How War was Turned into a Brand

Political chaos means Israel is booming like it's 1999 - and the boom is in defence exports field-tested on Palestinians
Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president's chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hizbullah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith. At a glance, things aren't going well for Israel. But here's a puzzle: why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it's 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China's?

Many Pressures for War On Iran

In the US there are many political pressures for the US to make war with Iran as the following excellent article details. It indicates that the US is closer than ever to staging provocations that can be used as a pretext and justification for war with Iran . Some of the comments that follow the article are very worthwhile and perceptive.

Cheney, Lieberman and Iran War Conspiracy

I was never one of those who believed the Bush administration was getting ready to attack Iran in 2006 or early 2007. But it is now clear that at least Vice President Dick Cheney is conspiring to push through a specific plan for war with Iran. And Senator Joe Lieberman is an active part of that conspiracy.

Protest At US Torture School

Torture is very much a part of the methods of Bush Administration Their object is to breed fear among US citizens and opponents of US wars and expansion. The Head of the torture school at Fort Huachuca is Major General Barbara Fast who was head of Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad during the time of exposure of prison tortures. It shows that the most degrading and inhuman job, can be done by women as well as men. They know that people experiencing torture are apt to say anything they think their torturers want to hear, however unreliable. However torture creates hatred and fear, which is why the monsters do it. Catholic priests, nuns, and other devoted Christians sometimes take their faith seriously. Like Fr. Louis Vitale and Jesuit Fr. Steve Kelly, they are not afraid to walk the path of Jesus Christ.

Pre-Trial Continues for Priests Who Denounce Torture

Two Roman Catholic priests, who were arrested as they approached the Fort Huachuca gatehouse on November 19, 2006, will face a continuance of their pre-trial hearing this August 13 in Federal Court in Tucson, Arizona. The intent of Franciscan Fr. Louis Vitale, 74, and Jesuit Fr. Steve Kelly, 58, was to speak with enlisted personnel and deliver a letter denouncing torture to Major General Barbara Fast, commander at the post. The letter addressed to Major General Fast voices the priests' concern with what is being taught to interrogators who are being trained at Fort Huachuca, the headquarters for the intelligence services of the US military.

Superb Indictment of Western Media Deceptions

This is John Pilger at his best, exposing how the media spins and plays government propaganda as 'news'. How they cover up facts, genuflect to special interests and suppress or omit unwanted truths. As Western society, led by the Bush Administration moves quickly toward dictatorship, using 'wars on terror' as their cover story, it is the media that is cheer-leading the charge - repeating all lies- seldom questioning - and never doubting any official falsehood, and covering up facts which expose official lies. No wonder they want to get their dirty hands on internet and then choke to death this one source of unbiased news. You cannot read John Pilger without wanting to be active in trying to stop this cancerous growth from our culture.

BRITAIN - How truth slips down the memory hole

One of the leaders of demonstrations in Gaza calling for the release of the BBC reporter Alan Johnston was a Palestinian news cameraman, Imad Ghanem. On July 5, he was shot by Israeli soldiers as he filmed them invading Gaza. A Reuters video shows bullets hitting his body as he lay on the ground. An ambulance trying to reach him was also attacked.

This is one of many articles I see dealing with the influence of Israel on US Mid-East policies, and how deeply it's agents and activists have penetrated US society. Not mentioned but very important is how Christian Zionists and 'End Time' religionists, link Israel and their favourite myth of 'God's final battle of Armageddon' to Israel's preservation. It is a potent mix in which George Bush as a fervent Christian Fundamentalist End Times believer, plays a vital role.

Everywhere I visit from Copenhagen to Istanbul, Patagonia to Mexico City, journalists and academics, trade unionists and businesspeople, as well as ordinary citizens, inevitably ask me why the US public tolerates the killing of over a million Iraqis over the last two decades, and thousands of Afghans since 2001?

Uri Avnery is one of the best writers on Israel's policies, wars and illegal occupation of Palestine. He exposes the criminal and barbarous treatment of Palestinians by Israel, supported by the Bush Administration. He described Tony Blair, as Bush's obedient poodle sent to the Middle East as an Ambassador to implement the policies of Bush, and Israel. Avnery exposes that Israel's occupation of Palestine is hardly mentioned in the media. The reason for this is that Israel wants people to learn to regard occupation of Palestine as Israel's right, rather than a continuing aggression. He is a very insightful, brilliant writer.

