isn’t good.
If John Bolton were actually president we’d all die in a nuclear war, guaranteed.
I don’t think so. In fact, I suspect this event will be featured in Part 2 or 3 of this series. That’s because Bolton is going to do his level best to talk Trump into killing many, many more people for Holy Israel. If the body count is in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, I doubt if either one of them will care the least little bit.
This appointment only shows how dangerous and insane Donald Trump is. There will be war. Probably nuclear war. I grieve for our world and all the beings that will be destroyed. There is no more tragic scenario than the one we are living now.
Let’s hope that Bolton’s OK of Israel/KSA attacks on Iran/Syria/Lebanon leads Russia to destroy the military bases of Israel and KSA, which would be both justified and corrective. If Israel forces a nuclear response, it would be tragic that many innocent Israelis would die, but worse that the complicit US would likely escape direct attack.
Thank you for this quantification. It gives perspective to the scale of the suffering, the loss of life and all other horrible effects of war, and the scale of the crimes committed by those responsible. The comparison with WWII demonstrates how the numbers render a grasp of the dimensions of the Iraq war.
I really liked reading this article, not only informative, but Mr. Davies would make an excellent teacher, everything was so clearly presented, and sequenced. Makes me want to read his book. Not that I didn’t realize we were on a downward spiral in terms of international law, but this article really brought that home. Made me remember the argument with a cousin who is an international lawyer who proclaimed Russia’s annexation of Crimea as a breech of international law, but our wars in the ME were okay, or nothing to be upset about. Might makes right in plane sight. I guess the whole idea of these double standards must be quite pervasive. To be honest I haven’t much hope for change, especially when you consider that Bush’s popularity is on an upward spiral, which doesn’t say much for the American mindset, not to mention our continued aggressiveness in the world.
My comment was meant for the previous article “The Iraq War and the Crisis of a Disintegrating Global Order”
By Inder Comar
Annie, You noted that Bush’s popularity is on the upward spiral. It is more than that; in the MSM, he is being elevated to the status of almost a great statesman, some sort of a great painter/artist too. We had some company at our home two weeks ago, and two of these so called liberal democrats were singing praises of Bush.
I wonder sometimes about the kind of World we are living in now !
The power holders at the top of our so-called culture, have done all they could to weave the rest of us into their sick ideas. Recovery from this situation may be impossible at this point. All indications are that the disease of our global industrial fascist way of life is entering it’s final fatal phase. Too bad – we blew it. The Fermi paradox means that we are probably not unique in our failure to handle the challenge of ethically underdeveloped creatures coming into more power than they could safely handle. All the metrics point to our near term extinction now.
Thank you Nat Parry and of course Nicholas J.S. Davies.
Robert Parry knew years ago that this day was coming, so did most of the regulars. Anybody who experienced The Vietnam War from beginning to end realized that unbelievably it was happening all over again. Now there is only one way forward and clearly Nicholas J.S. Davies has been thinking deeply about how this might be done. No more “moving on” it’s time for a reckoning and this time it must begin at the top…
Is there any surprise that returning vets are killing themselves to the tune of 3 or so a day? Dumb-ass teenagers with guns, just like my generation in Vietnam, come home and grew up and realize what they’ve done.
I’ve had two friends’ kids put a gun to their heads in the last ten years because of this. One Army, one Marine. They were typical teens with no jobs to look forward to after high school so the Economic Draft made them into killers.
And Obama said ‘let’s forget the past and look forward to the future’ when it came to indicting and convicting the mass murderers of the W Bush regime. We need a new Nuremberg, but we’ve needed one of those imposed on the US since…WWII ended. Or read Marine Brig. General Smedley Butler’s ‘War is a Racket’ and realize that nothing has changed for…ever on this continent.
Anybody actually proud to be a ‘murican? Only if you do NOT know the real history of our country.Oops, that’s right I forgot, it’s not politically correct to question. Just obey. So much for freedom and democracy, eh?
sealintheSelkirks
Vietnam Veterans were forced to fight, nobody could blame them much. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, or even those soldiers in Libya and Syria, were not forced. They joined the military to continue shit like this.
It appears that some fought in Vietnam or in Iraq because they approved, whether deceived or immoral, and some because they were coerced, whether directly, economically, or socially. Many of the immoral activities of our society have similar induction processes: some avoid them, some get out later, some go along just to get along, and the most immoral are the victors in power. Thorough reform is needed.
Well said.
My comment was meant for sealintheSelkirks.
