The US Missile Defence System Is the Magic Pudding That Will Never Run Out

Poland is just the latest fall guy for an American foreign policy dictated by military industrial lobbyists in Washington

by George Monbiot

It’s a novel way to take your own life. Just as Russia demonstrates what happens to former minions that annoy it, Poland agrees to host a US missile defence base. The Russians, as Poland expected, respond to this proposal by offering to turn the country into a parking lot. This proves that the missile defence system is necessary after all: it will stop the missiles Russia will now aim at Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK in response to, er, their involvement in the missile defence system.

The American government insists that the interceptors, which will be stationed on the Baltic coast, have nothing to do with Russia: their purpose is to defend Europe and the US against the intercontinental ballistic missiles Iran and North Korea don’t possess. This is why they are being placed in Poland, which, as every geography student in Texas knows, shares a border with both rogue states

Read on...

Peacenik enjoyed this George Monbiot article about the U.S. missile defense system. Peacenik has been following this boondoggle for years. Professor Ted Postol, an MIT physicist, has made a career out of debunking the missile shield. The missile defense system does not work. It has not been successfully tested. It is welfare for the military industrial complex. But countries hosting this boondoggle do place a target on themselves for that favorite neo-con boogey man......Russia.

Lying Liars: To Make Iraq An American Colony

by Mentarch

Two items.

First one: the long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report is out, confirming what everyone in the reality-based progressive community has known for a long time - that the Bush administration (including President Bush and V.-P. Cheney) made public statements to promote their invasion of Iraq which they knew full well were not supported by available intelligence.

(i.e. they "lied their asses off")

Among the report's conclusions:

* Claims by President Bush that Iraq and al Qaida had a partnership "were not substantiated by the intelligence."

* The president and vice president misrepresented what was known about Iraq’s chemical weapons capabilities.

* Rumsfeld misrepresented what the intelligence community knew when he said Iraq's weapons productions facilities were buried deeply underground.

* Cheney's claim that the intelligence community had confirmed that lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 was not true.

In addition, a companion report found that a special office set up by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld undertook "sensitive intelligence activities" that were inappropriate "without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department."

(In other words: they cooked the intel - again, nothing new revealed here, except that it is now "official")

Second item - Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control:

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

(...) Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

(...) The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". He added: "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans.

(...) The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence."

I think there can be no more doubt now that the Iraq war was not only about securing oil resources, but owning them permanently.

Taking the two items above, it is safe to conclude that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. lied their collective asses off to procure a new colony for the U.S.A. - and its very first one in the 21st century at that.

One small step for American Imperialism, a giant leap for the neocons' wet dreams.

I wonder if they'll be doing the same with Afghanistan ... or perhaps they prefer Iran?

In any case, I will join in the sarcasm of The Station Agent and make the suggestion of simply annexing Iraq and make it a state (with the huge, new embassy there becoming the state house) - and therefore be done with this.

Or maybe going about it this way would be too obvious?

Regime change indeed ...


P.S. See also this!