THERE NEVER was a darker Middle East summit meeting. The darkest there can be.
The four leaders at Sharm al-Sheik did not sit together at an intimate round table. Each one sat alone behind a huge table of his own. That ensured a striking separation between them. The four long tables hardly touched. Each one of the leaders, with his assistants behind him, sat like a solitary island in a vast sea.
All four - Hosni Mubarak, King Abdallah of Jordan, Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas - bore a severe countenance. Throughout the official part of the conference, not a single smile could be seen.

Robert Fisk shows how our media completely misrepresent the situation in Palestine and the Middle East generally. The media's aim is to please the US-Israeli war machine by repeating their lies and propaganda, thus facilitating further Israeli conquest of Palestinian lands - such as levelling Arab homes and building new Jewish settlements on Arab lands, and generally oppressing the Arab citizens of the Israeli-occupied territory.  With their discreditted Abbas regime now installed in the Western Bank, the US-Israeli war machine, and their media can portray it as ' the Government' . They can now increase their war on the popular elected Hamas-controlled Gaza by aiding the Abbas regime militarily, and  oppressing the Arab citizens of the Hamas-controlled area. As Washington's Israeli-influenced neocons might say, from now on it's going to be a 'cakewalk' to gain complete Israeli control of the area.

Welcome to 'Palestine'

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

The Battle of Gaza

In less than 24 hours of fierce street-fighting, Bush's proxy-army in Gaza was routed by armed units of Hamas. It was a stunning defeat for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and for US-Israeli policymakers who have done everything in their power to overturn the “free and fair” election of the Hamas government. For now, Hamas has reestablished its authority in Gaza although Abbas is still working frantically with Bush and Olmert to consolidate his power in the West Bank. ...
The forces that Bush has put in motion will inexorably lead to the decline of “superpower rule” and the dismantling of the US imperium. The transition is already visible. The battle of Gaza is just a macrocosm of a much larger phenomenon which now extends from Mogadishu to Kabul.

At a Barnes & Noble in Bayside, N.Y. a book reading and signing of The Scar of David by Susan Abulhawa scheduled for Thursday, May 24th was reduced to a book signing only. The reason Barnes & Noble gave for canceling the reading portion of Abulhawa's visit was due to ‘sensitivity' to the Jewish Community, space limitations and the author's safety, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations of New York (CAIR-NY).

Billionaire George Soros, tells how Israel has managed to link US policies to Israeli foreign policy objectives. This has involved a colossal cost to the US  and its reputation and may yet destroy it and the rest of the world. Just as Israel directly with the US government, and AIPAC with legislators in the US , influenced the US decision to make war on Iraq , so AIPAC is influencing the Bush Administration to move from the present covert war, to an open war on Iran . I hope there is still time for influential Americans like George Soros and Jimmy Carter to change US war policies before they plunge the world into a nuclear inferno from which it may never recover. The US has the technological means to do this, as has Israel with its own nuclear arsenal. Will sanity prevail over fanaticism harnessed to Christian and Zionist fundamentalism? Perhaps the answer is manifest in the historical record of 5,000 wars. They show that a majority can be enflamed to want war for almost any reason, and that sane, moderate, rational and wise people have seldom prevailed over the insanity of the wicked and power-mad few. This historical lesson has not yet been learned. Sane, moderate, rational people have not yet matched the dedication and commitment of the wicked and power-mad war hawks. Will they this time? 

George Soros, the billionaire investor, has added his voice to the debate over the role of Israel 's lobby in shaping US foreign policy.
In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Scott Ritter, a friend of Israel, describes how Israel has clandestinely hi-jacked US foreign policy. US taxpayers give Israel about 3 billion dollars a year in military aid. That helps finance the Israeli war machine, its occupation of Palestine and its war on Lebanon. Some is channelled back to the US to help finance one of the most powerful and influential lobbies in Washington - The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). By various methods, Israel manages to influence US legislators and the executive. The US war on Iraq, and the planned war on Iran are now not approved by a majority of Americans according to recent polls.

... This new Democratic leadership has failed egregiously.  Not only has the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, been unable to orchestrate any meaningful legislation to bring the war in Iraq to an end, but in mid-March she carelessly greased the tracks for a whole new conflict. By excising language from a defense appropriations bill which would have required President Bush to seek the approval of Congress prior to initiating any military attack on Iran, Pelosi terminated any hope of slowing down the Bush administration's mad rush to war.

