George W Bush om/on Propaganda (video)

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

För att motverka den rådande incestuösa förstärkningen (se video för förklaring) så måste FAKTA upprepas minst lika många gånger som de propagandistiska lögnerna. Boken The Best War Ever och videon nedan är viktiga bidrag till motpropagandan. Detta är inte minst viktigt nu när Bushadministrationen använder samma knep för att sälja Kriget Mot Iran.

To counteract the prevailing Incestuous Amplification (watch video below for explanation) facts have to be repeated as many times as the propagandistic lies. The book The Best War Ever and the video here (via Youtube) are important step in effective Counter-Propaganda. This is of course most important now when the Bush administration are using the same tricks to sell the War On Iran.

Andra bloggar om: propaganda, video, böcker, Youtube, USA, Iran, Irak, Irakkriget, Kriget Mot Terrorismen, Bush, George W Bush, media, politik - Intressant

Technorati: The Best War Ever, Propaganda, Video, Books, Youtube, Iraq, War On Iraq, Iran, War On Iran, War On Terrorism, Media, Bush, George W Bush, Sweden, USA, Politics

Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq - Etnisk rensning i Iraq

Why may it look like there is a more stable Iraq with less violence today? Because the civil war between Sunnis and Shiites have moved from neighborhoods to a large-scale conflict.

Seymour Hersh: Bush 'Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing' in Iraq

Spiegel Online: A lot of people have been saying that the US presence there is a big part of the problem. Is anyone in the White House listening?

Hersh: No. The president is still talking about the "Surge" as if it's going to unite the country. But the Surge was a con game of putting additional troops in there. We've basically Balkanized the place, building walls and walling off Sunnis from Shiites. And in Anbar Province, where there has been success, all of the Shiites are gone. They've simply split.

Spiegel Online: Is that why there has been a drop in violence there?

Hersh: I think that's a much better reason than the fact that there are a couple more soldiers on the ground.

Spiegel Online: So what are the lessons of the Surge?

Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he's talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He's not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You're going to have a Kurdistan. You're going to have a Sunni area that we're going to have to support forever. And you're going to have the Shiites in the South.

Spiegel Online: So the US is over four years into a war that is likely going to end in a disaster. How valid are the comparisons with Vietnam?

Hersh: The validity is that the US is fighting a guerrilla war and doesn't know the culture. But the difference is that at a certain point, because of Congressional and public opposition, the Vietnam War was no longer tenable. But these guys now don't care. They see it but they don't care.

There is also some talk about Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad worth reading:

Spiegel Online: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, he said that he is only interested in civilian nuclear power instead of atomic weapons. How much does the West really know about the nuclear program in Iran?

Seymour Hersh: A lot. And it's been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what [IAEA head Mohamed] ElBaradei and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA's best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they've been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn't enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

Spiegel Online: Is this just another case of exaggerating the danger in preparation for an invasion like we saw in 2002 and 2003 prior to the Iraq War?

Hersh: We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. And now we have this guy Ahmadinejad. The reality is, he's not nearly as powerful inside the country as we like to think he is. The Revolutionary Guards have direct control over the missile program and if there is a weapons program, they would be the ones running it. Not Ahmadinejad.

Times: Iraqi police ‘linked to ethnic cleansing’

THE soulful sound of koranic recitals for the dead reverberated from 22 homes lining a narrow, dimly lit street in the old Baghdad neighbourhood of Iskan in the early hours of yesterday morning.

In one house after another, the soothing voices mingled with the sobs of wives, mothers and sisters over a hum of visitors’ murmured condolences.

The walls of a small nearby mosque were draped with 22 black cloths on which the names of the husbands, sons and brothers being mourned will be inscribed in white paint, as is the custom in Iraq.

The grieving families in this predominantly Shi’ite district had collected their dead — all Sunnis — on Friday amid fury at the execution-style murders of the men and terror at the spread of sectarian killings in the run-up to this Saturday’s referendum on a new constitution.

