Category: News

Razan al-Najjar, 21, a paramedic helping injured protesters in the Gaza Strip, was murdered by what Benjamin Netanyahu insists the Palestinians recognize as the State of the Jewish People.

How, in these conditions, can individuals who are not religious believers but simply humanists, democrats and liberals, and endowed with a minimum of honesty, continue to define themselves as Jews?
~Shlomo Sand, How I Stopped Being a Jew

Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we deplore their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and the villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate.
~ Israeli Gen. Moshe Dayan

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
~ Israeli Gen. Moshe Dayan

From the archive: Islamophobe & Bolton pal Fred Fleitz has been named chief of staff for the National Security Council. Fletiz was a danger a decade ago in the Bush administration and is even more so now, recalls Ray McGovern. McGovern says that with Bolton’s old “enforcer” Fred Fleitz as NSC Chief of Staff, the odds increase on war with Iran. Bolton and his cronies can now elbow out any honest intelligence on Iran and goad the President into a world-class catastrophe. This time the result would be much worse – geometrically worse.

On a recent TV appearance, I was asked about whistleblowing, but the experience brought back to mind a crystal-clear example of how, before the Iraq War, CIA careerists were assigned “two bosses” – CIA Director George Tenet and John Bolton, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, the arch-neocon who had been thrust on an obedient Secretary of State Colin Powell.

CIA “analyst” Frederick Fleitz took the instructions quite literally, bragging about being allowed to serve, simultaneously, “two bosses” — and becoming Bolton’s “enforcer.” Fleitz famously chided a senior intelligence analyst at State for not understanding that it was the prerogative of policymakers like Bolton – not intelligence analysts – to “interpret” intelligence data.

In an email from Fleitz in early 2002, at the time when one of his bosses, the pliable George Tenet, was “fixing” the intelligence to “justify” war on Iraq, Fleitz outlined the remarkable new intelligence ethos imposed by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their subordinates who were reshaping the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Continue reading “Bolton Flunky Fleitz Raises Stakes for Iran”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Curt Mills explains who Fred Fleitz is and why it matters that he has been hired as John Bolton’s chief of staff on the National Security Council:

But Fleitz’s hiring signals three developments clearly: Bolton’s propensity to tap hardline loyalists; Bolton’s readiness to associate with Iran and North Korean regime change advocates; and Bolton’s assiduous staffing of Russia investigation critics.

Fleitz has been working for Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, which is known for both its wacky conspiracy theories about Islamist infiltration and its hard-line foreign policy views. Like Bolton, he was a vehement opponent of the nuclear deal, and absurdly claimed in 2014 that Obama was “conceding” an Iranian nuclear weapon by negotiating the agreement. Bolton’s hiring of Fleitz is a reunion for the two, as Fleitz served as Bolton’s chief of staff when the latter worked in Bush’s State Department. It was there that he earned the reputation of being Bolton’s “enforcer,” and presumably that is the role he is going to reprise on the NSC.

Fleitz’s position confirms that Bolton continues to remake the National Security Council in his image, and it shows once again the extent to which hard-line fringe figures have gained extraordinary influence in the Trump White House.

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter. This article is reprinted from The American Conservative with permission.

From today’s Cato Institute event, featuring Gene Healy, Vice President, Cato Institute; and John Glaser, Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute; moderated by Jeff Vanderslice, Director of Government Affairs, Cato Institute.

Healy and Glaser discuss the practical consequences of Congress’s abdication of its war-making powers and how Congress can reassert its rightful place as the branch of government responsible for determining the time, place, and targets of war.

Congress’s most solemn constitutional duty is to determine whether, where, and against whom the United States will engage in war. Yet for far too long, legislators have ceded that responsibility to the executive branch, allowing multiple administrations to use the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) as a blank check to wage war whenever and wherever the president decides.

As Congress determines how to respond to growing demands for a new AUMF, it should beware of proposals that would institutionalize mission creep by surrendering more authority to the executive branch. Instead, Congress should repeal — and not replace — the 2001 AUMF.

US Commander of the Europe Command, Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, has called for thousands more US troops to “deter Russian aggression” in Europe. He has even suggested that the US troops should be pulled off of counter-terrorism duty and sent to Europe. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced a massive shipment of military equipment to Europe, including tanks and other tracked vehicles. Do US military officials really believe that Russia is about to invade western Europe? Are we back in the 1940s? Or is Washington’s military-industrial complex looking for new ways to justify an ever-expanding military budget? Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

The Washington Post calls on the Trump administration to pressure the Saudi coalition to halt its offensive against the port of Hodeidah:

The world’s worst humanitarian crisis may be about to get much worse. In Yemen, where some 8 million people are on the brink of famine and the worst cholera epidemic in history is raging, the country’s most important port has become the target of a new offensive in the three-year-old civil war. Yemeni forces backed by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are seeking to cut off and eventually capture Hodeida, a city of 700,000 that is the entry point of 70 percent of the aid shipments keeping millions of civilians alive. The United States, which supplies the Saudi-UAE alliance with arms and intelligence, should use its leverage to stop this reckless venture.

The U.S. absolutely should do as the editorial recommends, but the fact that the offensive is happening suggests that the Trump administration supports the coalition’s decision to attack the port or it tells us that the coalition doesn’t think they will face any consequences for doing it anyway. Trump has shown no interest in pressuring the Saudis and their allies, and his administration has fought every Congressional effort to end US support for the war. It would be good news if the administration suddenly changed its position on the war on Yemen, but we have to assume that it won’t.

Continue reading “Making Yemen’s Humanitarian Catastrophe Even Worse”