Israel has become a fascist-military state using the threat of its nuclear weapons to wage wars and expand into neighbouring territories such as Palestine.  It uses a string of lies, staged events and false accusations to justify these expansionist steps and fool its own people. One of it's formulas to stifle criticism is to accuse any critics as "anti-Semitic" or "anti-Jewish". Its prime target is Iran - a non-nuclear weapon nation that could not be a threat to Israel with it's arsenal of some 200-400 nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the power of Israeli lies and war propaganda is great and dominates the media in Israel. As a result the majority of Israelis believe the false propaganda and support military action against Iran.

Ilan Pappe, a senior lecturer in the University of Haifa's Department of Political Science, says he is moving to the UK because it is "increasingly difficult to live in Israel" with his "unwelcome views and convictions."

.... This reaction either shows total and profound ignorance of the situation, or corrupt duplicity in enabling Bush to make war without hindrance or seeking permission from a Democratic Congress recently elected to stop Bush's wars. ...
It could become millions of deaths, and horrific long-term consequences for everyone, including the US public.
That is the spineless Pelosi and Democratic Party gift to the American public for their support in the last election.

The AIPAC Girl

If George W. Bush launches a pre-emptive war on Iran, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bear full moral responsibility for that war.
For it was Pelosi who quietly agreed to strip out of the $100 billion funding bill for Iraq a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before launching any new war on Iran. Pelosi's capitulation came in the Appropriations Committee.
What went down, and why?

Full-scale war on Iran may just be a concocted terrorist attack away from starting the "shock and awe."
The Samson Option is terminology used to explain Israel's intention to use its nuclear arsenal as an ultimate defense strategy if its leaders feel threatened enough to think they have no alternative. It comes from the biblical Samson said to have used his great strength to bring down the pillars of a Philistine temple, downing its roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistine tormentors. It's a strategy saying if you try killing me, we'll all die together, or put another way, we'll all go together when we go. Richard Wagner had his apocalyptic version in the last of his four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen - Gotterdammerung, or Twilight of the Gods based on Norse mythology referring to a prophesied war of the Gods resulting in the end of the world.

Hours after historic visit to Jerusalem holocaust museum, group of German bishops tour Palestinian Authority, say "Israel behaving like Nazis"
BERLIN - "This morning we saw pictures of the Warsaw ghetto at Yad Vashem and this evening we are going to the Ramallah ghetto." Several hours earlier on Sunday you probably would not have heard German Bishop Gregor Maria Franz Hanke choose such a divisive analogy.
But then on Sunday morning he was still in Israel and the rhetoric was considerably different than the one elected by the German Bishops' Conference once they crossed over in to the Palestinian Authority on Sunday evening.

Some articles say the US will stage an attack on Iran, others say Israel will attack Iran. Some say it will be a joint operation. In the following article the decision to strike is Israel 's but with US permission. I doubt whether Israel would attack Iran on its own, even though Israeli hawks may reason that Israel's nuclear arsenal will protect it against any retaliation. Other nations would fear that Israel may then retaliate with nuclear weapons and wipe them out. Israel and the US are playing on this fear. Israel has the full support of the Bush regime, which has been planning to attack Iran for years.

"The Telegraph" -- -- Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon.

At last a courageous US politician, Congressman Ron Paul, has warned fellow Americans that the Bush Administration may stage a false flag operation to incriminate Iran.
Bush can then blame Iran and justify his decision to attack Iran. Many of the comments that follow this short news item suggest that the US will stage some kind of nuclear attack on its own citizens to justify Bush's planned nuclear attack on Iran. Because of the enormous casualties and very long term disastrous consequences, it seems logical for the Bush regime to stage a very big false flag attack on the US - an attack so big, that few would believe that Bush would have or could have committed such a mass killing of Americans. If that's the way it happens, Bush should get all the support he wants, for whatever wars he wants against anyone he names. As Hitler wrote: "The bigger the lie the more people will believe it" 

Ron Paul stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and, in an open session, on the record, said, “A contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident may well occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.”
This is incredible, even by my standards. I watched this clip a few times, and I still don't believe it.
That's the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives! Where's the media coverage of this? * sigh * Listen to the video and read the responses.....

