Does the USA seek World War III

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By John Stanton


Agitating Iran, snatching the dead for DNA

These are gruesome days: the Single Bullet Doctrine rules. The world is truly adrift and on the brink of a global “something.” Everyone can feel it here in the USA.

The US system of government is often described as a layer cake: federal on top, state in the middle, and local at the bottom. That cake is a mess. The frosting—the sweet taste of the American Way of Life—has melted away; the bitter taste of economic insecurity/uncertainty is everywhere in the country. The federal government has slid off the top of the cake and occupies a place completely disconnected from the remaining two layers—state and local. The state and local layers of the cake are drying up and crumbling as the economic crisis in the USA is causing them to jettison all sorts of labor and safety net programs. And cost to care for returning military personnel and the heavy burden on communities that involves makes life all the more difficult in 2011.

Listening to America’s “leaders,” one is tempted to think that their grand solution to all of the USA’s problems is to start World War III. Is there a better way to do that than invade Iran based on divine or mythological guidance? Will Obama look to George W. Bush for guidance leading up to the invasion? Is the country being prepared for a “longer war”?

As the country continues to fragment, truth’s role in the political-military-economic-media milieu, as Gianni Vattimo points out, has vanished. The USA is devolving into religion, sorcery and mythological practices of times past as fear and the national security consciousness breeds visions of the unknown evil lurking everywhere. No one can be “trusted.” Technological Shamanism has appeared. Neil Whitehead of the University of Wisconsin has a very interesting take on UAV/Drone, Night Operations and the USA’s role as a night stalking killing machine.

And now the USA is engaging in the interesting practice of taking the corpses of dead “terrorists” offed in SWAT-like kill-capture raids for DNA retrieval purposes.

A mid-summer’s daydream

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta—described early in his career by a veteran Washington, DC politico as a “dangerous idiot”—trots off to Iraq and tells the US soldiers there that “you guys” are here because of 911. Great!

What is CIA Director David Petraeus going to say next? Fortunately, the former general’s version of the Iraq “success” is being challenged from within. Nonetheless, if Obama ascends to the presidency again, Petraeus will likely become secretary of defense.

A daydream here: perhaps President Barak Obama is secretly negotiating with Iranian leaders behind the scenes and as the USA’s election cycle starts to spin fast we’ll hear the “Breaking News,” a sort of “Nixon in China” announcement that a breathtaking series of agreements have been signed between the Iranians and Americans. Can you hear Obama speaking on national television at the post-breakthrough press conference? “I am pleased to announce that, at long last, we have come to terms with Iran. It is in America’s strategic interest to work with the Iranians. It has been far too long since we sat directly across from each other and extended hands of friendship across the table. The negotiations were brutal for both sides. But, talk was not cheap in this case. But make no mistake . . .”

That would be a groundbreaking event that Obama and all Americans could take a lot pride in. The fallout would be stunning as it would change the global geopolitical balance and put the USA one-up in the Great Game underway in South Central Asia.

Imagine it.

In the daydream world, the US and Iran could work together in Iraq and help diffuse the violence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and other countries in the region. A solid relationship would counterbalance the nefarious interests of Saudi Arabia and its support of violent Sunni extremists. It would force Israel to the negotiating table and with the USA and Iran leading the way, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinians may be resolved peacefully. Economically, the USA and Iran, teaming up with Turkey, Russia, China and India, could bring to bear massive investments in the region stretching from Iran to Egypt and other countries in the North Africa, employing millions/creating new markets. On that note, it may alter, to the USA’s advantage, the peer competition between the USA and China.

There are so many positives that a USA and Iran partnership would produce that it seems to be a no-brainer for both sides to “get it done.” But that’s exactly the point: there are no brains, apparently, on both sides, willing to give up living in the past.

Invasion of the body snatchers

So, instead of diplomatic breakthroughs, we get a press conference in which Obama stated, “We killed Bin Laden last evening.” Is that the stuff of national celebration, pride? To literally blow one man’s brains out, take a blood sample from the corpse for DNA purposes, and then dump the guy in the ocean? Did they retrieve any internal organs (like the brain) for study? What happens to his children/wives? Are they imprisoned for life, stuck in a dungeon, for fear that they would avenge the father? Where did their DNA end up?

And, for that matter, what becomes of all the DNA samples and bodies that JSOC, CIA, et al, pick up after a kill-capture raid? Is there a “Terrorist DNA Database”? Is the USA sequencing genetic material at a university defense contractor like Johns Hopkins? At some point the DNA, the bio-scans, the cultural data from Human Terrain Teams, Female Engagement Teams, Provincial Reconstruction Teams, and Village Stability Operators will make its way into many Geospatial Maps in intelligence agencies, military commands, and executive offices. This is Joshua Project meets Global Human Terrain Map. Makes sense, the way things work these days.

Getting back to Panetta, the US State Department had to put him in check for his statement suggesting that the USA would respond militarily to Iranian meddling in Iraqi affairs. Where has that guy been? The Iranians are ascendant in Iran. This comes on the heels, or at the same time, as the US Congress held a session with the MEK, listed as a terrorist group by the US State Department. The National Iranian American Council in Washington, DC, reported extensively on that event and a visit to their website should be in order for anyone interested in a balanced view of Iran and US relations, their tireless efforts to prevent a US-Iran war, and their activities for American Iranians.