America’s post-9/11 wars, the “blood on our hands”, resulted from treasonous executive and legislative collusion with the pro-Israel Lobby.
The Israeli-Saudi-US Axis “special relationship” now threatens to unleash yet another catastrophic war in the Middle East.
American political leaders and mainstream media have refused to address the real threats of pro-Israel Lobby influence in US electoral politics, and Israeli interference in American foreign policy.
Ongoing US wars for Israel endanger both American security and global stability.
Do you really think the US & UK Protestant elite would be interested in ending wars if it weren’t for Israel? Were the Jews slaughtering what was left of the American Indians or the power brokers in Jamestown slave trade? Do you think Hitler was boxing them up in rail cars, because the Jews had so much power in the US in the early 20th century?
Does the Hasbara propaganda troll really think no one notices their effort to change the subject?
Fine
I come back to this site after a 4 month hiatus and the first article I read is followed by the same bunch of commentors still obsessed with troll armies and Zionist conspiracies. Sad.
Hasbara troll “WC” is baa-aaack. Big surprise.
Four months ago, Conventional Hasbara (overtly pro-Israel / pro-Zionist) propaganda troll “WC” was busy telling us that Apartheid Israel is “in control”, insisting that “racism is subjective”, and complaining that there is entirely “too much emphasis on this one issue”.
See the hilarious Hasbara antics of comrade “WC” in the CN comments here:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/11/26/the-dark-inevitability-of-zionism/
Consortiumnews has a comment policy that expressly forbids “racial or religious slurs (including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia)”. Now, were I to use the same kind of offensive language you and others regularly hurl at Zionist Jews and Israel, but rather directed towards blacks, Hispanics, native Americans or any other ethnic minority, that would be considered inappropriate.
As for being a troll or a Zionist, I am neither. All I have done from the getgo is to try to impart on you morally elitist idealists that power (in this world) comes out of the barrel of a gun. Mao and Stalin said that, but could have come out of the mouth of any American president or any other political front man or woman.
And while I commend your efforts to right the wrongs and push for a better world, keep in mind all of the greedy opportunists, sociopaths and organized psychopaths that comprise the “Big Club” that owns this planet. When you have that thought firmly in mind, what are your realistic odds of success? So, you’d better come up with a better plan of action because moral platitudes (which are entirely subjective) will get you nowhere. :)
Hasbara troll “WC” is back spouting the same propaganda boilerplate as four months ago.
Comrade “WC” offers up the usual litany of Hasbara propaganda memes, and couldn’t even manage to make it through the second sentence without straight up lying.
As a Jewish American, not once have I ever used racist or offensive language in comments here at CN.
I am not offended by strong but fair criticism of Jews in America or Israel.
I’m not afraid of fact-based analysis of the actions of Israel or the pro-Israel Lobby here in the United States.
What I do unequivocally reject is the stream of fake “anti-Semitism” posted by Inverted Hasbara propaganda trolls attempting to smear the Consortium News site.
Conventional Hasbara (overtly pro-Israel / pro-Zionist) propaganda works in tandem with Inverted Hasbara (false flag “anti-Israel” / “anti-Zionist” and fake “anti-Jewish” / “anti-Semitic”) propaganda in ever more desperate efforts to “defend Israel” with a firehose of falsehood.
Zionist terrorist violence embraced the delusion that “power” comes “out of the barrel of a gun”.
A violent and fundamentally racist ideology, reinforced by constant propaganda, terrorizes Jews living in Apartheid Israel and abroad with the ominous specter of a “new anti-Semitism” and a “second Holocaust”.
Of course, many Jews in Israel and abroad reject racist Zionist ideology and its vile propaganda.
In today’s Apartheid Israel and in the United States, Jews committed to social justice are rejected as “morally elitist idealists” by the Zionist fanatics and gun-toting “settlers” who illegally occupy more and more Palestinian land.
Now these fanatics are getting really desperate, attempting to “secure the realm” by provoking direct military confrontation with Russia.
Effective action starts with accurate information. That’s why Consortium News is such an important resource, and deserves our continuing support (and vigilance) as readers and contributors.
And that’s why the Hasbara troll army is so busy with disinformation, distraction, dissuasion, and hilariously desperate efforts to smear this site.
My my, there’s a mouthful that supports everything I have said. Ol’ Abe rejects the title of being a “morally elitist idealist”, yet stands like Jesus on the mount, holding high the holy pages of The Rules Of The Perfect World. This is as “morally elitist” as you can get. The “idealist” part comes from not fully understanding the disconnect between what is right and why is real. Re·al – adjective: actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.
