Kathy Kelly, founder of Voices for Creative Non-Violence, discusses her recent visit to Gaza at the end of Israel’s incursion, the systematic damage done to civilian infrastructure, the mounting evidence that the Israelis used white phosphorus and committed war crimes, the large volume of images and reporting broadcast by Al-Jazeera in Gaza compared to the Western media’s near-blackout of coverage and the hopeful possibility that new U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell can broker a peace deal.

MP3 here. (30:37)

Kathy Kelly is the founder of Voices for Creative Non-Violence, a 3-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and helped initiate the Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the UN/US sanctions against Iraq.

Tom Engelhardt, editor of TomDispatch and of The World According to TomDispatch, chronicles the failures of the Bush Administration and their misguided faith in the dark side of force, the state of complete catastrophe inside Afghanistan and on its border with Pakistan, the precarious situation in Iraq, Bush’s failure to get Iran to stop enriching Uranium (his standard), how U.S. policy has benefited Hamas and Hezbollah, the worst crisis on earth: the U.S.-caused war in Somalia and the rise of much more radical forces there than those whose power the invasion was meant to thwart.

MP3 here. (23:32)

An editor in publishing for the last 25 years, Tom Engelhardt is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War era, now out in a revised edition with a new preface and afterword, and Mission Unaccomplished, Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters. He is at present consulting editor for Metropolitan Books, a fellow of the Nation Institute, and a teaching fellow at the journalism school of the University of California, Berkeley. Visit his Web site.

Robert A. Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, discusses his database of every suicide terrorist attack on earth since 1980, what it shows about the role of religion and occupation in motivating suicide terrorism, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the amount of truth discernible from social science, the suicide bombing campaign in Iraq and spread around the world since the Iraq invasion, the motivation of the Japanese Kamikazes, the suicide attacks of the Jewish Zealots against Roman occupation 2,000 years ago, the strategic logic of suicide terrorism, the importance in the difference in religion of the occupiers and occupied, the illogical Obama/McCain consensus on escalating the war in Afghanistan and now Pakistan, the example of Hezbollah’s suicide campaign against Israeli/French/American forces in Lebanon, the profile of the individual suicide bomber, why fighting them over there makes us less safe here, Adam Gadahn and the real, human, political reasons he sites in al Qaeda recruitment videos, and why Paul Wolfowitz got it wrong even on the one occasion he was right.

MP3 here. (51:57)

Robert A. Pape is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago specializing in international security affairs. His publications include Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House 2005); Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Cornell 1996), “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security (1997), “The Determinants of International Moral Action,” International Organization (1999); “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” American Political Science Review (2003); and “Soft Balancing against the United States,” International Security (2005). His commentary on international security policy has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, as well as on Nightline, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and National Public Radio. Before coming to Chicago in 1999, he taught international relations at Dartmouth College for five years and air power strategy for the USAF’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies for three years. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1988 and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982. His current work focuses on the causes of suicide terrorism and the politics of unipolarity.

Daniel Levy, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation, discusses the need for Israel to adopt a diplomatic foreign policy, prominent Israeli officials opposed to attacking Iran, the remaining danger of an Israeli attack, how hard-line rhetoric empowers Iran’s hawks in return, the disastrous effects any attack on Iran would have, the process for the upcoming Israeli election, the consequences of conflating all of Israel and America’s enemies and the new liberal U.S.-Israeli lobbying organization J-Street.

MP3 here. (28:48)

Daniel Levy is a senior fellow and director of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation and was a negotiator in the Rabin and Barak governments in Israel.

Philip Weiss, syndicated columnist, author of the blog MondoWeiss and the book American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps, discusses the touchy subject of the Israel Lobby and Jewish power in American politics, the difficulty Americans face in criticizing Israel due to the smear of “antisemitism,” the centrality of Israel policy to the neoconservatives, majority Jewish-American support for the takeover of Jerusalem, Barack Obama’s pandering to the Lobby, the relative peace position of the Olmert government compared to the U.S. War Party, the Lobby-Christian Zionist alliance, the brutality of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, the cause of the media blackout on the occupation, the new J-Street lobby and Israel’s conflict with Iran.

MP3 here. (40:44)

The New York Observer, The Nation and The American Conservative and in the past has written for the National Review, Washington Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, and Jewish World Review.

