Probably the most controversial claim in my work with John Mearsheimer on the Israel lobby is our argument that it played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Even some readers who were generally sympathetic to our overall position found that claim hard to accept, and some left-wing critics accused us of letting Bush and Cheney off the hook or of ignoring the importance of other interests, especially oil. Of course, Israel's defenders in the lobby took issue even more strenuously, usually by mischaracterizing our arguments and ignoring most (if not all) of the evidence we presented.

So I hope readers will forgive me if I indulge today in abit of self-promotion, or more precisely, self-defense. This week, yet another piece of evidence surfaced that suggests we were right all along (HT to Mehdi Hasan atthe New Statesman and J. Glatzer at Mondoweiss). In his testimony to the Iraq war commission in the U.K., former Prime Minister Tony Blair offered the following account of his discussions with Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. Blair reveals that concerns about Israel were part of the equation and that Israel officials were involved in those discussions.

Take it away, Tony:

Rumor has it that Timothy Geithner is on his way out as Treasury Secretary, due to his involvement in the AIG scandal that is now unraveling in hearings before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Bob Chapman writes in The International Forecaster:

Each day brings more revelations of efforts of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs to hide the details of the criminal conspiracy of the AIG bailout ... This is a real crisis on the scale of Watergate. Corruption at its finest.

But unlike the perpetrators of the Watergate scandal, who wound up facing jail time, Geithner evidently has a golden parachute waiting at Goldman Sachs, not coincidentally the largest recipient of the AIG bailout. At least that is the rumor sparked by an article by Caroline Baum on Bloomberg News, titled "Goldman Parachute Awaits Geithner to Ease Fall." Hank Paulson, Geithner's predecessor, was CEO of Goldman Sachs before coming to the Treasury. Geithner, who has come up through the ranks of government, could be walking through the revolving door in the other direction.

Alastair Campbell - former tabloid trash peddler, bully, psychophant and Tony Blair's 'Director of Communications and Strategy', that is to say, chief spin doctor and liar. Campbell was personally responsible for molding and selling the lies to the public leading up to the Iraq invasion that has, to date, caused the deaths of over 2 million Iraqi citizens. He is also arguably the man who played the central role in the murder of Dr David Kelly.

So, have you ever seen a psychopath attempt to appear "distressed"? Have a look.

The Christmas Day "terrorist" is the latest in a series of staged incidents meant to make The Clash of Civilizations appear plausible and "the war on terrorism" rational. The storyline does not hold together. Not even a little bit. As usual, the source of this media-fueled fear campaign traces directly to Tel Aviv - with a supporting role by the FBI.

How did a young Nigerian Muslim without a passport "slip through" security at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport? Not only did his itinerary feature an illogical travel route, he paid cash for a high-priced last-minute ticket and boarded without checked baggage. How?

ICTS International, the security screening company at Schiphol, was founded by former members of Shin Bet, Israel's civil security agency, and Israeli executives in charge of El Al security. ICTS had already proven its expertise in mounting this type of operation.

In December 2001, Richard "The Shoe Bomber" Reid "slipped through" ICTS security at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Huntleigh USA, an ICTS subsidiary, shared responsibility for security at Logan International Airport in Boston where hijackers for two of the four 911 jets "slipped through" airport security. It gets better.

Dubai is to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, if investigators conclude that the Mossad intelligence service was behind the killing of a senior Hamas official in the emirate last month.

The threat to detain the Israeli leader came as police in Dubai linked the apparent murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior member of the Hamas military wing, to the Jewish state for the first time.

Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai's police chief, claimed that the dead man was killed using methods known to be employed by Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence agency. He added that Mr Netanyahu would be held personally responsible if Mossad was identified as the culprit.

"Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to kill al-Mabhouh in Dubai," Gen Tamim told The National, an English language newspaper in Dubai.

"We will issue an arrest warrant against him."