Hasbara troll “WC” was puking up that whole “why [sic] is real” propaganda line four months ago in the CN comments here
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/22/the-strange-world-of-russian-trolls/
Comrade “WC” is still flogging Hasbara. Hilarity continues to ensue.
And Ol’ Abe couldn’t answer the “why is real” question four months ago either, but rather fell back on his whack-a-mole method of labeling anything he disagrees with or cannot fathom a “Hasbara troll or Zionist conspirator” out to sully the Consortiumnews website.
Here’s your problem, Abe. In your self-appointed role as the Consortiumnews comments section policeman, you are looking for bogymen under every bed. And just like tail gunner Joe McCarthy, you will find them everywhere you look so long as you are willing to interpret anything that is said with your own prejudicial mindset. Take the case of “Deniz” above, who simply brought up some questions that he/she thought relevant. But here comes Abe with his Hasbara whack-a-mole hammer to accuse Deniz of attempting to change the subject. Talk about “hilarity continues to ensue”. Sad indeed!
I am not the only one on this site who sees your Hasbara/Zionist obsession as not being conducive to the principles of the CN comments section – which is the free flow of information and ideas – like it or not. :)
Hasbara troll “WC” has been playing the deny-distract-divert game for longer than four months.
For lots more Hasbara propaganda antics from comrade “WC”, check out the CN comments here:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/18/blaming-russia-for-the-internet-sewer/
Comrade “WC” and fellow Hasbara trolls attempt to divert attention from fact-based investigations of Israeli interference in U.S. electoral politics and foreign policy, the workings of the pro-Israel Lobby, and the Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis military operations.
Inserting words like “Zionist/Zionism” and “obsessed/obsession” to distract readers, “WC” keeps on telling us all that paying attention to Israel and the pro-Israel Lobby will “get you nowhere”.
Hasbara trolls like “WC” sometimes go quiet for a while ( a “hiatus”) after they’ve been repeatedly exposed.
Apparently “WC” hoped we’d forget about all those previous Hasbara escapades.
The term “Hasbara troll” identifies what the propaganda poster does, not who they are.
What comrade “WC” is doing is pretty obvious to everyone.
Hasbara trolls seek to obstruct the free flow of fact-based information and distract from ideas that lead to practical, organized, effective political action.
Because they provide fact-based reporting on Israeli government actions, pro-Israel Lobby warmongering, and Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis aggression in the Middle East, independent investigative journalism sites like Consortium News have been besieged by Conventional Hasbara and Inverted Hasbara trolls.
That’s why comrade “WC” and “friends” who “agree” keep on popping up out of their holes.
Yes, this was clearly a criminal war intended solely to support Israel, started in deliberate and contemptuous defiance of the US Constitution, international law, US interests, and the will of the people of the US, by US mass media owned by zionists and US politicians bribed by zionists. I support Mr. Davies’ call for reparations and severe war crime prosecution of all persons in any way responsible for the starting the war.
A database of all foreign casualties of these wars should be compiled from prior government and private records, refugee and casualty lists, to support these estimates. Excess deaths due to disease, malnutrition, etc through the recovery period should be added. Also an inventory of property damage and reconstruction estimates with other loss estimates. The US should be embargoed and taxed until this is paid in full.
The argument of estimates in the article could be clarified. It is not clear why the ORB estimate (to 6/2007) would be added to the JFP-IBC estimate, which appears to cover the same period, unless the latter includes later data.
The only ameliorating factor of Iraq War II is that the US accidentally caused the Shiite plurality to gain power. Whether any government under such divisive conditions can be called a democracy is questionable.
I keep telling people that Israel was just a side player in the decision to invade Iraq; fundamentally Iraq was about control of the oil money and the oil production first, as per the neoliberal economic agenda, and about Israeli interests second.
This article doesn’t even mention that fundamental factor, unfortunately; the Nuremburg quote doesn’t mention what came out of Nuremburg, i.e that the fundamental ‘class A’ war crime is to wage a war of aggression for economic gain.
This notion, that it was an ideological war for the benefit of Israeli Zionism, is just a distraction, and worse, a misreading of history. Go read State Department cables at Wikileaks – it’s all about the economics, that’s what the US military posture around the world is all about. In Syria, the destabilization campaign was due to the growing economic ties between Iran, Syria and Lebanon, along with the involvement of Russia’s Gazprom.
