Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that it will only be a matter of time before America endures another terrorist attack if Congress ends up blaming the defense budget for this country's red ink woes. "The Department of Defense is not what's causing the debt and the deficit. It's the entitlement programs," he told HUMAN EVENTS in an exclusive interview. "If we make that mistake, we're doomed to suffer another attack of some kind, and our intelligence will be less strong and less effective."

Before legislators attempt to take out the nation's crushing debt on the Defense Department, they must understand that spending on the military is low compared with historical averages, said Rumsfeld. He noted that military spending from Eisenhower though LBJ topped 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP), far less than today's 4.7%.

President Obama has already imposed $400 billion in military cuts, and there could be $800 billion more in slashing to follow in the very near future if congressional leaders do not agree on a debt-reduction deal.

There are some people who can win any argument or debate, no matter whether they are right or wrong. Lawyers, for example, make really nice livings convincing juries that the most obviously guilty criminals are innocent. So goes the modus operandi of the 9/11 truth de-bunkers out there: wrong or not, they are always right. Or at least, like the lawyers, they appear to be right.

First off, let me correct myself and apologize for the inaccurate title of this article. I used the phrase "9/11 conspiracy theory" in order to speak in terms most people understand. In reality, I am referring to the truth about 9/11, rather than any so-called "conspiracy theory. " In other words, I am referring to the thousands of undisputed, officially endorsed but disturbing pieces of information related to the attacks of 9/11, that, when actually examined, chronicle a far different story than the one told to us by our government and their reality manipulators known as the establishment media.

As I have clarified in previous articles, these disturbing facts and details are not in dispute; they are, however, not known by the majority of people. Thank you establishment media, for a job well done.

The storming of the Israeli embassy by a mob of Egyptian protesters inflicted a "severe injury to the fabric of peace" between the two countries, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Saturday.

The ambassador and the entire embassy staff except for one deputy ambassador were evacuated from Egypt along with their families in the face of the overnight rampage at the Nile-side embassy in Cairo, when hundreds of protesters tore down a concrete security wall outside the building, set fires in the street and dozens broke into an office of the embassy tossing documents off the balcony to the crowd below.

The hours of rioting that extended into the pre-dawn hours significantly added to the already growing tensions between the two Mideast neighbors, seven months after the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Many in Israel fear that this year's uprisings around the Arab world are giving freer rein to anti-Israeli sentiment.

But Netanyahu tempered his remarks and praised Egyptian authorities for rescuing six embassy personnel who were trapped by the rioting.

The six staffers - apparently a security detail in offices that were otherwise empty on what is a weekend night here - had taken shelter in a room in the embassy and at one point there was only a single wall between them and protesters who were ransacking offices, said a senior Israeli official. Egyptian commandos eventually made their way in and got them out, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the incident.

Scandal-plagued Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi complained on Friday that constitutional constraints hindered his government from making major reforms as Italy came under mounting pressure in the euro zone debt crisis.

Lashing out at "communists" and an "anti-Italian" press and opposition, Berlusconi told a rally of young supporters in Rome that it was almost impossible to change Italy's deeply entrenched problems given limits on executive power.

"We have found it is extremely difficult to do anything concrete in a system that gives no power to the person who is in charge of the government," he said. "In all these years, I have felt a truly dramatic sense of impotence."

The U.S. Senate, in an unusual procedure, cleared the way Thursday for the U.S. to lift its borrowing authority by $500 billion to $15.19 trillion, enough to keep the support federal government borrowing through late January or early February.

The action came under an unusual legislative procedure spelled out under the August agreement to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and avoid a U.S. credit default. In a 52-45 vote, the Senate blocked an attempt by Republicans to slow down the process that will result in the $500 billion debt-ceiling increase.

The increase stems from a deal between Congress and the White House, finalized last month, that spells out how the borrowing limit would be increased by $500 billion. Under the process, lawmakers in both the House and Senate must vote on a resolution of disapproval against the increase in the borrowing limit. President Barack Obama would then have to veto the resolution of disapproval, and Congress would then vote to try and override that veto.

The complicated procedure, designed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), would allow an increase of the borrowing limit while allowing most Republicans to vote against such an increase.

There was a twist in this scenario Thursday evening, however. Democrats held firm, rejecting the resolution of disapproval, thereby speeding the process and increasing the borrowing limit immediately.

Only Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.) broke from his party to vote with the Republicans in trying to move forward with the measure.

The next increase in the borrowing limit, likely in the first quarter of next year, will be dependent on the ability of a panel of 12 lawmakers to reach a deal that cuts at least $1.2 trillion from federal budget deficits over the next decade.

