Uncle Sam in Afghanistan: Good Help Is Hard to Find By Norman Solomon

Almost eight years after choosing Hamid Karzai to head the Afghan government, Uncle Sam would like to give him a pink slip. But it’s not easy.

And the grim fiasco of Afghanistan’s last election is shadowing the next.
 
Another display of electioneering and voting has been ordered up from Washington. But after a chemical mix has blown a hole through the roof -- with all the elements for massive fraud still in place -- what’s the point of throwing together the same ingredients? Full Article>>

Obama's "Iran First" Policy

By D. Lindley Young

WASHINGTON, D.C. (TMT) (10/20)  -   In the 2008 Presidential campaign Barack Obama sold peace in one hand and war in the other. It has now become clear that Obama held out the peace for all to see in the light of day while he prepared for wars in what some would call the shadows. The Obama kabuki dance is heading towards an historic finish – war with Iran sometime next summer. Full Article >>

Presidential Power Grows

Will You Love Every Future President?
By David Swanson

Presidential power has been on a pathway of expansion beyond what the Constitution outlined, and what a government of, by, and for the people requires, since George Washington was president. That expansion, which hit the highway after World War II, got a turbo boost during the co-presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Some of the new powers that those two stole from Congress, the courts, the states, and us the people are being abused less severely in this new age of Obama; others, more so; but far more crucially, in a pattern followed by recent presidencies, all are being maintained, if not expanded, and thus more firmly cemented into place for future presidents to use. Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, you are likely to strongly oppose some major decisions of some future presidents. So it shouldn't be hard to envision some pretty undesirable consequences that might flow from presidential power that increasingly approaches the absolute. Full Article >>

The Lie of the Century - The spin for War with Iran

By D. Lindley Young

WASHINGTON, D.C. (TMT) (9/28) - The question. How may times do you have to tell a lie before it becomes the truth? Answer. A lie never becomes the truth no matter how many times it is told.

The media and politicians, especially Netanyahu, keep saying that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has said "he" will "wipe Israel off the map." This a a lie no matter how many times it is said.

At a seminar on a world without Zionism, not without Jews, but, without the cult that believes that Palestine has no right to exist because of Isreali biblical claims to the land on which Israel and Palestine exist.

The seminar took place before the word "zionist' was redefined to mean the Jewist identity. At the time of Ahmadinejad's speech at the seminar "A World without Zionism," it meant those Jews that made biblical claims to Palestine. So, it could be said that the issue was then picturing a "world in which people did not refuse to recognize Palestine's right to exist."

In any event, Ahmadinejad quoted from the Ayatollah Khemeni and, depending upon the interpretation, said, quoting Ayatollah Khemeni as saying he hoped Israel would "vanish" or "collapse." Ahmadinejad did not say "he" was going to "wipe Israel off the map."

There is a world of difference from Ahmadinejad quoted from the Ayatollah Khemeni and the lie being told that Ahmadinejad said "he" would "wipe Israel off the wipe."

Juan Cole, President of the Global Americana Institute, put it this way :

"It was apparently some Western wire service that mistranslated the phrase as 'wipe Israel off the map', which sounds rather more violent than calling for regime change. Since then, Iranian media working in English have themselves depended on that translation. One of the tricks of Right-Zionist propagandists is to substitute these English texts for Ahmadinejad's own Persian text."

Cole continued, "What is really going on here is an old trick of the warmongers. Which is that you equate hurtful statements of your enemy with an actual military threat, and make a weak and vulnerable enemy look like a strong, menacing foe. Then no one can complain when you pounce on the enemy and reduce his country to flames and rubble."

"It is obvious that powerful political forces in Washington are fishing for a pretext to launch a war on Iran, and that they are just delighted to have Ahmadinejad as cartoon villain and pretext."

See full article: http://www.juancole.com/2007/06/ahmadinejad-i-am-not-anti-semitic.html

Arash Norouzi wrote 'Wiped off the Map' – The Rumor of the Century." See http://www.antiwar.com/orig/norouzi.php?articleid=11025

"Amid heated wrangling over Iran's nuclear program, and months of continuous, unfounded accusations against Iran in an attempt to rally support for preemptive strikes against the country, the imperialists had just been handed the perfect raison d'être to invade. To the war hawks, it was a gift from the skies."

Even if every media outlet in the world were to retract the mistranslated quote tomorrow, the major damage has already been done, providing the groundwork for the next phase of disinformation: complete character demonization. But, if war is the goal, join in. Our politicians and the media know the truth, but, are helping those who are lying our way into war with Iran

"But, if war is the goal, join in. Our politicians and the media know the truth, but, are helping those who are lying our way into war with Iran."

There are other articles, if the truth matters to you. See: http://goatmilk.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/israel-wiped-off-the-map-lost-in-translation  Also, listen to Salute America at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/saluteamerica