NIAC reports this on the MEK “A decision is imminent regarding whether the MEK will stay on the terrorist list or if it will be permitted to receive U.S. Government funding and support. The State Department has been ordered to review the MEK’s terrorist designation as result of a legal appeal by the MEK and a decision is expected in August 2011. The MEK has spent millions of dollars on lobbyists, PR agents and communications firms to orchestrate an unprecedented political campaign to pressure its way off the terrorist list. “High profile former U.S. officials have received payment to advocate publicly for the MEK, and Members of Congress have introduced resolutions calling for MEK to be removed from the FTO list. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to issue a decision on whether the MEK will continue to be listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in August 2011.

If MEK is removed from the State Department’s list, the NIAC correctly notes that the USA will be repeating the war formula for Iraq. “Disastrous repercussions in Iran and the US will take place to include empowering anti-democratic hardliners in Iran and devastating the pro-democracy movement in Iran; paving a pathway to covert action and war, repeating the mistakes of Iraq; empowering pro-war hardliners in Washington and destroying US credibility among Iranians; and enabling the MEK to control US policy towards Iran and silencing the Iranian-American community.”

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com.

A world overwhelmed by Western hypocrisy By Paul Craig Roberts Western institutions have become caricatures of hypocrisy. The International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank are violating their charters in order to bail out French, German, and Dutch private banks. The IMF is only empowered to make balance of payments loans, but is lending to the Greek government for prohibited budgetary reasons in order that the Greek government can pay the banks. The ECB is prohibited from bailing out member country governments, but is doing so anyway in order that the banks can be paid. The German parliament approved the bailout, which violates provisions of the European Treaty and Germany’s own Basic Law. The case is in the German Constitutional Court, a fact unreported in the US media. US president George W. Bush appointed an immigrant, who is not impressed with the US Constitution and the separation of powers, to the Justice [sic] Department in order to get a ruling that the president has “unitary powers” that elevate him above statutory US law, treaties, and international law. According to this immigrant’s legal decisions, the “unitary executive” can violate with impunity the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which prevents spying on Americans without warrants obtained from the FISA Court. The immigrant also ruled that Bush could violate with impunity the statutory US laws against torture as well as the Geneva Conventions. In other words, the fictional “unitary powers” make the president into a Caesar. Constitutional protections, such as habeas corpus, which prohibit government from holding people indefinitely without presenting charges and evidence to a court, and which prohibit government from denying detained people due process of law and access to an attorney, were thrown out the window by the US Department of Justice [sic], and the federal courts went along with most of it. As did Congress, “the people’s representatives.” Congress even enacted the Military Tribunals Commissions Act of 2006, signed by the White House Brownshirt on October 17. This act allows anyone alleged to be an “unlawful enemy combatant” to be sentenced to death on the basis of secret and hearsay evidence presented in the kangaroo military court placed out of reach of US federal courts. The crazed nazis in Congress who supported this total destruction of Anglo-American law masqueraded as “patriots in the war against terrorism.” The act designates anyone accused by the US, without evidence being presented, as being part of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or “associated forces” to be an “unlawful enemy combatant,” which strips the person of the protection of law. Not even George Orwell could have conceived of such a formulation. The Taliban consists of indigenous Afghan peoples, who, prior to the US military intervention, were fighting to unify the country. The Taliban are Islamist, and the US government fears another Islamist government, like the one in Iran that was blowback from US intervention in Iran’s internal affairs. The “freedom and democracy” Americans overthrew an elected Iranian leader and imposed a tyrant. American-Iranian relations have never recovered from the tyranny that Washington imposed on Iranians. Washington is opposed to any government whose leaders cannot be purchased to perform as Washington’s puppets. This is why George W. Bush’s regime invaded Afghanistan, why Washington overthrew Saddam Hussein, and why Washington wants to overthrow Libya, Syria, and Iran. America’s first black (or half white) president inherited the Afghan war, which has lasted longer than World War II with no victory in sight. Instead of keeping with his election promises and ending the fruitless war, Obama intensified it with a “surge,” The war is now 10 years old, and the Taliban control more of the country than does the US and its NATO puppets. Frustrated by their failure, the Americans and their NATO puppets increasingly murder women, children, village elders, Afghan police, and aid workers. A video taken by a US helicopter gunship, leaked to Wikileaks and released, shows American forces, as if they were playing video games, slaughtering civilians, including cameramen for a prominent news service, as they are walking down a peaceful street. A father with small children, who stopped to help the dying victims of American soldiers’ fun and games, was also blown away, as were his children. The American voices on the video blame the children’s demise on the father for bringing kids into a “war zone.” It was no war zone, just a quiet city street with civilians walking along. The video documents American crimes against humanity as powerfully as any evidence used against the Nazis in the aftermath of World War II at the Nuremberg Trials. Perhaps the height of lawlessness was attained when the Obama regime announced that it had a list of American citizens who would be assassinated without due process of law. One would think