The twilight period of American democracy is now, when various steps, such as impeachment proceedings could still be successful.
There really is precious little time left for people to still exercise their freedoms and preferences.
I hope the dead hand of apathy ends soon, before our children's future is destroyed.

The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity.
At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable, a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread, in terms of radioactive fallout, over a large part of the Middle East.
There is mounting evidence that the Bush Administration in liaison with Israel and NATO is planning the launching of a nuclear war against Iran, ironically, in retaliation for its nonexistent nuclear weapons program. The US-Israeli military operation is said to be in "an advanced state of readiness".

The Pentagon has blurred the distinction between conventional battlefield weapons & nuclear bombs. The nuclear bunker buster bomb is presented as an instrument of peace-making & regime change, which will enhance global security.

At a not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing on Jan. 10, George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming.
Commenting about the briefing on MSNBC after Bush's nationwide address, NBC's Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said “there's a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue – in the country and the world – in a very acute way.”

Bush administration provokes open war on Iran Irbil raid, and other operations, authorized "several months ago" - by Larry Chin - 2007-01-15

Israel has been given the job of attacking Iran with nuclear weapons because the mid-term elections ruled out the US doing what they had been planning to do for the  last 2 years, according to this article by Michael Carmichael. Israel is the sacred cow of US politics that few dare criticize. Israel can invoke fears of another holocaust in order to gain public sympathy and dampen down criticism if they use nuclear weapons.

In the early 1990s, one of America's premiere journalists, Seymour Hersh, published a best-selling book, The Samson Option, detailing Mr Vanunu's testimony and a great deal of new information about Israel's vaunted nuclear defense capability.
While the vast majority of the peoples of the earth have known about Israel's nuclear arsenal since 1986, many Americans still do not accept the existence of WMDs under the direct control of the Israeli defense establishment. In the mid-1990s, Michael Moore - not known for his conservatism nor his reflexive support of Israel - made disparaging remarks during an interview that touched on the existence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal, because he was obviously oblivious to either Mordechai Vanunu's testimony or Mr Hersh's bestselling book.

Paul Craig Roberts has written extensively on the Bush Administration especially it's present wars and future war plans.
I've been studying US affairs, wars and nuclear issues for over 50 years and would rate Roberts as among the top US political analysts I have read during this time. His credentials are at the end of the following paper.

Most Americans believe that Bush's Iraqi misadventure is over. The occupation has lost the support of the electorate, the Congress, the generals and the troops. The Democrats are sitting back waiting for Bush to come to terms with reality. They don't want to be accused of losing the war by forcing Bush out of Iraq. There are no more troops to commit, and when the “surge” fails, Bush will have no recourse but to withdraw. A little longer, everyone figures, and the senseless killing will be over.
Recent news reports indicate that this conclusion could be an even bigger miscalculation than the original invasion.

It will be a huge mess spiralling upward and out of control. A general nuclear war that destroys all life cannot be ruled out....
...The American people and Democrats have not been forewarned about 'False Flags' and how Bush may use one to deceive them. Many believe he has already successfully used this technique, been believed, and then gone on to squander billions on illegal wars.
They are apt to believe the deception, and back Bushes action to use nuclear weapons to attack Iran , or at least quietly accept it, as they have accepted his previous lies and crimes. As with leading Democrats like Hillary Clinton, many accept and still repeat his Iraq war lies.

The new year began on the hopeful note that Bush's illegal war in Iraq would soon be ended. The repudiation of Bush and the Republicans in the November congressional election, the Iraq Study Group's unanimous conclusion that the US needs to remove its troops from the sectarian strife Bush set in motion by invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld's removal as defense secretary and his replacement by Iraqi Study Group member Robert Gates, the thumbs down given by America's top military commanders to the neoconservatives' plan to send more US troops to Iraq, and new polls of the US military that reveal that only a minority supports Bush's Iraq policy, thus giving new meaning to “support the troops,” are all indications that Americans have shed the stupor that has given carte blanche to George W. Bush.

.... Parry's article below reports that the Bush regime is planning to go ahead with its expansion of the Iraq  war, and by nuclear bombing Iran. This parallels many other articles on this site which say the same thing. All predict very, very serious consequences in many areas.
Parry also predicts there will be "some provocation that can be blamed on Syria and Iran , thus justifying the expanded war."
My own prediction is that the "provocation" referred to by Parry, will be a vitally important False Flag operation. It would be very carefully planned by the Bush Administration to stage some kind of an attack, perhaps a terrorist attack on the US, like 9/11, for which the Bush Regime has planned to blame Iran. ...