Many believe the killers’ aim is to drive them out in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that is polarising communities, casting suspicion on the Iraqi police and undermining confidence in the ability of the Baghdad government to maintain security.

Some relatives of Iskan’s dead have already packed up and moved to Sunni areas where they feel safer.

The murdered men’s bodies were shrivelled beyond recognition when they were found where they had lain for a month in the desert more than 70 miles away, near the town of Badra.

But the blindfolds wrapped around their heads were intact, along with the cuffs of metal, plastic and rope used to bind their hands. One or two shots fired into each man had ended their lives.

“Why were they killed? What did they do?” shrieked one mourner as he prepared for a street procession of coffins to their place of burial on Friday.

The answer is difficult to discern. What is known is that all the Sunni victims were married to Shi’ite women. However, this is not uncommon in Iraq and is thought unlikely to be the motive for their murder.

One clue may lie in the alleged presence of Iraqi police officers when the men’s killers came to take them away. According to witnesses, about 40 police vehicles and four-wheel drives from the interior ministry stormed the district in the early hours of August 8.

Iraqi police ‘linked to ethnic cleansing’

This is really not news. Note the date on the article below.

Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold

Across central Iraq, there is an exodus of people fleeing for their lives as sectarian assassins and death squads hunt them down. At ground level, Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold on a massive scale.

By Patrick Cockburn in Khanaqin, North-East Iraq

Published: 20 May 2006

The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves. "Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," warned one of four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, a pregnant mother of three children in the city of Baquba, in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad. He offered chocolate to one of her children to try to find out the names of the men in the family.

Mrs Mohammed is a Kurd and a Shia in Baquba, which has a majority of Sunni Arabs. Her husband, Ahmed, who traded fruit in the local market, said: " They threatened the Kurds and the Shia and told them to get out. Later I went back to try to get our furniture but there was too much shooting and I was trapped in our house. I came away with nothing." He and his wife now live with nine other relatives in a three-room hovel in Khanaqin.

The same pattern of intimidation, flight and death is being repeated in mixed provinces all over Iraq. By now Iraqis do not have to be reminded of the consequences of ignoring threats.

In Baquba, with a population of 350,000, gunmen last week ordered people off a bus, separated the men from the women and shot dead 11 of them. Not far away police found the mutilated body of a kidnapped six-year-old boy for whom a ransom had already been paid.

The sectarian warfare in Baghdad is sparsely reported but the provinces around the capital are now so dangerous for reporters that they seldom, if ever, go there, except as embeds with US troops. Two months ago in Mosul, I met an Iraqi army captain from Diyala who said Sunni and Shia were slaughtering each other in his home province. "Whoever is in a minority runs," he said. "If forces are more equal they fight it out."

It was impossible to travel to Baquba, the capital of Diyala, from Baghdad without extreme danger of being killed on the road. But I thought that if I took the road from Kurdistan leading south, kept close to the Iranian border and stayed in Kurdish-controlled territory I could reach Khanaqin, a town of 75,000 people in eastern Diyala. If what the army captain said about the killings and mass flight was true then there were bound to be refugees who had reached there.

I thought it was too dangerous to go beyond the town into the Arab part of Diyala province, once famous for its fruit, since it is largely under insurgent control. But, as I had hoped, it was possible to talk to Kurds who had sought refuge in Khanaqin over the past month.

Andra bloggar om: etnisk rensning, Irak, Iran, Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, USA, media, Seymour Hersh, politik - Intressant

Technorati: Ethnic Cleansing, Iraq, Iran, Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Media, Seymour Hersh, USA, Politics

War Plan IRAN moves ahead smoothely

The tricks and lies used by the Bush administration to get support for the War on Iraq, the Occupation of Iraq, the Plundering of Iraq has been covered in shocking detail. Even before the attack it was very, very obvious to literate individuals what was going on. Here is a review of "War Plan Iraq," by Milan Rai, published on December 18, 2002. That was three months before the attack, so the book must have been written much earlier.