that if law any longer had any meaning in Western civilization, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, indeed, the entire Bush/Cheney regime, as well as Tony Blair and Bush’s other co-conspirators, would be standing before the International Criminal Court. Yet it is Gadaffi for whom the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants. Western powers are using the International Criminal Court, which is supposed to serve justice, for self-interested reasons that are unjust. What is Gadaffi’s crime? His crime is that he is attempting to prevent Libya from being overthrown by a US-supported, and perhaps organized, armed uprising in Eastern Libya that is being used to evict China from its oil investments in Eastern Libya. Libya is the first armed revolt in the so-called “Arab Spring.” Reports have made it clear that there is nothing “democratic” about the revolt. The West managed to push a “no-fly” resolution through its puppet organization, the United Nations. The resolution was limited to neutralizing Gadaffi’s air force. However, Washington, and its French puppet, Sarkozy, quickly made an “expansive interpretation” of the UN resolution and turned it into authorization to become directly involved in the war. Gadaffi has resisted the armed rebellion against the state of Libya, which is the normal response of a government to rebellion. The US would respond the same as would the UK and France. But by trying to prevent the overthrow of his country and his country from becoming another American puppet state, Gadaffi has been indicted. The International Criminal Court knows that it cannot indict the real perpetrators of crimes against humanity—Bush, Blair, Obama, and Sarkozy—but the court needs cases and accepts the victims that the West succeeds in demonizing. In our post-Orwellian times, everyone who resists or even criticizes the US is a criminal. For example, Washington considers Julian Assange and Bradley Manning to be criminals, because they made information available that exposed crimes committed by the US government. Anyone who even disagrees with Washington is considered to be a “threat,” and Obama can have such “threats” assassinated or arrested as a “terrorist suspect” or as someone “providing aid and comfort to terrorists.” American conservatives and liberals, who once supported the US Constitution, are all in favor of shredding the Constitution in the interest of being “safe from terrorists.” They even accept such intrusions as porno-scans and sexual groping in order to be “safe” on air flights. The collapse of law is across the board. The Supreme Court decided that it is “free speech” for America to be ruled by corporations, not by law and certainly not by the people. On June 27, the US Supreme Court advanced the fascist state that the “conservative” court is creating with the ruling that Arizona cannot publicly fund election candidates in order to level the playing field currently unbalanced by corporate money. The “conservative” US Supreme Court considers public funding of candidates to be unconstitutional, but not the “free speech” funding by business interests who purchase the government in order to rule the country. The US Supreme Court has become a corporate functionary and legitimizes rule by corporations. Mussolini called this rule, imposed on Americans by the US Supreme Court, fascism. The Supreme Court also ruled on June 27 that California violated the US Constitution by banning the sale of violent video games to kids, despite evidence that the violent games trained the young to violent behavior. It is fine with the Supreme Court for soldiers, whose lives are on the line, to be prohibited under penalty of law from drinking beer before they are 21, but the idiot court supports inculcating kids to be murderers, as long as it is in the interest of corporate profits, in the name of “free speech.” Amazing, isn’t it, that a court so concerned with “free speech” has not protected American war protesters from unconstitutional searches and arrests, or protected protesters from being attacked by police or herded into fenced-in areas distant from the object of protest. As the second decade of the 21st century opens, those who oppose US hegemony and the evil that emanates from Washington risk being declared to be “terrorists.” If they are American citizens, they can be assassinated. If they are foreign leaders, their country can be invaded. When captured, they can be executed, like Saddam Hussein, or sent off to the ICC, like the hapless Serbs, who tried to defend their country from being dismantled by the Americans. And the American sheeple think that they have “freedom and democracy.” Washington relies on fear to cover up its crimes. A majority of Americans now fear and hate Muslims, peoples about whom Americans know nothing but the racist propaganda which encourages Americans to believe that Muslims are hiding under their beds in order to murder them in their sleep. The neoconservatives, of course, are the purveyors of fear. The more fearful the sheeple, the more they seek safety in the neocon police state and the more they overlook Washington’s crimes of aggression against Muslims. Safety uber alles. That has become the motto of a once free and independent American people, who once were admired but today are despised. In America lawlessness is now complete. Women can have abortions, but if they have stillbirths, they are arrested for murder. Americans are such a terrified and abused people that a 95-year old woman dying from leukemia traveling to a last reunion with family members was forced to remove her adult diaper in order to clear airport security. Only a population totally cowed would permit such abuses of human dignity. In a June 27 interview on National Public Radio, Ban Ki-moon, Washington’s South Korean puppet installed as the Secretary General of the United Nations, was unable to answer why the UN and the US tolerate the slaughter of unarmed civilians in Bahrain, but support the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Gadaffi for defending Libya against armed rebellion. Gadaffi has killed far fewer people than the US, UK, or the Saudis in Bahrain. Indeed, NATO and the Americans have killed more Libyans than has Gadaffi. The difference is that the US has a naval base in Bahrain, but not in Libya. There is nothing left of the American character. Only a people who have lost their soul could tolerate the evil that emanates from Washington. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.