Antiwar.com Blog

As I said here — and, earlier, here — the whole Syrian “nuclear” facility that the Israelis supposedly took out, in a faux-replay of the Osirak narrative, turned out to be a hoax:

“According to current and former intelligence sources, the US intelligence community has seen no evidence of a nuclear facility being hit. US intelligence ‘found no radiation signatures after the bombing, so there was no uranium or plutonium present,’ said one official, wishing to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject. ‘We don’t have any independent intelligence that it was a nuclear facility — only the assertions by the Israelis and some ambiguous satellite photography from them that shows a building, which the Syrians admitted was a military facility.’”

Now that the IAEA is has the satellite photos, the truth is about to come out:

One of the diplomats indicated that the photos came from U.S intelligence. Two others said the images, which have been studied by experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency since being received on Thursday, do not at first examination appear to substantiate reports that the target was a nuclear installation, but emphasized that the images were still under examination.

The serial liars running our foreign policy don’t care if their deceptions are exposed: the value of lying is the impression it leaves. Many heard about the Syrian “nukes,” few will notice the debunking.

Follow the money, as the old saying goes:

“The US arms industry is backing Hillary Clinton for President and has all but abandoned its traditional allies in the Republican party. Mrs Clinton has also emerged as Wall Street’s favourite. Investment bankers have opened their wallets in unprecedented numbers for the New York senator over the past three months and, in the process, dumped their earlier favourite, Barack Obama.”

The military-industrial complex is clearly betting on the Democrats, who, for the first time, are beating out the GOP in raising money from the war profiteers. What’s more, they’ve clearly settled on Hillary as their horse in this race, and here’s the numbers:

“So far, Mrs Clinton has received $52,600 in contributions from individual arms industry employees. That is more than half the sum given to all Democrats and 60 per cent of the total going to Republican candidates. Election fundraising laws ban individuals from donating more than $4,600 but contributions are often ‘bundled’ to obtain influence over a candidate.”

Yes, but, as she put it recently — I believe it was at the dailykos conference — lobbyists are people, too. They need to be represented — and Hillary will certainly do that. End the war? Withdraw from Iraq? Re-evaluate American foreign policy? Not on your life.

Even monkeys and apes are clever enough to use the threat of a common enemy as a way of reducing within-group tensions. Frans de Waal has seen wild baboons resolve a dispute by jointly threatening the members of another baboon troop, and chimpanzees in a zoo making aggressive “wraaa” calls in the direction of the cheetah enclosure, though no cheetah was visible. “The need for a common enemy can be so great that a substitution is fabricated,” says de Waal. “I have seen long-tailed macaques run to the swimming pool to threaten their own images in the water; a dozen tense monkeys unified against the ‘other’ group in the pool.”

In the absence of a common enemy, or of a common goal that can be achieved only if everyone pulls together, groups tend to fall apart into a collection of individuals or smaller groups.

– The Nurture Assumption, by Judith Rich Harris

More science here.

Yes, Benito Giuliani’s foreign policy team is very … Halloweenish. In addition to Daniel “Ethinc Cleanser” Pipes, we have one Martin Kramer, as profiled by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

“‘Academic colleagues, get used to it,’ warned the pro-Israel activist Martin Kramer in March 2004. ‘Yes, you are being watched. Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you’ve also posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be visited late at night.”

Kramer’s “Campus Watch” is devoted to harrassing anyone on campus who doesn’t kowtow to The Lobby. How would you like to see him as, say, Secretary of Education?

If Rudy makes it to the White House, and you’re an academic, especially one involved in the realm of Middle Eastern studies, get ready for the knock on the schoolhouse door at night  ….

The apppointment of Daniel Pipes, whose particular brand of political extremism is documented here, as a top advisor to the Giuliani campaign is about par for the course for Rudy, whose over-the-top pronouncements fit right in with Pipes’ hate-all-Arabs shtick. But how far is Rudy willing to take it — as far as Pipes? The reason I ask: Pipes is on the “presidium“ of something called “the Jerusalem Summit,” which has a “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “A generous relocation and resettlement package to allow them to build a new life for themselves and their families in countries preferably, but not necessarily exclusively, with similar religious and socio-cultural conditions.” In short: the wholesale deportation of the Palestinians.

It’s fair to ask: Is this Giuliani’s Middle East “peace plan”? And if not, why has he appointed a nut-bag like Pipes to a top position on his foreign policy staff? 

 

According to ABC News:

“[Ron Paul] does not, in the ads running in early primary states and intended to introduce him to traditional Republicans there, mention his opposition to the Iraq War.”

If true, this is a major mistake. The reason for Paul’s rising popularity is his unique confluence of antiwar and anti-Big Government views: without the former, the latter loses its punch. Methinks the Ron Paul Revolution needs … a revolution from within.