Video from Robert Greenwald, director of Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (Google copy: move mouse pointer here to watch the full movie)

FOX ATTACKS IRAN

Sign the Open Letter

Tell the networks not to follow FOX down the road to war

Andra bloggar om: video, FOX News, media, böcker, War Plan Iraq, Irak, Iran, kriget mot Iran, film, Iraq for Sale, Robert Greenwald, USA, Bush, politik - Intressant

Technorati: FOX News, Media, Books, Video, USA, Iran, Iraq, War Plan Iraq, War On Iran, Robert Greenwald, Iraq for Sale, Film, Politics

Target Iran: Robertson and Podhoretz on Antisemitism (not a problem)

Swedish Intro: Det kan vid första anblicken verka förbryllande att man idag inte ser och hör så många entydigt antisemitiska attacker från kristokratin. Svaret på detta är enkelt: en ny syndabock skapades den 11/9, 2001 i form av Islam och Islamism. Varför krångla till det med traditionell antisemitism när muslimhatet är så utspritt? Se även Blackwater Army of God and Pat Robertson.

At first sight it might be a bit confusing to not find much overt antisemitism coming from Christocracy advocates today. The reason for this is very, very simple: a much more convenient scapegoat was created on 9.11, 2001: Islam, Islamism and the Archenemy Islamofascism. Why complicate things whit traditional Anti-Semitism when their already is so much hate towards muslims to exploit? See previous entry Blackwater Army of God and Pat Robertson for more on this.

Video clip from the "Left Behind" (first movie), Part 2:

Left Behind, the Movie, Part 1 is here.

You don't have to go very far back in time to find the ex-president candidate Pat Robertson deep into the traditional right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories:

New World Order, 1991:

The New World Order

Robertson's books have been both successful and controversial. The Secret Kingdom, Answers to 100 of Life's Most Probing Questions, and The New World Order were each in their respective year of publication the number one religious book in America.

Robertson's tome The New World Order was described as a 'catch all for conspiracy theories' by Christian academic Don Wilkey:

Pat Robertson’s work, NEW WORLD ORDER, is a catch all for conspiracy theories. It combines the paranoia of the Old Right with modern versions. A summary of Robertson’s book is found on page 177 in which Pat says a conspiracy has existed in the world working through Freemasonry and a secret Order of the Illuminati, a group combining Masons and Jewish Bankers.^[12]

Ephraim Radner also accuses Robertson of espousing anti-semitic beliefs in the same book:

In his published writings, especially his 1991 book The New World Order, Pat Robertson has propagated theories about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Michael Land raised the issue in February in the New York Times Book Review, and in April Jacob Heilbrun, writing in the New York Review of Books, cited chapter and verse of Robertson's borrowings from well-known anti-Semitic works.^[13]

(Swedish: Liknande idéer kan hittas hos svenska kristokater: Flammor.com om hur "En ny världsordning planeras".)

So why don't those Neoconservatives pretending to be Friends of Israel care about Antisemites like Pat Robertson? Or even defend them, like Norman Podhoretz did with Pat Robertson?

Norman Podhoretz, Commentary, 1995: In the Matter of Pat Robertson (archive only)

An Interview with Norman Podhoretz, 2003

Conservative Christians as Friends

"This is why I defend the conservative Christians who have taken such a strong stand in favor of Israel. True, one of their leaders, Pat Robertson, has bought into hoary anti-Semitic fantasies about the alleged conspiracy of Jews and Masons in the eighteenth century, but bad as this is, it seems to me trivial - or academic - as compared with his support of Israel in the living present.

"Many liberal Jews don't want the fundamentalist Christians as friends, which is absurd. Israel needs all the allies it can get. Again, it is true that the support of some Christian fundamentalists derives from a belief that the second coming of their Messiah must be preceded by Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land, followed by a mass conversion of the Jews to Christianity. But as Irving Kristol has quipped, at the end of days we'll find out whether these fundamentalists are right, and in the meantime we can embrace them as the friends and allies they now are.