Intelligence sources say President Bush -- along with Israel's Ehud Olmert and the UK's Tony Blair -- are weighing the possibility of Israeli-led attacks on Syria and Iran in early 2007, with the United States providing logistical back-up.

....The U.S. Democrats who have just won in Congress and the Senate are unlikely to stop this war as they are deeply involved in approving the Iraq war, and either repeating or not questioning Bush lies to justify it. They are doing the same thing about the new U.S. enemy - Iran . They have also approved Bush's new nuclear doctrines, his patriot laws, his preparations for the Iran war and given him virtually unlimited power. The Democrats have proved themselves to be a weak, lily-livered and wishy-washy opposition party unwilling and unable to speak the truth about the Bush Administration and the illegal wars. There are a few exceptional and honest Democratic politicians who oppose U.S. war policies, but not enough to make much difference.

In mid 1970s the American Power Elite drew a “Grand Plan” to control and to monopolize global oil and nuclear energy resources, for he who controls energy resources determines the fate of nations. The base of this “Grand Plan” is the invasion of energy rich countries to directly control their resources, and to create subservient governments that would exploit their own people as cheap labor to harvest energy for the United States.
The collapse of the Soviet Union had created a window of opportunity for the United States to ensure and to affirm its global superiority through expansion and controlling energy resources without any real opposition. The attacks of 911 were necessary requirements for the Bush administration to wage a “global war against terror” that would serve as a cover up for American hegemony. President Bush borrowed Mussolini's fascist motto of “If you are not with me, you are against me” and turned it into “You are either with us or with the terrorist” to terrorize weaker nations into accepting American expansions.

This is one of the most important papers we have ever re-printed, by a world authority on U.S. nuclear war policies, and U.S. plans to wage nuclear war on Iran . Michel Chossudovsky details the various nuclear war doctrines that are an integral part of Pentagon military options. No longer do the U.S. military consider nuclear weapons 'a weapon of last resort', likely to lead to escalation and an end to humanity.
Today they literally, have learned to 'love the bomb' and have radically changed past perceptions so that nuclear weapons have become just one of a number of military options military commanders may use in various battle situations. They allow the U.S. to suddenly launch a preemptive nuclear strike against a chosen enemy. The enemy may be non-nuclear or nuclear. Also, they claim the right to introduce nuclear weapons use into conventional military conflicts.

Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust?

Will the US launch "Mini-nukes" against Iran in Retaliation for Tehran's "Non-compliance"?
At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable, a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread, in terms of radioactive fallout,  over a large part of the Middle East.
All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as "a weapon of last resort" have been scrapped. "Offensive" military actions using nuclear warheads are now described as acts of "self-defense".

The following essays provide insight into the growth and power of U.S. Christian Zionism, its influence on U.S. foreign policy, and the influence of Israel on U.S. policy. It is very powerful, very irrational and leading humanity toward what it sees as a Biblical prophecy of End Times. It is utterly immoral and cruel toward its Palestinian victims, as it believes they are occupying land given by God to the Jews a few thousand years ago. They believe that any action to help bring about End Times and the return of the Messiah, is justified as it helps implement God's will. It is a growing insanity of righteous self-destruction that believes that if some kind of heavenly Armageddon turns our planet into a fiery hell, the chosen  believers will be raptured to a heavenly paradise.

I saw films tonight about the U.S. bombardment, destruction and occupation of a small city in Iraq - Fallujah The suffering victims expressed themselves on film. Their homes had been bombed and shelled by the U.S. - the woman and children wounded and killed. The Americans blocked their exit roads from the city. It was Bush, Neo-conservative Terrorism on a grand scale. It wasn't so a much war, as an 'Only Made In America' slaughter house

War is not a solution for terrorism

THERE IS SOMETHING important to be learned from the recent experience of the United States and Israel in the Middle East: that massive military attacks, inevitably indiscriminate, are not only morally reprehensible, but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out.
The United States, in three years of war, which began with shock-and-awe bombardment and goes on with day-to-day violence and chaos, has been an utter failure in its claimed objective of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq. The Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon has not brought security to Israel; indeed it has increased the number of its enemies, whether in Hezbollah or Hamas or among Arabs who belong to neither of those groups.