There is an ABSOLUTE taboo in the American and British corporate media when it comes to discussing the economic agenda for covert intervention, regime change and military invasions. This is really what is driving the whole agenda.
As far as Iraq, the neocon/neoliberal plan was for Iraq to be America’s oil tanker / aircraft carrier in the Middle East, from which further regime change invasions – targeting Iran, mainly, but the plan was to link up to Central Asia for the “New American Century”. Israel was NOT the driving force in this plan. Wall Street & Exxon & Chevron & Lockheed Martin – etc. – their economic agenda was the driving force. In that overall effort, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, are just minor partners of the American Empire.
War is a racket, as Smedley Butler said – and Israel is only supported because it plays a relatively minor covert role in supporting that racket – pretty cheap, you get a whole country’s worth of covert thugs who serve American imperial interests around the world for only $4 billion in military aid per year. Plus, they can use their nuclear weapons to keep other states in line if push comes to shove, without direct American involvement.
Good post. Controlling Middle East oil has been the US strategy since the end of WWII – well before it’s marriage to Israel.
I agree, the Mel Gibson, drunken Aussie rant that “the Jews are responsible” for all the wrongs of the World is used to often as a overused & cliqued excuse? Follow the money is where it’s at, not follow the Jew nonsense?
Follow the money.
Here’s where it’s at:
https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ISR
Israel ranks first among high-income countries receiving official U.S. foreign aid.
However, 99% of U.S. aid to Israel is U.S. military aid credit under the Department of Defense (DoD) Foreign Military Financing (FMF) Program, Payment Waived.
Israel ranks second after Iraq in U.S. aid to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
But Israel received 3.1 billion in annual U.S. military aid to defend a population of 8.5 million.
By comparison, an Iraq still ravaged by the 2013 war and its chaotic aftermath, not to mention the 1990-91 war plus a decade of sanctions and U.S. bombing, now rebuilding its security forces while under siege by ISIS terrorist forces, received just 2.9 billion in aid to defend a population of 39.3 million.
Follow the money and the facts: the warmongering pro-Israel Lobby is intimately involved in U.S. efforts to control Middle East oil.
Hasbara propaganda denies the reality of post-9/11 Israeli-Saudi-US Axis wars.
The Hasbara trolls and their fellow travelers predictably grumble their peculiar “overused & cliqued [sic] excuse” that it’s somehow all just some “Jew nonsense”.
Yes, Saddam’s switch to Euro’s for oil was one primary reason for the invasion. Presently Russia is demonized for it’s BRICS and Petro Yuan agreement with China. Zionism as is the KKK by definition hideous.
“The level of naivety necessary before you can talk about ‘an American plan to bring democracy to the Middle East’ cannot be found anywhere outside of 1970s porno films. ‘You mean the time machine only works if I take off all my clothes?'”
Robert Newman’s History of Oil (2006)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIpm_8v80hw
Hasbara propaganda includes mis-leading claims and straw man arguments that attempt to distract from the reality of U.S. Wars for Israel.
For example, U.S. Wars for Israel have never been “solely to support Israel” (as claimed by Sam F) or some “ideological war for the benefit of Israeli Zionism” (as nonsense factory mentioned).
(We’re not suggesting here that Sam F and nonsense factory are Hasbara trolls, only that their pro- and con- comments are both based on Hasbara disinformation about Israel’s role in the Iraq War.)
Having said that, the claim (by nonsense factory) that “Israel was just a side player in the decision to invade Iraq” is false on its face.
In addition to their phoney claims about “Iraqi WMD” and allegations of “Iranian nuclear capacities”, the pro-Israel officials, analysts and staffers that populated the Bush administration promoted lots of spurious “economic” and “humanitarian” arguments for U.S. war against Israel’s designated “enemies” Iraq and Iran.
In 1947, under United Nations General Assembly Resolution 177 (II), paragraph (a), the International Law Commission was directed to “formulate the principles of international law recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the judgment of the Tribunal.”
The Nuremberg Principles are a set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime:
Principle VI
“The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.”
Principle VII
“Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.”
The Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis has committed multiple crimes against peace and humanity.
Regardless of the myriad “economic” and “humanitarian” arguments proffered to instigate U.S. military action, America’s post-9/11 wars in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region remain indisputably U.S. Wars for Israel.
Equally indisputable is the reality that U.S. Wars for Israel have economically harmed America and caused enormous human suffering for Americans.
“The Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis has committed multiple crimes against peace and humanity.”