"In political life one survives by the ability to tell who are one's friends and who are one's enemies. Many American Jews seem amazingly deficient in this elementary ability. In the past, as I indicated earlier, it was the parties of the left that favored civil liberties, civil rights, and emancipation for the Jews, while the parties of the right resisted such measures. But in the last thirty-five years - beginning with the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967 - we have seen more and more evidence of a historic reversal where Israel is concerned. On the left there has been increasing hostility toward Israel, while on the right there has been increasing friendliness.

"Many Jews resolutely refuse to accept this. They are blinded by an atavistic anxiety which takes the form of the belief that these Christians want to convert their children and turn America into a place where Jews would be less than fully at home. This anxiety has no connection with contemporary realities. Another quip of Irving Kristol is that the main danger to Jews from Christians nowadays is not that they wish to persecute or convert the Jews, but that they want to marry their daughters."

So why this odd symbiosis between Christocracy and Neoconservatism (extending far beyond Robertson and Podhoretz? A common enemy, albeit for different reasons:

Norman Podhoretz, Commentary: The Case for Bombing Iran

Robertson: Iran "now has atomic weapons" (video)

From the May 2 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: It's shocking what's happening. And I got home over the weekend and read the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, once again, to see a war that is forecast where a nation identified as Russia and possibly some of the Caucasian states, maybe Turkey, but some of those states in that region, join with Iran, Libya, and the Sudan to move against Israel. A great horde of people to come against Israel, re-gathered from the nations in the latter days.

It's amazing that Iran has come to the fore as it has with a president who says Israel should be wiped off the map, who -- it now has atomic weapons. And a year ago, the Lord told me, as I was praying, that Israel was entering into the most dangerous time in its existence as a nation. He confirmed this again in January, and lo and behold, the events in the -- in the current affairs just keep tumbling, tumbling, tumbling upon us. And I look in disbelief.

Just like is the case with George W. Bush, Pat Robertson can hear the Voice of God. FOX News is always a willing channel for prophesies:

Religious Broadcaster Pat Robertson Predicts Horrific Terrorist Attack on U.S. in 2007

Andra bloggar om: Left Behind, antisemitism, religion, islam, islamism, islamofobi, kristendom, kristokrati, den kristna högern, Pat Robertson, video, film, Iran, Israel, USA, politik - Intressant

Technorati: Left Behind, Antisemitism, Anti-Semitism, Film, Pat Robertson, Books, Podhoretz, USA, Iran, Israel, Christocracy, Film, Religion, Islamophobia, Christo Fascism, Christofascism, Christocracy, Religion, Video, Politics

Cruising and Crusading with Norman

Mer om korståg mot Evil-Doers. "Ship of Fools" nedan är lång, men ger en unik bild av hur den välartikulerade amerikanska högern låter i avspända sammanhang. Islamhat. Islamhat. Islamhat.

From The Sunday Times September 30, 2007

Neocon 'godfather' Norman Podhoretz tells Bush: bomb Iran

Sarah Baxter, Washington

ONE of the founding fathers of neoconservatism has privately urged President George W Bush to bomb Iran rather than allow it to acquire nuclear weapons.

Norman Podhoretz, an intellectual guru of the neoconservative movement who has joined Rudolph Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser, held an unpublicised meeting with Bush late last spring at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.

The encounter reveals the enduring influence of the neoconservatives at the highest reaches of the White House, despite some high-profile casualties in the past year.

Karl Rove, who was still serving in the White House as Bush’s deputy chief of staff, took notes. But the meeting, which lasted 45 minutes, was not logged on the president’s schedule.

Hold mouse pointer over link below to watch Podhoretz talking about how he is the one and only person in the USA supporting the Bush Doctine (endless Crusade):

Norman Podhoretz on His New Book (World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism) - Video

Meet Norman Podhoretz, William Buckley (founder of National Review and Conservative Icon of the past), Bernard Lewis (essential in forming Bush's War on Islamic Countries) and other right wing luminaries aboard on

Ship of fools: Johann Hari sets sail with America's swashbuckling neocons

The Iraq war has been an amazing success, global warming is just a myth – and as for Guantanamo Bay, it's practically a holiday camp... The annual cruise organised by the 'National Review', mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans.

