God, Guns and Oil: The Shadow History of the Saudi-American Alliance
Tariq Ali has written an excellent piece in the London Review of Books on the ever-corrupt relationship between the Saudi royals and the American elite, and the history of the religious extremists who, as in America, serve as the main base of the nation’s wastrel leaders. Go there and read the whole thing. With an intro like this (excerpted below), how can you resist?
Curiouser and Curiouser: The Comeback Kids of Al Qaeda
We wrote here yesterday of the Bush Administration’s curious propensity for allowing “al Qaeda” leaders in Iraq to slip away before its various surges and crackdowns in Iraq. But of course in this, the situation in Iraq simply mirrors the Administration’s approach to al Qaeda throughout the whole “War on Terror” — a policy that could be very charitably described as “benign neglect” (although more sinister constructions on this policy are also quite plausible).
For example, counterterrorism officials are now telling Congress that al Qaeda has restored its power
Killing Time: Countdown Quickens for Bush War on Iran
(UPDATED below)
Here we go…
U.S. Ties Iranians to Iraq Attack That Killed G.I.’s (NY Times)
The countdown to war with Iran has entered its final stages now. Citing testimony elicited – by one means or another – from two Iraqi Shiite captives and a Lebanese man who has been held in one of Bush’s secret prisons, U.S. military officials are now formally charging that Iranian government officials directly planned operations that killed American soldiers in Iraq.
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Liberate With Extreme Prejudice: Another Civilian Slaughter in Afghanistan
(UPDATED below.)
While the Anglo-American media goes into hyperdrive over a pair of utterly bungled terrorist wannabe attacks in the UK, the actual, highly efficient slaughter of innocent civilians in Afghanistan by American forces continues at a frenzied pace.
Dozens of Afghan civilians — from 50 to 80 — were killed in a three-hour bombing raid on the village of Hyderabad on Saturday, local officials of the American-backed Afgan government told the Observer. One man, Mohammed Khan, lost seven members of his family, including
Annals of the Imperium: A Brief Round-Up
(UPDATED below — and now UPDATED AGAIN.)
Very busy today elsewhere, so here’s a too-quick round-up of several items that would otherwise get more time and consideration.
Ethiopia’s dictator finds that he too has been hornswoggled by his mentor George W. Bush, saying that, upon reflection, it might not have been a good idea to join Bush’s third “Terror War” regime change operation against Somalia, which has
Slandering the Dead: The American Massacre at al-Khalis
As Glenn Greenwald, among others, has pointed out, the new Bushist line is that everyone killed by American forces in Iraq is “al Qaeda” – a transparent falsehood belied by the Pentagon’s own assessments but now mindlessly adopted by almost every corporate media venue, with the honorable exception (as always) of McClatchy Newspapers. Of course, the Invader-in-Chief and his multitude of bootlickers in traditional media and the blogosphere have always vastly inflated the numbers and importance of those elements in Iraq that are associated with al Qaeda in some way, however tenuous.
Alabama Getaway: Bush-Rove Legal Perversion Goes South
Scott Horton has put out a detailed and entirely damning piece about the corruption of the judicial process for partisan gain engineered by Karl Rove and the White House down south: Justice in Alabama. The prosecution — and persecution — of former Democratic governor Don Siegelman was a state crime from start to finish, and was clearly orchestrated by Karl Rove and his appointed minions — themselves hip-deep in sleaze, graft and criminal conspiracy. In a brilliantly apt comparison, Horton likens Rove to Andrey Vyshinsky,
Bringing Africa Together: The Unsung Triumph of George W. Bush
You know, we give
George W. Bush a lot of good-natured guff around here – strictly for
fun, of course, in the spirit of frat-boy raillery that the president
loves so well – but sometimes you have to put joking aside, and give
our leader the credit he deserves. Mr. Bush has always said that he’s a
uniter, not a divider, and he has proven that this year by
accomplishing something that no other Western leader has ever done:
bringing the fractious continent of Africa together into a
Send in the Clowns: Congress Writes More Blank Checks for Bush Crime
Arthur Silber comes down hard on the empire burlesque put on by the clowns that rule us, noting that the Democratic-led Congress has just handed George W. Bush two blank checks: one for an unlimited military presence in Iraq — for years, decades, even centuries — while the other merely gives the Bush gang a full, formal “justification” for launching a war of aggression against Iran.
We thank you, princes, for this fell service: record it with your high and
Rowing Together on the Blood-Dimm’d Tide: Further Reflections on A Tragic Legacy
(UPDATE: Arthur Silber has a few thoughts on the matter here.)
Both Glenn Greenwald and Paul Curtis have replied briefly and graciously to the comments I made in a previous post that was sparked by Curtis’ analysis of excerpts from Greenwald’s upcoming book, “A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency.” Just to clarify my own thoughts on the matter a bit further, I would say that I find Glenn’s contention that I was at some