Like other totalitarian regimes that have no legitimacy and no base of support, the Saudis are wrapping themselves in religion. Saddam Hussein in the 1990s and currently Bashar al-Assad – the heads of the Baath party in Iraq and Syria – both played the religious card. However, Baathist doctrine in Iraq and Syria is basically irreligious. The Saudis are using …
Sophie McAdam – Bombshell: UK Accused Of Plotting Syria War Back In 2009
In this illuminating interview on French television program LCP, France’s former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas claims Britain planned to invade Syria long before protests against Assad began in the country, and that it would do this in order to defend Israel. In the interview, first televised in 2013, Dumas states that during a visit to England (“two years before the hostilities began …
Leid Stories – 10.29.15
Whip, Lash: Mainstream Media Gets Outed at Republican Q&A History Redacted: CNN Assists in Tony Blair’s Cleanup on Iraq Invasion A clear winner in the third two-tiered Q&A session (erroneously called a “debate”) Republican presidential candidates had last night was a point made about the role of the media (“liberal” media, two panelists claimed) in shaping coverage and influencing public …
Peter Van Buren – What If They Gave a War and Everyone Came?
What if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq in 2003? How would things be different in the Middle East today? Was Iraq, in the words of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the “worst foreign policy blunder” in American history? Let’s take a big-picture tour of the Middle East and try to answer those questions. But first, a request: after each paragraph …
Jason Leopold – he CIA Just Declassified the “WMD Document” of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) That Supposedly Justified the Iraq Invasion
Thirteen years ago, the intelligence community concluded in a 93-page classified document used to justify the invasion of Iraq that it lacked “specific information” on “many key aspects” of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. But that’s not what top Bush administration officials said during their campaign to sell the war to the American public. Those officials, citing the same classified document, …
John Kozy – Human Beings: The Omnicidal Species. There is Nothing They Won’t Kill
Human beings comprise an omnicidal species. Apparently there is nothing they won’t kill. Yet some claim to value life and say that all lives matter. But if all lives matter, Palestinian lives matter, Syrian lives matter, Iraqi lives matter, Afghan lives matter, Libyan lives matter. If all lives matter, Osama bin Laden’s life mattered. So did Al Awlaki’s and his …
PETER FRANKOPAN – Declassified CIA documents reveal how disastrous America’s post-9/11 plans really were
Three possible triggers were envisaged – all of which could justify military action. Perhaps Saddam “moves against the Kurds in [the] north?” wondered Rumsfeld in November 2001; maybe a “connection to Sept 11 attack or to anthrax attacks” (following mailings to several media outlets and to two US senators in September 2001); or what if there were a “dispute over …
Peter Koenig – From Bush to Obama: The Iran Gambit II. “Washington Strives towards Regional and World Subjugation”
Gambit I was the start of false accusations by the then Bush Administration in 2007 that Iran was preparing a nuclear weapon, when in fact Iran had no such ambitions at all, but a plan to open an Iranian Oil Bourse (IOB) in Teheran, an international hydrocarbon exchange, where all countries, hydrocarbon producers or not, could trade this (still) principal energy …
July 18, 2003: Death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly plunges BBC – and Blair – into crisis – Chas Early
The body of scientist and biological weapons expert Dr David Kelly – the source of a BBC report claiming the government had ‘sexed up’ their intelligence dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – was discovered in a wood near his Oxfordshire home on this day in 2003. Dr Kelly, a Ministry of Defence advisor and former United Nations weapons …
Washington’s ‘New Middle East’ Stalls, the Resistance Rises By Prof. Tim Anderson
Washington’s plan for a New Middle East has hit a rock called Syria. After the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the destruction of Libya, Syria was to be the next domino overthrown by a ‘colour revolution’, led by Islamists and backed by the big powers. After ‘regime change’ in Damascus the next most powerful enemy of Israel, Hezbollah, leader …