By Johann Hari

Published: 13 July 2007

I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, both chilling and burning, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe."

I am getting used to these moments – when gentle holiday geniality bleeds into... what? I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

I am travelling on a bright white cruise ship with two restaurants, five bars, a casino – and 500 readers of the National Review. Here, the Iraq war has been "an amazing success". Global warming is not happening. The solitary black person claims, "If the Ku Klux Klan supports equal rights, then God bless them." And I have nowhere to run.

From time to time, National Review – the bible of American conservatism – organises a cruise for its readers. I paid $1,200 to join them. The rules I imposed on myself were simple: If any of the conservative cruisers asked who I was, I answered honestly, telling them I was a journalist. Mostly, I just tried to blend in – and find out what American conservatives say when they think the rest of us aren't listening.

II. "We're doing an excellent job killing them."

The Vista Lounge is a Vegas-style showroom, with glistening gold edges and the desperate optimism of an ageing Cha-Cha girl. Today, the scenery has been cleared away – "I always sit at the front in these shows to see if the girls are really pretty and on this ship they are ug-lee," I hear a Reviewer mutter – and our performers are the assorted purveyors of conservative show tunes, from Podhoretz to Steyn. The first of the trip's seminars is a discussion intended to exhume the conservative corpse and discover its cause of death on the black, black night of 7 November, 2006, when the treacherous Democrats took control of the US Congress.

There is something strange about this discussion, and it takes me a few moments to realise exactly what it is. All the tropes that conservatives usually deny in public – that Iraq is another Vietnam, that Bush is fighting a class war on behalf of the rich – are embraced on this shining ship in the middle of the ocean. Yes, they concede, we are fighting another Vietnam; and this time we won't let the weak-kneed liberals lose it. "It's customary to say we lost the Vietnam war, but who's 'we'?" the writer Dinesh D'Souza asks angrily. "The left won by demanding America's humiliation." On this ship, there are no Viet Cong, no three million dead. There is only liberal treachery. Yes, D'Souza says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers."

The panel nods, but it doesn't want to stray from Iraq. Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's one-time nominee to the Supreme Court, mumbles from beneath low-hanging jowls: "The coverage of this war is unbelievable. Even Fox News is unbelievable. You'd think we're the only ones dying. Enemy casualties aren't covered. We're doing an excellent job killing them."

....

A fracture-line in the lumbering certainty of American conservatism is opening right before my eyes. Following the break, Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley – two of the grand old men of the Grand Old Party – begin to feud. Podhoretz will not stop speaking – "I have lots of ex-friends on the left; it looks like I'm going to have some ex-friends on the right, too," he rants –and Buckley says to the chair, " Just take the mike, there's no other way." He says it with a smile, but with heavy eyes.

Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11 American conservatism, and they stare at wholly different Iraqs. Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who travelled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America's power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a bristling grey ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims: "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and " thank God" for that.

Buckley is an urbane old reactionary, drunk on doubts. He founded the National Review in 1955 – when conservatism was viewed in polite society as a mental affliction – and he has always been sceptical of appeals to " the people," preferring the eternal top-down certainties of Catholicism. He united with Podhoretz in mutual hatred of Godless Communism, but, slouching into his eighties, he possesses a world view that is ill-suited for the fight to bring democracy to the Muslim world. He was a ghostly presence on the cruise at first, appearing only briefly to shake a few hands. But now he has emerged, and he is fighting.

"Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?" Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. "No," Podhoretz replies. "As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf War I, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran." He says he is "heartbroken" by this " rise of defeatism on the right." He adds, apropos of nothing, "There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we're winning." The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn't he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley "a coward". His wife nods and says, " Buckley's an old man," tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

I decide to track down Buckley and Podhoretz separately and ask them for interviews. Buckley is sitting forlornly in his cabin, scribbling in a notebook. In 2005, at an event celebrating National Review's 50th birthday, President Bush described today's American conservatives as "Bill's children". I ask him if he feels like a parent whose kids grew up to be serial killers. He smiles slightly, and his blue eyes appear to twinkle. Then he sighs, "The answer is no. Because what animated the conservative core for 40 years was the Soviet menace, plus the rise of dogmatic socialism. That's pretty well gone."