Talk of space wars and weaponizing space, suggests that Israel will choose the path of war, conquest and domination. In the long run, that could result in disaster for all people and nations in the Middle East.

Israeli Official Urges Space-Based Weapons

" Israel is one of the very few nations of the world that routinely abstains from voting for a resolution to ban weapons in space," noted Theresa Hitchens, vice president of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, a public policy think tank.

Throughout the Israeli offensive against Lebanon, Israel has claimed this is in retaliation against Hezbollah for capturing 2 Israeli soldiers. Only Hezbollah they claim. In fact they attacked a well-known and marked UN observation post. This killed 4 UN staff even though the staff had been in regular contact with Israel forces warning that the Israeli bombs were getting closer to the base.
Israel did not stop, but continued bombing until they killed the UN officers. They then rubbed in the outrageous crime by attacking the rescue mission. This was a deliberate attack on the UN by Israel, which Israel then claimed was a mistake.

US media: Israel's 'shocking' use of cluster bombs not newsworthy

The UN recently reported that they have "identified 359 cluster bomb strike locations with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets" in southern Lebanon. Amazingly, 90% of the bombs were dropped in the final 72 hours of the war. They also report that it can take years to clean them up and innocent civilians are being killed and wounded by these munitions every day.

We should also recognise that both the U.S. and Israel are prepared to resort to the use of nuclear weapons in their conquest. A careful analysis of the military situation and relevant papers on both our web site and others, would tend to support this finding.
I don't think people should lose sight of these factors in their attempts to stop this criminal madness before it becomes uncontrollable. 

Amnesty: 'Israel committed war crimes'

On August 23, human rights group Amnesty International accused Israel of committing war crimes. Amnesty said that the pattern and scope of Israel's bombing campaign in Lebanon, statements by Israeli officials and the scale of damage inflicted on civilian infrastructure “indicated that such destruction was deliberate and part of a military strategy, rather than 'collateral damage'”.

After Lebanon, What's Left?

As the month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel draws to a close—albeit with a high risk that it will reignite, or even worse, spark a new Lebanese civil war—American policymakers who supported Israel's decision to go to war should understand its long-term impact on moderates in Lebanon and in the Arab world.
Ever since 9/11 brought the Middle East to the center of U.S. foreign policy, . . .

The following essays show just how much Israeli thinking and influence has permeated American culture and policy.
Neo-conservatives with a strong pro-Israel bias create the policy papers which influence American thinking.  Powerful well-funded, pro-Israeli lobby groups, with direct links to Israel and to Washington, lobby and donate to politicians that influence U.S. policy decisions. There is a well-known mass media bias for pro-Israel and pro-Israeli war articles. Israel has become a shining Beacon to the Bush Administration as it leads the way into the Middle East and disaster for millions of people. These essays explore the issues.

by Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D.
... THE MORAL OF THE STORY. In the morally-twisted worldview of the Anglo-American-Israeli Axis, some people are as if gods, whereas other people just don't matter. However, we can challenge their primitive tribalistic "us versus them" mentality, help cure the world's ills, and uplift humankind, by adopting the three-step global ethics:

... The cost? Hundreds of Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah soldiers killed and wounded and some hundred Israeli soldiers. Billions of dollars worth of Lebanese property and infrastructure by Israeli bombs.. And the captured Israeli solders?
Still held by Hezbollah.

In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. “It’s a moment of clarification,” President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. “It’s now become clear why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the “root causes of instability,” and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until “the conditions are conducive.”

Israeli Propaganda Is Winning

I was shocked to see the degree that Israel's intellectuals accepted the official justification for Israel's exceptionally barbarous wars on Lebanon and Palestine.
As the following article demonstrates, they justify the slaughter and every aspect of the disproportionality of Israel's response to Lebanese seizing of two Israeli soldiers. Nowhere do these intellectuals seem to admit that the war was planned well in advance. The seized solders were only an excuse for Israel to begin one of the most brutal wars in history. Why?

Dedicated to the too few Israeli intellectuals who do dare speak out against this war.
.... For those who imagine Israel's intellectual elite as a sane oasis of rational, moderate, peace-loving liberals, here are a few snapshots of Israel's intellectual cheerleaders on their current patriotic march supporting the devastation of Lebanon.