China has agreed to cancel 80 percent of the 8.5-billion-dollar debt it is owed by Iraq, the finance ministry in Baghdad said in an official statement on Tuesday.

It said a bilateral agreement was signed in Beijing, without specifying the date, and that China's ambassador to Iraq had met officials in Baghdad to confirm the agreement.

The statement added that the two countries entered into trade deals valued at 3.8 billion dollars in 2009.

Dr. Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner for New York City, was host of the HBO series Autopsy and is the forensic science contributor to Fox News. I furnished Baden copies of the official autopsy reports for the three Guantánamo prisoners who died under mysterious circumstances in 2006, as well as information about secondary autopsies arranged by the families of the deceased.

1. When the U.S. government released its autopsy reports, it redacted the names of the pathologists and observers involved in preparing the report. It suggests that this was done to protect their privacy. Is this a normal practice?

Redacting the names of pathologists is not normal in either civilian or military practice. It is necessary to know the pathologists' names to be able to evaluate their qualifications, certifications, and experience. This may also help the family assess whether a second autopsy should be done. Mistakes can be made. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a recent decision establishing a right to cross-examine forensic experts, wrote that "A forensic analyst responding to a request from a law enforcement official may feel pressure - or have an incentive - to alter the evidence in a manner favorable to the prosecution." Science must remain independent of politics. It is necessary that names of the pathologists be known to the family for accountability purposes.

The possibility of yet another U.S. war became more real last week, when the Obama administration sharply confronted both China and Iran. The first aggressive act was performed by Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who "warned" China that it must support serious economic sanctions against Iran (an act of war).

Clinton said: "China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing effect that a nuclear-armed Iran would have, from which they receive a significant percentage of their oil supply."

The implication here is that China will be cut off from a major energy source if they do not support U.S. foreign policy - this, too, would equal an act of war.

After repeatedly denying that the Christmas Underwear Bomber had any help in his misguided attempt to blow up Detroit-bound Flight 253 on Christmas day 2009, or that there was any sign of an accomplice on over 200 hours of Amsterdam airport security tapes, the US government recently, and very quietly, chose to admit that it had been watching Mutallab all along and that it's now looking for his accomplice at Amsterdam airport.

In one of only a few mainstream news reports on the US government's reversal, the Detroit News stated:

The State Department didn't revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counter-terrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.

Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would've foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

"Revocation action would've disclosed what they were doing," Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, "rather than simply knocking out one soldier in that effort."

ABC News also reported:

Federal agents also tell ABCNews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutallab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.

Of course, that's not an admission that Mutallab had an accomplice, but it says a lot following six weeks of repeated denials on the existence of accomplices.

This one might seem beyond belief, but we have it from none other than a sitting Secretary of Defense.

In April 1997, then-Defense Secretary William Cohen was speaking at a terrorism conference at the University of Georgia. After some introductory remarks about the conference, Cohen takes questions from the media in attendance. A reporter asks a question based on the fake anthrax letters that had recently been sent to B'nai Brith. Cohen gives a strange answer, using the occasion to mention the exotic weapons being developed by terrorists (as well as--one would assume--governments).

Here's the exchange, taken verbatim from the transcript posted on the Defense Department's Website:

Q: Let me ask you specifically about last week's scare here in Washington, and what we might have learned from how prepared we are to deal with that (inaudible), at B'nai Brith.

A: Well, it points out the nature of the threat. It turned out to be a false threat under the circumstances. But as we've learned in the intelligence community, we had something called -- and we have James Woolsey here to perhaps even address this question about phantom moles. The mere fear that there is a mole within an agency can set off a chain reaction and a hunt for that particular mole which can paralyze the agency for weeks and months and years even, in a search. The same thing is true about just the false scare of a threat of using some kind of a chemical weapon or a biological one. There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.

So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that's why this is so important.

The entire transcript can be accessed at the Defense Department's Website here. It is also available below: