Dick Cheney’s Oily Dream
by ilene - September 5th, 2010 11:40 pm
Dick Cheney’s Oily Dream
Courtesy of Washington’s Blog
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is currently saying that Dick Cheney’s vision of policy towards the Middle East after 9/11 was to re-draw the map:
Vice-President Dick Cheney’s vision of completely redrawing the map of the Middle East following the 9/11 attacks is "not stupid," and is "possible over time," former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says.
In his new book, A Journey, the former Labour Party leader wrote that Cheney wanted a wholesale reorganization of the political map of the Middle East after 9/11. The vice president "would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it — Hezbollah, Hamas, etc," Blair wrote.
What does this mean?
Well, as I have repeatedly pointed out, the "war on terror" in the Middle East has nothing to do with combating terror, and everything to do with remaking that region’s geopolitical situation to America’s advantage.
For example, as I noted in January::
Starting right after 9/11 — at the latest — the goal has always been to create "regime change" and instability in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Lebanon; the goal was never really to destroy Al Qaeda. As American reporter Gareth Porter writes in Asia Times:
Three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith’s recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith’s account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country’s top military leaders.
Feith’s book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a series of states…
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General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic
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Will The EU’s Collapse Push The World Deeper Into The Great Depression II?
by ilene - May 17th, 2010 3:21 am
Will The EU’s Collapse Push The World Deeper Into The Great Depression II?
Courtesy of Timothy D. Naegele[1]
“For want of a nail . . . the kingdom was lost.”[2] Will Greece’s debt crisis lead to a Greek debt default and the collapse of the euro and an ensuing collapse of the 27-member European Union (or EU), and trigger the next round of crashes that will be described by economic historians decades from now as “the Great Depression II”?[3] The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in Sarajevo, Serbia brought the tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia to a head. In turn, it is said this triggered a chain of international events that embroiled Russia and the major European powers; and World War I broke out in Europe.[4] Will Greece’s debt crisis set a series of events in motion that sends the world into a downward economic spiral of unfathomable proportions?
For years, I have wrestled with the question of whether the Europe would collapse economically, politically, socially and militarily. Sounds absurd, you say? The countries are too interwoven and mutually dependent now for that to happen, and at the very least they will muddle along, making the worst of the best situations, and achieving the lowest common denominator? The United States of Europe, they are not and never will be, but they have achieved a degree of cohesiveness that I never thought was likely years ago.
I believed jealousies and rivalries and, yes, the hatreds of the past would linger barely beneath the surface, coming unglued at the most inopportune times when it really mattered the most. When the chips were down, I felt the EU would splinter and fall apart; and that its participants and the world would write it off as a noble experiment that failed, much like the League of Nations. After all, its successor—the United Nations—is considered to be a colossal joke by Americans, many of whom would love to see it shipped to Europe, and its building on the East River in Manhattan bulldozed and turned into a park, or made into co-ops or condominiums.
The bitter hatreds of the past seem to have subsided in Europe though, and it has become a cultural melting pot, more and more. Airbus was the first tangible sign of economic integration that I never thought would…
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ONION Medley
by ilene - April 9th, 2010 9:30 am
Sampling several articles from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source (click on titles for whole articles):
U.S. Government: We Have Not Forgotten About Osaka Binn Rogen
WASHINGTON—High-ranking intelligence officials said Monday that the military was still aggressively pursuing notorious terrorist Osaka Binn Rogen, declaring that they had not forgotten about bringing the leader of the Al Hydra network to justice.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates assured citizens that American forces were actively hunting down Osaka Binn Rogen, and asserted that locating the mastermind behind the tragic 19-11 attacks is as pressing now as it was when their search first began, six or 10 years ago or however long it’s been.
"This homicidal madman committed terrible atrocities against the American people, and we have never, ever lost sight of that," Gates said. "Binn Rogen is the most wanted man on the planet, and he remains our No. 1 priority."
"We have only one thing to say to this heinous individual," Gates added. "We will find you, Osaka Binn Rogen."
Based upon field surveillance and intelligence, officials recently widened the search for Orlama Win Roben by dispatching CIA paramilitary officers and Delta Force soldiers to track down, capture, or assassinate the terrorist leader, who has been described as a "very bad, very tall guy with a beard."
"Every single day our brave soldiers are out plastering wanted posters with Owanda Bun Luvin’s face on buildings, telephone poles, and surrounding trees," Gen. Stanley McChrystal said. "We are constantly scouring the dangerous borderlands of Latvia for this terrible, terrible man."…
Here’s a little something we may have suspected, but now there’s a scientific study:
Study: Shoving, Yelling Makes Things Go Faster 76% Of Time
TUCSON, AZ—Researchers at the University of Arizona released a study Monday showing a causal relationship between raising one’s voice, pushing people in the chest, and getting what you want more quickly. …
Similarly unsurprising…
Chimp In Cocaine Study Starts Lying To Friends
ATLANTA—Concerned workers at the National Primate Research Center said Bobo, a 5-year-old chimpanzee participating in a 16-month cocaine study, was observed this week lying to the faces of friends, family, and staff.
"Our goal was to determine how large doses of the stimulant would improve or impair the chimpanzee’s ability to perform memory and language tasks," said primatologist Daniel Martin, the project’s lead researcher. "What we found was that cocaine
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.