When President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act on New Year's Eve, he codified policies of arbitrary and indefinite detention for terror suspects including possibly U.S. citizens. Alexander Hamilton referred to such policies as the “favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.” Based on our experience in evaluating and caring for victims of torture and human rights abuses from all over the world, Hamilton was right.
Regardless of the law's applicability to U.S. citizens, indefinite detention in a military facility without charge can be tantamount to torture, causing profound health consequences.
The Murdoch papers are carrying a new version of the bin Laden saga. This one contains much of the fiction of the last 25, leaving out much as well. Nothing is new, just a set of lies with some reason for them to be retold. We know what that reason is, nobody takes a word of it seriously anymore, not the first stories, not the sea burial, not the execution of the world’s most valuable intelligence asset.
Big Bat USA: 4% of the force (the infantry) takes 80% of the casualties and receives 1% of the budget. This FACT alone gives the lie to all of the above pontifications. Both the US Government and the US media are inept and misrepresenting reality to the American people. 99% of the Pentagon budget is fraud, waste, and abuse–the policy is based on ideology rather than reality; acquisition is broken–we simply transfer money from the taxpayer to the corporations without thinking about it; and operations are mostly theater. We do not have a strategy–we have a collection of criminally insane people posturing for the public and getting away with it. For those who lived through the same thing in the 1970′s, remember the movie King of Hearts? There are only two candidates that are both informed and honest on this matter: Ron Paul and Robert Steele.
Susan Lindauer, Former CIA Back Channel to Iraq at the United Nations
Most Americans are astonished to discover that right up to 9/11, the CIA was developing a “Real Politik” vision of Iraq that recognized the fast approaching collapse of U.N. Sanctions. The CIA was preparing for Peace—with a ruthless determination that the United States would capture the lion's share of spoils from Iraqi Reconstruction contracts in any post-sanctions period.
German pilots transporting medical supplies and doctors into Baghdad International Airport at the end of the Clinton Administration had blasted the myth of invincibility surrounding sanctions. To this day, those pilots are anonymous—but they changed the equation in total. Their courage honoring the Berlin Airlifts in the Cold War was quickly copied. Across Europe and the Arab world, activists began to organize humanitarian flights into Baghdad. On the Security Council, France and Russia argued strenuously that the ban on air travel had been self imposed, and the no-fly zone could not prohibit humanitarian flights.
By this time, UN sanctions had killed over 1.7 million Iraqis; wiped out literacy in a single generation; and created artificial starvation in the world's second most oil-rich nation. Iraq's world class hospitals that once rivaled London and New York had been ravaged. Sick of the misery, the global community refused to stay silent any longer.
The CIA saw the writing on the wall. International loathing for “genocide by sanctions” had reached such a peak of outrage that there was no possibility of re-crafting the hated policy. Secretary of State Colin Powell's vision of “smart sanctions” had come too late.
The CIA was determined to control the agenda for the advantage of the United States, however. And so quietly through my back channel, we undertook a proactive, covert dialogue over exactly what concessions Iraq would offer the United States, in exchange for lifting the sanctions. As a long-time opponent of sanctions myself, I was eager to get results.
Occupy 9/11 is emergent. This film, loaded on 1 February 2011, is now going viral. At 2:28:42, this is one of the best documentaries on the topic, and it is free online.
Phi Beta Iota: This is an extraordinary contribution. It is highly recommended for students as well as adult learning clubs; it provides the best “overview” in one place.
It's no secret what's required in 2012 and beyond: an efficient and effective organization of military power for the optimum utilization of increasingly constrained resources. More specifically, a serious audit of the U.S. Department of Defense, along with a national reset where the roles of politicians, bureaucrats and four stars are recast as servants, not masters, of the national interest. Unfortunately, inside the Beltway where accountability is a dirty word, political and military leaders are free to conflate their personal and bureaucratic interests with the national interest.
As a result, there is still no willingness to comprehend or, at least, admit the truth: America's current national security posture is fiscally unsustainable. Today, the United States' national debt is so large it will swallow almost any legislation the President and Congress agree to pass. It is only a question of time before the U.S. government is compelled to make drastic cuts in federal spending.