(Completly agree, there is plenty of news everywhere to support this.)
However ….
“Regardless of the myriad “economic” and “humanitarian” arguments proffered to instigate U.S. military action, America’s post-9/11 wars in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region remain indisputably U.S. Wars for Israel.”
(This is just a restatement of your initial premise and is not conclusive from the facts that you provided in your analysis.)
Deniz has shifted tactics from trying to change the subject to claiming that it’s somehow “not conclusive from the facts”.
Independent investigative journalism and fact-based analyses (here on Consortium News and elsewhere) has consistently documented U.S. executive and legislative collusion with the pro-Israel Lobby; Israeli instigation of U.S. wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria; Israeli propaganda against Iran; and Israeli-Saudi-US Axis preparations for war against Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
Does the Hasbara propaganda troll really think no one notices their latest effort to claim the facts somehow aren’t “conclusive”?
I choose not to focus on minor interests, delusions, or interests non-specific to the Mideast, such as:
1. the interest of the MIC in attacking small countries anywhere;
2. the hope of oil execs for free oil despite causing more damage than a decade of oil profits.
So the only interest apart from those is the real reason for US wars in the Mideast, “solely to support Israel.” You are welcome to suggest a realistic alternative specific to the region.
My information on the causes of Iraq War II is about as far as possible from “hasbara disinformation.” See for example Bamford’s Pretext For War on the zionist DefSec Wolfowitz’ appointment of known zionist conspirators Perl, Wurmser, and Feith to the offices at DIA, CIA, and NSA that “stove-piped” known-false “intelligence” about WMD to Bush, Cheney, and Powell to start the war. They had previously conspired to recruit Netanyahu to trick the US into wars for Israel.
There are always minor interests for and against a war of aggression, but here the specific interest was indeed solely to support Israel.
Come on, Israel’s agenda is to expand territorial control into South Lebanon and keep control of the Golan Heights, right?
The real tipping points in the decision to overthrow Saddam (which PNAC had been pushing for) were likely two fold:
(1) Saddam ditched the US dollar for the euro in 2000. Why this was ridiculed by every economist in the corporate media, the euro rose 30% against the dollar by 2001. This mean Saddam had increased the value of his currency reserves by 30%
(2) Saddam had locked all British and American oil firms out of bidding on Iraqi oil – this was seen in the ‘list of foreign suitors’ for Iraqi oil contracts, the March 2001 Cheney Energy Task Force documents. France, China, Russia, in contrast, all had large holdings.
Israel is only peripherally involved in these issues. Their role in the American Empire is as a deniable supplier of weapons, training and surveillance to regimes that are even too dirty for the US to directly support (like Equatorial Guinea, say). It’s a bit part, not a leading role.
These are US Wars for Wall Street, Abe – Israel is a nasty apartheid state with an undeclared nuclear weapons program, but it really is silly to claim they are running the show.
Regardless, the only lasting result of the Iraq invasion and occupation was that now Iraq is far closer to Iran than it ever was under Saddam, they’re looking more and more like economic partners. It would be a hilarious fail by the American Empire if it hadn’t cost so many lives, that’s hard to laugh at.
It is interesting that Iraq had refused US bids on their oil, but the supply alternatives mean that the nations that got Iraqi oil would bid less for the alternatives, so the costs of war would make it a loss for the US. A few US companies would be disadvantaged for a while, but not the US.
I doubt that the US cares enough about small countries using the dollar, to declare wars without other primary causes. I hear those ideas mostly as coverups for the obvious Israeli influence.
The influence of Israel and KSA in the US is clearly central to the US wars on all sides of Israel and KSA. And we know that Israel has been many times as influential as KSA, and was directly involved in causing the Iraq War II in the media, the administration, the Intel agencies, etc.
Indeed the Iraq war backfired on the hawks in elevating the plurality Shiites to power in Iraq, in sympathy with Iran.
But if the US Mideast wars were for Wall St, we would simply take over then-weak KSA and get many times the oil for free. If we had opposed Israel, we might have eliminated the regional troublemaker and restored nationhood to the Palestinians, a diplomatic coup. We could just as well have supported the MB in Egypt and used diplomacy to arbitrate among the factions of Iraq and Syria. Libya was no threat to the US either, as it was seeking better relations, and Yemen merely needed our help. There is no broad Wall St interest in those backwaters, whereas war costs real money and causes real problems.
