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By Weldon Berger, on December 18th, 2009
What is “Why is the United States legally obligated to provide Israel with new military hardware whenever that nation feels a bit insecure?”
Yes, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law! The Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2008 amended the Arms Control Export Act of 1976 to require that any U.S. arms . . . → Read More: Because there aren’t nearly enough guns in the Middle East
By Weldon Berger, on July 2nd, 2008
Blaming our country’s woes exclusively on the people who have most directly wrought them—Bush, Cheney, torture maven David Addington et al—becomes increasingly difficult in the face of the refusal by Democratic party leaders to confer accountability, let alone make any attempt to visit some sort of necessarily inadequate justice, upon the administration.
The party’s presidential candidate, who agreeably opposes impeaching Bush and Cheney and seems no more than mildly interested in examining the genesis of our sorrows should he and his party consolidate control of the two elective branches, has just come out foursquare in favor of expanding the reach of a government that already has its national security tentacles embedded in what should be some very uncomfortable places, and he has endorsed at least two Congressional figures—practicing war lover Joe Lieberman, who is receiving favorable mention as a possible Republican vice-presidential candidate, over the anti-occupation Ned Lamont in 2006, and reactionary Georgia representative John Barrow over his progressive primary opponent, Regina Thomas, this year—who represent the antithesis of Barack Obama’s watchwords, “hope” and “change”. To continue the cephalopod analogy, he seems fully sympathetic to the notion of redaction as a survival technique, if one takes “survival” to mean “convenience”.
Obama did not, however, lay the keystone of a national security state, or invade Iraq, or greenlight torture, or threaten to carpet bomb Iran, or minister to the armed forces with a sledgehammer, or weaken the economy to the point that it has become its own threat to our collective security, and neither did other Vichy Democrats such as Jay Rockefeller, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and dozens of other administration enablers. They only helped; anything more than to shave their heads and shun them could be seen as an overreaction.
Continue reading Worst National Security Administration Ever: Wall Street Edition
By Weldon Berger, on March 4th, 2008
George W. Bush has a death grip on the title of Worst US President Ever, but he’s not alone in achieving historic levels of incompetence: his cabinet secretaries are pulling their weight as well.
Take Condoleezza Rice, for instance. As Bush’s national security council chief, she presided over the administration’s total lack of interest . . . → Read More: Not just the worst president ever: worst cabinet secretaries too
By Weldon Berger, on December 27th, 2007
Condi did it.
No, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice didn’t pull the trigger or build the bomb or hire the assassin, but it was the U.S. effort to force Pakistan’s dictator, Pervex Musharraf, into a power-sharing arrangement with Bhutto that led directly to her death.
Steve Clemons, proprietor of the Washington Note and . . . → Read More: A brief comment on the assasination of Benazir Bhutto
By Weldon Berger, on October 1st, 2007
My friend Cell Whitman emailed me a few days ago about a C-SPAN interview with the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. Kessler was discussing U.S. – Soviet relations, and the difficulties they present putative Russia expert Condoleezza Rice, when he let fly with this little gem about Bush and Putin:
[A]t his very first meeting . . . → Read More: Bush and Putin’s soul: a masterpiece of product placement
By Weldon Berger, on August 13th, 2007
U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice appears to have reverted to her Cold War roots with her announcement last month, in tandem with fellow cold warrior and US defense secretary Robert Gates, that the US intends to sell some $20 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United . . . → Read More: Feeding the beast: US, UK flood the Middle East with arms
By Weldon Berger, on May 16th, 2007
The Washington Post reported Sunday on a Pentagon official in Iraq who has drawn the ire of other government officials by unilaterally reconstituting some of that country’s state-owned industries.
Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense, has been called a Stalinist by U.S. diplomats in Iraq. One has accused him of helping insurgents build better bombs. The State Department has even taken the unusual step of enlisting the CIA to dispute the validity of Brinkley’s work.
Brinkley’s attempt to ease unemployment among the ranks of young men with guns — estimated to be running at 60% or higher — drew this response from one irate US embassy official: “Here was this guy who parachuted in from Washington who thought he had all of the answers and that we were just a bunch of idiots sitting around in the Green Zone.”
What could possibly lead him to think that?
Continue reading From the department of questions better left unasked
By Weldon Berger, on February 2nd, 2007
Germany has become the second European country to issue arrest warrants for CIA agents involved in kidnapping terrorism suspects for transportation to third countries where the suspects are abused and often tortured. German citizen Khaled El-Masri was snatched from the German border, flown to Afghanistan where he was beaten and tortured, and was then dumped in Albania five months later after the CIA realized they had kidnapped an innocent man.
Last year, Italy charged 23 CIA agents with the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan, possibly with the unauthorized help of Italy’s top intelligence agency. Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr was then sent to Egypt where he remains in prison amid allegations that he too was tortured. (For more on the Italian case, see BTC News coverage here, here, here and here.) The case was killed by an appointee of Bush ally Silvio Berlusconi but was revived under Berlusconi’s successor.
Neither the Germans nor the Italians expect any of the CIA agents to surrender or to travel to countries within the European Union where they might be subject to arrest and extradition, but prosecutors in both countries want to send a (belated) message that the CIA no longer has an unlimited license to kidnap and transship suspects from and through EU territory.
Continue reading Germany joins Italy in charging CIA agents with kidnapping
By Eric Brewer, on January 26th, 2007
There’s a revealing tidbit in a “Sporting Scene” article in the current New Yorker that sheds some light on today’s front page Washington Post story about how the Bush administration wants American troops to start killing Iranians in Iraq… . . . → Read More: “I got to figure out Iran”: Condoleezza Rice advances a pawn
By Weldon Berger, on January 14th, 2007
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice granted an interview to three somewhat incurious New York Times reporters on Friday. During the course of it she implied that Iraq would be unsalvageable if Baghdad wasn’t under control by sometime this summer and, in bits and pieces, identified concerns about Iran that echo, sometimes almost verbatim, those the administration professed about Iraq in 2002.
Among the things Rice told the reporters is that the US would pursue unilateral action (sanctions) against Iran because the recent UN Security Council debate on sanctions was “not actually helpful,” and she didn’t know what further use the UN could be.
Why was the debate unhelpful? Because it was a debate.
Continue reading Reporters are stupid and Rice is tired of the UN
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Word of the Decade Ignoranus: An ignorant asshole.
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