Puppet Masters
More than 16 Afghan civilians have been reported killed or wounded this week by U.S. soldiers as troops battled an outbreak of insurgent activity in warmer spring weather, according to Afghan officials.
CAIRO - French President Jacques Chirac, due here on a two-day visit, told Egyptian daily Al-Ahram that it was "unacceptable" for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and called for "necessary gestures" from Israel and the Palestinians for "real negotiations" to resume.
The Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be high on the agenda when Chirac meets Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday.
The Iranian leaders "must understand that, for the international community, the prospect of a militarily nuclearized Iran is unacceptable," Chirac said in an interview.
The Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be high on the agenda when Chirac meets Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday.
The Iranian leaders "must understand that, for the international community, the prospect of a militarily nuclearized Iran is unacceptable," Chirac said in an interview.
The US is probably incapable of completely destroying the Iranian nuclear program, but as a last resort it could attempt to knock out "some of the components" in order to "delay and deter it," Senator Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate and a serving member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has told The Jerusalem Post.
Speaking at a time of almost daily declarations from Teheran concerning both progress in the nuclear program and hostility to Israel, Lieberman said he knew of no "set war plans" being drawn up by the Bush Administration and, "I don't think anyone's yearning for military action against Iran."
Speaking at a time of almost daily declarations from Teheran concerning both progress in the nuclear program and hostility to Israel, Lieberman said he knew of no "set war plans" being drawn up by the Bush Administration and, "I don't think anyone's yearning for military action against Iran."
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In the last 6 years or so, there have been literally dozens of official reports about Iran's nuclear program, and virtually all of them have stated that there is no evidence that Iran is planning to develop a nuclear weapon.
What Iran is doing is attempting to achieve a "nuclear capability", which the Iranians claim is for peaceful purposes, like nuclear power plants etc. The problem is that once a country achieves this "nuclear capability" there is little to stop them from using that capability to produce a nuclear weapon.
There seems to be a strong feeling on the left that, somehow, 9/11 is irrelevant. That to focus on it distracts from "real" issues such as Iraq and domestic spying. Again, almost to minimize the importance of 9/11, treat it as bygone history, and concentrate only on the misuse of the event by the administration.
There are a number of problems with this approach. It leaves in place the people that did it, and the mechanisms used for covering it up. It leaves in place the use of the "war on terror" as justification for the current administration's abuses, and allows the 9/11 rallying cry to continued to be used, and often accepted, to justify these abuses. And it leaves open the very distinct possibility that this kind of attack will be used again to justify further abuses.
There are a number of problems with this approach. It leaves in place the people that did it, and the mechanisms used for covering it up. It leaves in place the use of the "war on terror" as justification for the current administration's abuses, and allows the 9/11 rallying cry to continued to be used, and often accepted, to justify these abuses. And it leaves open the very distinct possibility that this kind of attack will be used again to justify further abuses.
"We must comply with the local law, indeed we have all made a commitment to the government that we will absolutely follow the Chinese law. We don't have any alternatives.
"It is not an option for us to broadly make information available that is illegal, inappropriate or immoral or what have you."
"It is not an option for us to broadly make information available that is illegal, inappropriate or immoral or what have you."
The White House has angrily denied a newspaper report that suggested President George W Bush in 2003 declared the existence of biological weapons laboratories in Iraq while knowing it was not true.
On May 29, 2003, Bush hailed the capture of two trailers in Iraq as mobile biological laboratories and declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The report in The Washington Post said a Pentagon-sponsored fact-finding mission had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. The newspaper cited government officials and weapons experts who participated in the secret mission or had direct knowledge of it.
On May 29, 2003, Bush hailed the capture of two trailers in Iraq as mobile biological laboratories and declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The report in The Washington Post said a Pentagon-sponsored fact-finding mission had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. The newspaper cited government officials and weapons experts who participated in the secret mission or had direct knowledge of it.
George W. Bush is at it again. This time, reports Sy Hersh in The New Yorker, it'll be Iran. (Those of us who guessed it would have been Syria first apparently underestimated his hubris.) And this time he wants to be able to use nukes.
In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the way a seemingly democratic president kept his nation in a continual state of repression was by keeping the nation in a constant state of war. Cynics suggest the lesson wasn't lost on Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon, who both, they say, extended the Vietnam war so it coincidentally ran over election cycles, knowing that a wartime President's party is more likely to be reelected and has more power than a President in peacetime.
In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the way a seemingly democratic president kept his nation in a continual state of repression was by keeping the nation in a constant state of war. Cynics suggest the lesson wasn't lost on Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon, who both, they say, extended the Vietnam war so it coincidentally ran over election cycles, knowing that a wartime President's party is more likely to be reelected and has more power than a President in peacetime.
Today, in an example of the joke that the Western 'justice' system has become, a Spanish judge passed down sentences on 29 Moroccon patsies for their alleged yet wholly uncorroborated part in the Madrid Train bombings:
Comment: Israel continues to constantly threaten Palestine, and some estimates indicate that Israel possesses 200 nuclear warheads. Why does Iran have to disarm weapons that no one can even prove it has, and yet Israel can keep its nukes and threaten death and destruction as it pleases with the USA's backing in the UN?