“Greater israel” aims for most of the Middle East
I think that readers here find this “hasbara troll” stuff unproductively vague, and like “anti-semitism” the real thing is easy to see. You found no error, so why not state your objection to my comment?
Knowingly or not, the errors of Sam F and nonsense factory represent two extremes of Hasbara disinformation regarding the Iraq War:
At one extreme, Sam F has repeatedly claimed that the Iraq War was ““solely to support Israel”. This is manifestly not true.
At the other extreme, nonsense factory keeps on insisting that “Israel was just a side player” with a “bit part” and “not a leading role”. Also not true.
Both extremes are severely limited viewpoints that deny the complex military, economic and political reality of U.S. Wars for Israel.
Israel’s geo-strategic agenda extends far beyond “territorial control” in South Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
Well beyond its aspired-to “Biblical borders”, Israel strives to secure status as the regional hegemonic power in the Middle East.
Israel’s tireless efforts to instigate U.S Wars against key MENA states: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran have been advanced by pro-Israel Lobby elements in American government and media.
Pursuing its own regional agenda, Saudi Arabia has served as a temporary “ally” of Israel.
Supporting the Israeli-Saudi-US Axis, other GCC states and NATO member states have hoped to reap some economic and political benefits by cooperating to varying degrees in U.S. Wars for Israel.
Russian diplomatic efforts and military support at the request of the Syrian government thwarted the Israeli-Saudi-US Axis “regime change” agenda for Syria.
The 2016 campaigns of slavishly pro-Israel candidates Hillary Clinton (supported by Haim Saban) and Donald Trump (backed by Sheldon Adelson) signaled that a pro-Israel warhawk would occupy the White House in any event.
It is ridiculous to claim that Israel alone is “running the show”. It is equally ridiculous to assert that post-9/11 U.S. Wars are “for Wall Street” only.
The pro-Israel Lobby is deeply embedded in the U.S. military-industrial-governmental-media complex.
That is why the global peace movement must ignore the voluminous “regime change” propaganda churned out by the mainstream media, and must firmly oppose the Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis war agenda.
Otherwise the next U.S. War for Israel may spark a nuclear conflict that makes it humanity’s final war.
I don’t see where we disagree, Abe, except for my usage of “solely” to emphasize the insignificance of other factors. That is why I suggest reserving the “hasbara disinformation” concept for arguments that are not only wrong, but demonstrably from a source that intended to deceive. You sometimes point to such sources. Otherwise those who advance such an argument are unnecessarily insulted and the debate can become more emotional than rational.
The outsized influence of the pro-Israel Lobby and ziocon big money bribers upon American foreign policy is undeniable. And it is apparent that the aim of U.S. foreign policy is to advance hegemonic control of socio-political realities and narratives. Economic “partnerships” that play to the dominance of corporate neofeudalistic exploitation are “good” and any notions of national sovereignty, socialized “benefits”, or human rights and welfare that get in the way of that domination are subject to ironic or twisted propaganda, bald-faced lies, and/or the military boot of hegemonic enforcement.
The aim of Israel to be a regional hegemonic power dovetails with global U.S. hegemony. They are militarily and economically aligned serving much the same agenda when it comes to resource beneficiaries and “competitors”. Sam F has been consistent on this nexus and the role of pro-Israeli bribery and media manipulation. I don’t really see much difference between Abe’s use of the term “War for Israel” and Sam’s use of “solely”. And you each have made a point to document or refer to Israeli “instigations” — so all-in-all I don’t see where you disagree.
Sam refers to the use of “solely” as emphasis–and I get that. But I would think Sam would agree that the driving factors of U.S. wars in the Middle East include the advancement of U.S. hegemony (dovetailing with Israeli interests) and profiteering by the likes of the Carlyle Group, Halliburton, and the MIC in general. There are American power players who are only too glad to be influenced or have things instigated (Cheney’s connections to Halliburton and Genie Energy and the Bush connection to Carlyle are instructive).
I would say nonsense factory makes some solid points but would disagree that Israel is in any way a “bit player” and think the longer-term “results” of the war are being played out according to plan. The Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis is exemplified by the perpetration of 9/11 which was a project of PNAC as part of a forward strategy that was greatly aided or boosted by the Iraq invasion and occupation. The destabilization of the Middle East was and is intended to strengthen Axis “control” and eliminate the potential of independent “competition” from Russia-Iran-Syria in the region. Such “destabilization” also could mestasize to Russia’s “underbelly” and would aid in their destabilization. The Iraq War led directly to Libya/Syria with a view toward Iran and Russia.
