Out of the Blue
If the United States ever attacks Iran it will be out of the blue, that is the blue sky and the blue water. That is what Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week at a Pentagon news conference. Mullen said plans for “potential military courses of action” are being made, citing Iran’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq and alluding to its nuclear program. Navy and Air Force capabilities, he declared, are available. However, Mullen made clear that he has “no expectations that we’re going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future.” This saber rattling may be to warn Iran to give up its uranium enrichment, but it does hold out the possibility of another war, a war that will begin with a surprise attack. Iran will not be given time to prepare countermeasures. April 30, 2008
Show Trials
After five years, the Pentagon will soon begin trials of Guantanamo detainees. According to the Defense Department’s former chief prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, he was pressured by his superiors to hurry the cases along to give the Bush administration “strategic political value” by seizing the imagination of the American public before the fall elections. Acquittals will not happen, Davis was told, because you can’t hold people for five years and then acquit them. In effect, there will be show trials. The Pentagon disputes Davis’ views, indicating perhaps that down the line a lesser detainee may actually be acquitted. All part of the pre-arranged show? April 30, 2008
Ten Foreign Policy Rules for the Next President
April 29, 2008
Nicholas Berry
So much has gone wrong in George W. Bush’s foreign policy that major corrections are necessary. Granted, the post Cold War era has been so very new and different. At the risk of torturing the language, it has been and is highly unique. Figuring out how to advance American national interest has not been easy – and major thinkers have been absent. ...more
The Pentagon's Puppets
April 30, 2008
Center for American Progress
The Bush administration covertly tried to influence public opinion in its favor throughout the Iraq war, planting stories in Iraqi newspapers and disseminating misleading polls. Last week, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon has been using more than 75 "military analysts" as "puppets," revealing one of the most extensive attempts at domestic propaganda in this war....more
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