Mohamad Bazzi, Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses his recent article in Newsweek about the prospects for peace in the Middle East, the peace talks between Israel and Syria over the Golan Heights, the Bush administration’s policy of isolating Syria, their close alliance with Iran, Turkey’s role in the Israeli-Syrian talks, the State Department’s recent contact with the Syrian ambassador to the U.S., U.S. involvement in the Middle East, the situation in Lebanon between the Seniora government and Hezbollah and takes questions from callers.

MP3 here. (16:41)

Mohamad Bazzi is Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday. He is currently working on a project about Hezbollah and the Shiite community in Lebanon.

Eric Margolis, foreign correspondent for Canada’s Sun National Media and author of War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet, discusses the new hype about Israel’s bombing of the supposed Syrian/North Korean nuclear facility in September 2007, the North Korean uranium enrichment program which still does not exist and which they still won’t fess up to, Israeli peace negotiations with Syria over the Golan Heights on the eve of further war, the two countries’ relative strength, the insane neocon “the Iranians want to be bombed and taken over by the MEK” theory, new war plans being drawn up, various ways that Iran could strike back, the bogus threat of the “Shi’ite Crescent,” the very real willingness of the Iranians to negotiate and do business with the U.S., the motivations which drive the al Qaeda movement, pro-Americanism in France and the NATO/EU Army question.

MP3 here. (42:17)

Award winning author, columnist, and broadcaster Eric S. Margolis has covered 14 wars and is a leading authority on military affairs, the Middle East, South Asia, and Islamic movements. He is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.

Philip Giraldi, former DIA and CIA officer and columnist for Antiwar.com, discusses his scoop for the American Conservative magazine that the information leading the FBI to Ben Ami Kadish came from inside the Israeli government, speculation that it may have been an attempt by antiwar factions in Israel to thwart scheduled testimony by Israeli intelligence agents in favor of the bogus story of the North Korea/Syria nuclear weapons program, the promotion of Gen. Petraeus to commander of Centcom, the remaining danger of war with Iran given a suitable pretext, the detriment of the narrative of the indivisibility of Israeli and American interests, the natural divisions between groups like Hezbollah, al Qaeda, the Iranian Mullahs, the War Party’s claims about their cooperation, the FBI’s bogus terrorism prosecutions since 9/11, America’s regime change in Somalia, the case for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and the McCain prescription for confrontation with Russia and China.

MP3 here. (39:51)

Philip Giraldi is a former DIA and CIA officer, partner at Cannistraro Associates, Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance, contributing editor at the American Conservative magazine and columnist at Antiwar.com.

Gareth Porter, historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the recent/ongoing battle between “Iraqi government” forces and the Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad, how Maliki jumped the gun and thwarted Cheney, Hakim and Petraeus’s plan for a much larger effort against the Sadrists this summer, Maliki’s plain explanation that having his guys attack with Americans would have only weakened his position even more than happened anyway, Maliki’s desperate escape from Basra, Iran’s role in negotiating a cease fire in Basra, the retirement of the “special groups” talking point, the fact that the Iranian regime still supports the Da’wa/ISCI/Maliki regime over Sadr’s forces as the U.S. regime prefers, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s accusations that the U.S. is in cahoots with the Iranians even as the U.S. backs al Qaeda allied groups in Lebanon and Iraq, the continuing danger of war with Iran and full scale war against the Shi’ites of Iraq and ultimate defeat.

MP3 here. (38:03)

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.

Dr. Porter was both a Vietnam specialist and an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and was Co-Director of Indochina Resource Center in Washington. Dr. Porter taught international studies at City College of New York and American University. He was the first Academic Director for Peace and Conflict Resolution in the Washington Semester program at American University.

Gareth Porter discusses his recent story in The Nation: “Bush’s Iran/ Argentina Terror Frame-Up“: How the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina has always been blamed on Iran via Hezbollah by the U.S. and Israel despite conflicting evidence and how the Bush administration is rehashing this incident to implicate Iran as the most dangerous terrorist threat in the world. Porter also discusses his article: “How The Pentagon Planted A False Story” about the War Party’s manipulation of the story of the Iranian speedboats’ and U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf.

MP3 here.

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.