Libya represented a threat of “independence” due to aspirations of pan-African development (outside U.S. hegemony or control) and the example of socialized benefits. Syria is aligned with Palestinian rights, national sovereignty, and socialized benefits. They are/were “in the way”.
I want to just add that unforeseen hitches in the plan involve the resolve of the Syrians and the capacities and resolve of Russia.
Sam F:
The response to your posts has nothing to do with “agreement” or “disagreement”. It is about fundamental points of fact.
Your repeated usage of “solely” is not only wrong (not correct or true), but demonstrably from a source that intends to deceive: Hasbara propaganda.
Regardless of your intention, the “argument” you advance is both incorrect and based in disinformation.
Now I imagine that you and nonsense factory want to steer clear of Hasbara troll “debate” tactics.
So it certainly isn’t necessary to become “emotional” or “insulted” when the Hasbara source of such an “argument” is pointed out.
A further point of clarification:
The Iraq War didn’t “backfire” on the pro-Israel Lobby warhawks.
The point of U.S. Wars for Israel has always been to utterly destroy the designated target “enemy” states, to demolish their civil society and critical infrastructure, their military offensive capacity and internal security forces, leaving them vulnerable to chaos and terror
Of course, “war costs real money” – but it’s American money and always it includes more lavish “aid” to Israel. In 2003, official “aid” to Israel “from the American people” peaked at $3.7 billion https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ISR
So U.S. Wars for Israel are very, very lucrative… for Israel.
And sure, there are plenty of U.S. MIC players that benefit, as well as Israel’s Saudis BFF, NATO and the GCC satraps. But the Israelis get to watch while the U.S. “blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven” (Devarim 25:19 / Book of Deuteronomy).
Until somebody says “nyet”. Then that somebody gets a li’l “regime change” on their door step.
We can go on, but I assume you, nonsense factory, and others are sufficiently rational to grasp these points.
Of course, the Hasbara troll army jus’ luuuvs to “debate” the facts and will vomit up all sorts of hilarity to change the subject.
When paying these reparations, who should these reparations go to when whole families are wiped out? Seriously, who? How can families in the United States get remunerated for losing their home (literally everything they own) from the 2008 ruse put upon us? It’s ok, though, ’cause at least they weren’t droned to death. If they are homeless, then it is “move along, nothing to see here”. My point is, it wasn’t just outside countries affected, also good people inside THIS country.
Yes, an important point. When mass wrongs are to be righted, one must first decide whether the events were recent enough, and whether enough documentation exists, that most reparations can be directed as payments to specific persons, industries, etc. or classes thereof, or whether individuals etc. must show relative misfortune in the present. Where there are no survivors or damage was to the general welfare, a general distribution of reparations is warranted.
Some injuries can be documented well enough by records of deaths or property loss, or reasonable presumptions by location and history. Injuries long ago or in chaotic situations can be shown by disparity in the present, which admittedly will include persons whose injury was unrelated to the events for which reparation is made (prior homelessness, unemployment, or other injury) but in a sense is more just than direct reparations. That is the rule of “if you break it, you own it” with all prior defects.
And you are right that aggressive war causes injuries within the aggressor state, not only military injuries and survivor needs, plus injuries of all kinds to the opponents of war, but degradation of government institutions, a stain upon history, etc. The prosecution of war crimes and penalization of aggressor states should enforce standards of compensation of domestic victims, and standards of demilitarization monitoring and government provisions against future aggression.
Trump has named pro-Israel war hawk John Bolton as National Security Adviser:
“President Trump named as his national security adviser John Bolton, a hawk who has said military strikes may be inevitable as a means of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
“The White House announced Thursday evening that H.R. McMaster was leaving the position and that Bolton would take his place by April 9.
“Naming Bolton suggests Trump is ready to pull out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal by May 12, the deadline for Trump to waive sanctions. The deal trades sanctions relief for a rollback of Iran’s nuclear program. Bolton is a staunch opponent of the deal, as is Mike Pompeo, the CIA chief Trump nominated last week to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. […]
“Bolton has close relations with the pro-Israel community stemming from his success in 1991 in getting the United Nations to rescind its Zionism is racism resolution. Bolton was at the time the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs under President George H. W. Bush.
“Bush’s son, George W. Bush, nominated Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations in 2005 and named him acting ambassador. Bolton never cleared the Senate nominating process, in part because of his hawkishness on Middle Eastern issues, but also because subordinates at the State Department emerged to describe him as an abusive boss. Bolton had under the younger Bush been the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs.
“Pro-Israel groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, at the time broke with their protocol against endorsing a nominee and lobbied for Bolton’s confrimation, but to no avail. Bolton was forced to step down from the U.N. post.
“McMaster got along well with his Israeli counterparts but angered some on the right wing of the pro-Israel community because of reports that he blocked Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Trump ultimately recognized Jerusalem last December.”
https://www.jta.org/2018/03/22/news-opinion/politics/trump-set-name-john-bolton-iran-hawk-pro-israel-advocate-national-security-adviser
Bolton served as a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 5 August 2005 until 31 December 2006. Bolton is currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a Fox News Channel commentator. He was a foreign policy adviser to 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
An outspoken fixture in the pro-Israel Lobby and an enthusiast for U.S. wars for Israel, Bolton is closely involved with several neocon and pro-Israel think tanks, policy institutes and special interest groups, including the infamous Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).
Bolton also serves as Chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a New York-based pro-Israel think tank whose founder and President Nina Rosenfield, an heiress to the Sears Roebuck fortune, is an ardent Zionist.
Rosenfield was vice president of Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and has served on the board of directors of many pro-Israel organizations, including Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Center for Security Policy (CSP), and the Hudson Institute. In 2003, Rosenfield was given an award by the Zionist Organization of America for her pro-Israel advocacy. She also serves on the board of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), headed by former IDF Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin.
Abe it’s stuff like this at times like this that I learn from your free style reporting.
I had a thought that if President Trump is painting a picture of ‘peace through strength’ with these terrible picks which he has been replacing with even more previous horrible picks is to portray ..
I Mean Badass Face to the world well good luck with that with this band of crazies picks he has put in charge…. and yes the Israeli influence is astounding by far. And yes we are on our way to Iran, thank you Brookings you are doing a hell of a good job ruining America and the world, or the other way around, but bad anyway you say it.
I’ve made up my mind to read and re-read every JFK-Khrushchev Back Channel reference there is, to remain somewhat hopeful of what’s to come. It’s hard when you hear of Polish Army Brigades moving eastward towards the russsian borderlands. Maybe huge joint US-S Korea/Japan/Australia military exercises is good intimidation negotiation techniques, but how smart is it getting rid of our your spy’s when Russia retaliates in kind? Genius, and what’s it say to when your own people (Porton Lab) look dumbfounded to your PM’s claims? Then what’s with all the condemnation of Russian sports participation in world events…. & who is buying this? Oh I forgot MSDNC.
Abe I do believe Israel’s worst is at the helm of not only Israel and the Middle East but of the operation in total including that which is commonly referred to as of the USofA…. J Edgar was a rookie compared to what the U.S. Establishment is dealing with within the world of blackmail, and dirty dealing. It’s not just a Jewish thing, because it really never was, but this order of Zionist is among the Barron Order of Power that search back to the 18th century of allowing nations to wage war. JFK talked about secret societies and George Carlin told us how we ain’t in it… but there is a hierarchy somewhere with inside a concentric ring of rings, and I don’t like who they left in charge almost anywhere with inside of our nation’s circle of friends.
Thanks for the reporting of Bolton. Joe
Lets hope he gets fired real quick like:)
“Trump has named pro-Israel war hawk John Bolton as National Security Adviser:”…so the narcissist is on his way to becoming a megalomaniac
Quote:
“American political leaders and mainstream media have refused to address the real threats of pro-Israel Lobby influence in US electoral politics, and Israeli interference in American foreign policy.”
Where did you get that from?
It’s hard nowadays not to notice that it had been Russia that interfered with the 2016 presidential elections and not our friends Israel in the Middle-East. Pickup up any MSM publication, listen to our politicians and you’ll see my point…
PS: It must be true, if so many people say the same…. On the flip side, billions of flies cannot be wrong when they invade the dump… :)
http://www.academia.edu/34954495/The_Spy_Chiefs_of_Renaissance_Venice_Intelligence_Leadership_in_the_Early_Modern_World
May/may not be of interest to you. Page 15…….
Regardless I thought of you when I read it.
Keep up the good fight
No less true today:
“Of course, when the opportunity arose to fill their pockets, some of these gentlemen did not hesitate to leak information […] purse strings always became loose at the prospect of valuable information.” (pages 15-16)
And, of course, there are “intelligence sources” that do not hesitate to leak disinformation at no charge when the purse lies elsewhere.