Key California legislators passing an anti-parent bill grabbed campaign financing from the gigantic Merck conglomerate, a CalWatchDog.com investigation revealed. The legislation is AB 499 by Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, D-San Diego. In the bill's language, it "authorizes a minor, who is 12 years of age or older, to consent to medical care related to the prevention of a sexually transmitted disease."

Current law allows such care only with a parent's permission. AB 499 passed both houses of the Legislature and awaits a decision by Gov. Jerry Brown.

AB 499 commonly is called the "Gardasil Bill" because the major drug to be administered to 12-year-old girls - without their parents' consent - is Gardasil, manufactured by Merck. According to Merck's Gardasil Web site:

GARDASIL is the only human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine that helps protect against 4 types of HPV. In girls and young women ages 9 to 26, GARDASIL helps protect against 2 types of HPV that cause about 75% of cervical cancer cases, and 2 more types that cause 90% of genital warts cases. In boys and young men ages 9 to 26, GARDASIL helps protect against 90% of genital warts cases.

Polls Show that Americans Think We Overreacted, Overspent and Weakened Ourselves Through the War on Terror

As the Brooking Institution reported yesterday, Americans think that the government overreacted and overspent in reaction to 9/11:

These are a summary of findings of a new poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.

• Six in ten Americans believe that that the United States weakened its economy by overspending in its responses to the 9/11 attacks. In particular, respondents felt this was especially true of the U.S. mission in Iraq. Two out of three Americans perceive that over the decade since 9/11, U.S. power and influence in the world has declined. This view is highly correlated with the belief that the United States overspent in its post-9/11 response efforts - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• At this point, a large majority (73%) wants the United States to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan, but less than half (44%) want troops withdrawn completely.
• Fifty-five percent say that the United States has spent too many resources in the Iraq war, while a plurality of 49% called the Iraq war a mistake (45% right decision). This criticism is a bit lower than other polls that asked similar questions in 2010 and found a majority ranging from 51 to 62% saying that it was not the right decision.
• Support for the decision to go to war is highly correlated with beliefs held by substantial and undiminishing minorities that Iraq was providing support to al Qaeda (46%) and either had a WMD program or actual WMDs (47%). Among those with such beliefs, large majorities say the war was the right thing while among those without such beliefs large majorities have the opposite views.
• A modest majority (53%) believes that the U.S. should withdraw its troops according to schedule even if the Iraqi government asks the US to stay another year.
• A clear majority (61%) says that the United States should not take sides in its efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while just 27% want the United States to lean toward Israel (5% toward Palestinians).

Lt. Robert Medairos, "First Incident Commander at the Scene":

Winston Churchill rightly explained that "(a) lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Today, of course, it circulates everywhere instantly.

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany's Reich Minister of Propaganda, once said:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

He added that

"truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Corporate media manipulators love a big story they can hype, distort, and falsify to attract large audiences supportively for the worst imperial crimes.

In fact, the bigger the event, the worse the reporting, sacrificing truth for managed news and opinions everyone should understand and avoid.

Distinguished scholars like David Ray Griffin exposed the 9/11 lie in his exhaustive research and writings. In numerous books, articles, and lectures, he provided convincing evidence about an inside job, not an attack carried out by "crazed Arabs."

In an April 5, 2006 lecture titled, "9/11: The Myth and the Reality," he concluded saying:

"It would seem, for many reasons, that the official story of 9/11, which has served as a religious Myth in the intervening years (and still does), is a myth in the pejorative sense of a story that does not correspond to reality."

It was Griffin's polite way of calling it a Big Lie, the biggest of our time.

For ten years independent scholars and researchers have been investigating the troubling anomalies of the 9/11 official account.

One such scholar, Dr. David Ray Griffin, has written ten encyclopedic books documenting fundamental problems with the government account. For this work he has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize (2008 and 2009), and his The New Pearl Harbor Revisited was named "pick of the week" by Publisher's Weekly in November 2009.

Although 9/11 has been the seminal event of this century, none of the research by Dr. Griffin and other critics has been reported by the North American media. Today, the formation of the 9/11 Consensus Panel, involving 22 investigators of the September 11th events, is being announced at consensus911.org.

The 13 Consensus Points issued by the Panel were derived from a Delphi survey modeled on consensus statements developed by expert panels in medicine to guide diagnosis and treatment. The strength and credibility of the Delphi method is based on the fact that respondents are blind to one another through several rounds of review, during which feedback is continually refined until consensus is reached.

In this way the "best evidence" is identified and legitimized. The 9/11 Consensus Panel, co-founded by Dr. David Ray Griffin and medical librarian Elizabeth Woodworth, conducted three survey rounds with 22 respondents, and reached an average consensus of 94% on 13 points of evidence that directly contradict the fundamental claims of the official account of September 11th.