This does not feel like an optimistic defence of his brood, but it's a theme he returns to repeatedly: the great battles of his life are already won. Still, he ruminates over what his old friend Ronald Reagan would have made of Iraq. "I think the prudent Reagan would have figured here, and the prudent Reagan would have shunned a commitment of the kind that we are now engaged in... I think he would have attempted to find some sort of assurance that any exposure by the United States would be exposure to a challenge the dimensions of which we could predict." Lest liberals be too eager to adopt the Gipper as one of their own, Buckley agrees approvingly that Reagan's approach would have been to "find a local strongman" to rule Iraq.

A few floors away, Podhoretz tells me he is losing his voice, "which will make some people very happy". Then he croaks out the standard-issue Wolfowitz line about how, after September 11, the United States had to introduce democracy to the Middle East in order to change the political culture that produced the mass murderers. For somebody who declares democracy to be his goal, he is remarkably blasé about the fact that 80 per cent of Iraqis want US troops to leave their country, according to the latest polls. "I don't much care," he says, batting the question away. He goes on to insist that "nobody was tortured in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo" and that Bush is "a hero". He is, like most people on this cruise, certain the administration will attack Iran.

Podhoretz excitedly talks himself into a beautiful web of words, vindicating his every position. He fumes at Buckley, George Will and the other apostate conservatives who refuse to see sense. He announces victory. And for a moment, here in the Mexican breeze, it is as though a thousand miles away Baghdad is not bleeding. He starts hacking and coughing painfully. I offer to go to the ship infirmary and get him some throat sweets, and – locked in eternal fighter-mode – he looks thrown, as though this is an especially cunning punch. Is this random act of kindness designed to imbalance him? " I'm fine," he says, glancing contemptuously at the Bill Buckley book I am carrying. "I'll keep on shouting through the soreness."

This was a short excerpt. The full article here

Andra bloggar om: Bush, Iran, korståg, Podhoretz, Irak, Neokonservatism, islamofobi, USA, politik - Intressant

Technorati: Bush, Iran, Podhoretz, Iraq, Religion, National Review, USA, Islamophobia, Politics, Religion, Neoconservativism, War

Associated Press: Bush Says Strikes on Iran Begin

Bush, 2001: This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.

Swedish: Crusade = korståg, d.v.s. ett kristet JIHAD

Breaking news!

washingtonpost.com

Bush Says Strikes on Iran Begin

Associated Press Sunday, October 7, 2007; 10:29 PM

U.S. forces launched a strike against "targets of military opportunity" in Iran, President Bush said Sunday night. He described the action as the opening salvo in an operation to "disarm Iran and to free its people."

Bush spoke after the U.S. military struck with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs against a site near Teheran, where Iranian leaders were thought to be, U.S. government officials said. There was no indication whether the attack was successful.

The strikes used Tomahawk cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs dropped from F-117 Nighthawks, the Air Force's stealth fighter-bombers, military officials said.

Bush addressed the nation about two hours after his 8 p.m. EST ultimatum for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give up power.

"Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force," Bush said in his address to the nation. "We will accept no outcome but victory."

He spoke as a U.S-led force of 100,000 troops ringed Iran, ready to launch a ferocious assault to topple the Iranian dictator and capture any weapons of mass destruction.

"On my order, coalition forces have begun targeting selected targets of military importance to undermine Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ability to wage war," the president said. "These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign."

As he has many times in the run-up to war, Bush declared that the United States has "no ambition in Iran except to remove a threat. Our forces will be coming home as soon as their work is done."

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino had announced Bush's plans to speak on short notice.

© 2007 The Associated Press

So what was it worth to watch President Bush on Arabian television?

Bush denies plans to attack Iran

Fri Oct 5, 5:19 PM ET

WASHINGTON - President Bush denied in an interview with Arab television that the U.S. is gearing up to attack Iran and said he remains committed to working diplomatically to resolve the standoff with Tehran over its nuclear program.

The president, in an hour-long interview with Al-Arabiya TV, also reiterated his pledge to negotiate with Iran if it gives up its nuclear program.

"I have said that if they suspend their nuclear program, we will be at the table," Bush said, according to a transcript of the interview the White House released on Friday. "But they have so far refused to do that."

Bush brushed off as "gossip" reports in the Arab press that he has issued orders to senior U.S. military officials to prepare for an attack on Iran at the end of January or in February.

"I would call that empty propaganda," Bush said. "Evidently, there's a lot of gossip in the parts of the country — world that try to scare people about me personally or my country or what we stand for. And that kind of gossip is just what it is. It's gossip. It's baseless gossip."

In the hour-long interview, Bush acknowledged that some people in the Middle East think he is against Islam and is a man or war. The interview was conducted on Thursday in the Oval Office and two other areas of the White House by the Saudi-owned satellite news broadcaster.

"I understand the images of my country have been distorted," Bush said. "And I understand people say things about me personally that simply aren't true. And so I appreciate the chance to come and talk to you directly and to talk to your viewers directly about what's in my heart and about the fact that my country is a country of peace."

From the White House archives, September, 2001:

Remarks by the President Upon Arrival

Our nation was horrified, but it's not going to be terrorized. We're a great nation. We're a nation of resolve. We're a nation that can't be cowed by evil-doers. I've got great faith in the American people. If the American people had seen what I had seen in New York City, you'd have great faith, too. You'd have faith in the hard work of the rescuers; you'd have great faith because of the desire for people to do what's right for America; you'd have great faith because of the compassion and love that our fellow Americans are showing each other in times of need.

I also have faith in our military. And we have got a job to do - just like the farmers and ranchers and business owners and factory workers have a job to do. My administration has a job to do, and we're going to do it. We will rid the world of the evil-doers. We will call together freedom loving people to fight terrorism.

And on on this day of - on the Lord's Day, I say to my fellow Americans, thank you for your prayers, thank you for your compassion, thank you for your love for one another. And tomorrow when you get back to work, work hard like you always have. But we've been warned. We've been warned there are evil people in this world. We've been warned so vividly - and we'll be alert. Your government is alert. The governors and mayors are alert that evil folks still lurk out there.

As I said yesterday, people have declared war on America, and they have made a terrible mistake, because this is a fabulous country. Our economy will come back. We'll still be the best farmers and ranchers in the world. We're still the most innovative entrepreneurs in the world. On this day of faith, I've never had more faith in America than I have right now.

We need to go back to work tomorrow and we will. But we need to be alert to the fact that these evil-doers still exist. We haven't seen this kind of barbarism in a long period of time. No one could have conceivably imagined suicide bombers burrowing into our society and then emerging all in the same day to fly their aircraft - fly U.S. aircraft into buildings full of innocent people - and show no remorse. This is a new kind of -- a new kind of evil. And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I'm going to be patient.

But I can assure the American people I am determined, I'm not going to be distracted, I will keep my focus to make sure that not only are these brought to justice, but anybody who's been associated will be brought to justice. Those who harbor terrorists will be brought to justice. It is time for us to win the first war of the 21st century decisively, so that our children and our grandchildren can live peacefully into the 21st century.

And the Crusade goes on and on. One budding theocracy and its Army of God to attack a theocracy in full bloom. The correct date for the Breaking News item above was of course

washingtonpost.com

Bush Says Strikes on Iraq Begin

Associated Press Wednesday, March 19, 2003; 10:29 PM

And Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Baghdad etc. had been updated to the current situation. Associated Press and Washington Post might as well use the article when Iranian Evil-Doers are bombed.

Andra bloggar om: Bush, Iran, Ahmadinejad, Irak, krig, religion, korståg, fundamentalism, USA, politik - Intressant

Technorati: Bush, Iran, Ahmadinejad, Iraq, Religion, Army of God, USA, Christocracy, Politics, Religion, Theocracy, War,