....Rather than welcoming Hezbollah's important shift away from the use of terrorism to advance its political agenda, however, the Bush administration and Congress?in apparent anticipation of a U.S.-Israeli assault against the group and its supporters?instead became increasingly alarmist about the supposed threat posed by this Lebanese political party. And, given the refusal by the Lebanese government to ban the political party and their inability to disband the militia, the United States has given Israel the green light to attack not just Hezbollah militia, but the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon as well."

...While Hezbollah's ongoing rocket attacks on civilian targets in Israel are indeed illegitimate and can certainly be considered acts of terrorism, it is important to note that such attacks were launched only after the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on civilian targets in Israel began July 12.

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He frequently travels and offers reflections on organizing and the state of America's soul....

George Orwell's book ":1984" has become reality in Israel.    More and more Israel is practising a form of ethnic cleansing on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians calling it part of Bush's "war on terrorism".

.....I'm so frustrated I can't think straight. I'm full of rage against Israel, the US, Britain, Iran and most of Europe. The world is going to go to hell for standing by and allowing the massacre of innocents. For God's sake, 34 children???

This article examines and helps explain the pathology of Israeli irrational and brutal behaviour toward Lebanon and Palestine.
Many Israeli intelligentsia are making a similar diagnosis of Israeli society. With some 200 to 500 nuclear weapons and U.S. support Israel thinks it is invulnerable. It believes it can bomb the UN and ignore UN resolutions. It makes excuses to justify grossly disproportionate aggression and expansion.. It doesn't want independent UN witnesses in Lebanon. Israeli extremism matches that of the Bush Administration. That's one reason Bush's U.S. supports and funds anything Israel does.

The Pathology Of Israeli Power

As we witness the unfolding spectacle of ferocious, indiscriminate violence, destruction, and brutality in Gaza and Lebanon, it's difficult to resist the conclusion that there is something terribly wrong with the Israeli state and society. It's as though all moral and psychological constraints and boundaries have been breached, deviancy normalized. Not that state terrorism, deliberate aggression, extreme disproportionate force, and massive violations of international humanitarian law are new to the Israeli state: from 1948, the list is long, the evidence widely available.

As indicated in Uri Avnery's article and the comments that follow, the Israeli attack on the people of Lebanon is part of pre-planned attack and will probably be expanded with U.S. financing and participation to make wars on Syria and Iran - long the targets of Bush's neocon administration.
As planned, nuclear weapons will probably be used, and a global nuclear disaster could soon be the result. It's time for Americans and others to wake up and take political action before the extremists destroy our world.

It is the old story about the losing gambler: he cannot stop. He continues to play, in order to win his losses back. He continues to lose and continues to gamble, until he has lost everything: his ranch, his wife, his shirt.
The same thing happens in the biggest gamble of all: war. The leaders that start a war and get stuck in the mud are compelled to fight their way ever deeper into the mud. That is a part of the very essence of war: it is impossible to stop after a failure. Public opinion demands the promised victory. Incompetent generals need to cover up their failure. Military commentators and other armchair strategists demand a massive offensive. Cynical politicians are riding the wave. The government is carried away by the flood that they themselves have let loose.

I would rate Israel's false propaganda among the most deceptively effective in the world. Israel manages to get top politicians singing it's song.
The facts do not seem to matter much. Opposition to Israeli aggression in Western countries is sporadic and misinformed. This is at least partly due to Israel's success in embedding their ban, that opposition to Israeli aggression is equivalent to "anti-Semitism" "anti-Zionism" "anti-Israeli prejudice" etc.

This week I had the pleasure to appear on American radio, on the Laura Ingraham show, pitted against David Horowitz, a "Semite supremacist” who most recently made his name under the banner of Campus Watch, leading McCarthyite witch-hunts against American professors who have the impertinence to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Arabs have minds and feelings like the rest of us.

For a more comprehensive understanding of U.S. policy on Iran, and Iran's offers of concessions to meet U.S. concerns, the following May 27 article is essential reading.

Iran experts at the State Department had been working throughout 2001 on increasing relations with Mohammed Khatami's Iran. Post 9/11, they immediately realized the strategic value of working with Iran against a common enemy?al-Qaida.

.... If only they would tell their readers about the PNAC papers that called for U.S. domination of middle east oil resources.

Sidney Blumenthal's latest article claims that the NSA is working with Israel to "monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah." He describes his source as "a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation."