"American-made Harpoon missiles, armed with nuclear warheads, are now aimed by Israel’s fleet of Dolphin-class submarines against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Following September’s exclusive report in American Free Press about Israel’s submarine nuclear attack capability, over 100 Harpoon cruise missiles have been secretly airlifted to the remote island of Diego Garcia, a joint UK-U.S. base in the Indian Ocean.

The three Israeli submarines that arrived at the base early this month were each loaded with 24 Harpoon missiles.

They then set sail for the Gulf of Oman—bringing Iran’s nuclear facilities all within range of the submarines’ payloads.

The decision to launch them is entirely in the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Just as Sharon gave Washington only a short warning before he gave the order to attack an alleged terrorist camp deep inside Syria, he has made it clear to Washington that the same rule of engagement will apply if it comes to launching the Harpoons."

"What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline", Kwiatkowski wrote. "If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam (Hussein) occupation (in Iraq) has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defence" (OSD)...

"Groupthink. Defined as 'reasoning or decision-making by a group, often characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view', groupthink was, and probably remains, the predominant characteristic of Pentagon Middle East policy development. The result of groupthink is the elevation of opinion into a kind of accepted 'fact', and uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated points of view.

The result of groupthink has been extensively studied in the history of American foreign policy, and it will have a prominent role when the history of the Bush administration is written. Groupthink, in this most recent case leading to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, will be found, I believe, to have caused a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress."

4. Why did you allow a private Saudi jet to fly around the US in the days after September 11 and pick up members of the Bin Laden family and fly them out of the country without a proper investigation by the FBI?

Private jets, under the supervision of the Saudi government - and with your approval - were allowed to fly around the skies of America, when travelling by air was forbidden, and pick up 24 members of the Bin Laden family and take them first to a "secret assembly point in Texas". They then flew to Washington DC, and then on to Boston. Finally, on September 18, they were all flown to Paris, out of the reach of any US officials. They never went through any serious interrogation. This is mind-boggling. Might it have been possible that at least one of the 24 Bin Ladens would have possibly known something?

While thousands were stranded and could not fly, if you could prove you were a close relative of the biggest mass murderer in US history, you got a free trip to gay Paree!

Why, Mr Bush, was this allowed to happen?

One or more misconceptions:
FOX – 80%
CBS - 71%
ABC - 61%
NBC - 55%
CNN – 55%
Print Sources – 47%
NPR/PBS – 23%

None of the three misconceptions:
NPR/PBS – 77%
Print Sources – 53%
CNN – 45%
NBC – 45%
ABC – 39%
CBS – 30%
FOX – 20%

"Whatever its immediate apparent outcome, the war on Iraq represents a catastrophic breakdown of the British and American imagination. Weve utterly failed to comprehend the character of the people whose lands we have invaded, and for that were likely to find ourselves paying a price beside which the body-count on both sides in the Iraqi conflict will seem trifling. Passionate ideologues are incurious by nature and have no time for obstructive details. Its impossible to think of Paul Wolfowitz curling up for the evening with Edward Saids Orientalism, or the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, or Seven Pillars of Wisdom, or the letters of Gertrude Bell, or the recently published, knotty, often opaque, but useful book by Lawrence Rosen, The Culture of Islam, based on Rosens anthropological fieldwork in Morocco, or Sayyid Qutbs Milestones. Yet these, and a dozen other titles, should have been required reading for anyone setting out on such an ambitious liberal-imperial project to inflict freedom and democracy by force on the Arab world. The single most important thing that Wolfowitz might have learned is that in Arabia, words like "self", "community,""brotherhood" and "nation" do not mean what he believes them to mean. When the deputy secretary of defence thinks of his own self, he - like me, and, probably, like you - envisages an interiorised, secret entity whose true workings are hidden from public view. Masks, roles, personae (like being deputy secretary for defence) mediate between this inner self and the other people with whom it comes into contact. The post-Enlightenment, post-Romantic self, with its autonomous subjective world, is a western construct, and quite different from the self as it is conceived in Islam. Muslims put an overwhelming stress on the idea of the individual as a social being. The self exists as the sum of its interactions with others. Rosen puts it like this: "The configuration of ones bonds of obligation define who a person is . . . the self is not an artefact of interior construction but an unavoidably public act...."

- National concentration: A national television network may now acquire dozens of local broadcaster stations and control up to 90 percent of the national television market;

- Local concentration: A single corporation may now acquire, in one city, up to three television stations, eight radio stations, the cable TV system, numerous cable TV stations, and the only daily newspaper.

"American imperial adventures are usually rehearsed at Bilderberg meetings. Europe's elite were opposed to an American invasion of Iraq since the 2002 Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. Rumsfeld himself had promised them it wouldn't happen. Last week, everybody struck back at Rumsfeld, asking about the infamous "weapons of mass destruction". Most of Europe's elite do not believe American promises that Iraq's oil will "benefit the Iraqi people". They know that revenues from Iraqi oil will be used to rebuild what America has bombed. And the debate is still raging on what kind of contracts which rewarded Bechtel and Halliburton will "benefit" Western Europe.

Europe's elite, according to those close to Bilderberg, are suspicious that the US does not need or even want a stable, legitimate central government in Iraq. When that happens, there will be no reason for the US to remain in the country. Europe's elite see the US establishing "facts on the ground": establishing a long-term military presence and getting the oil flowing again under American control. This could go on for years, as long as the Americans can guarantee enough essential services to prevent the Iraqi people from engaging in a war of national liberation."

"You have no right to hold us," Asher insisted.

"Yes, we have every right," responded one of the agents. "You are being held under the Patriot Act following suspicion under an internal Homeland Security investigation."

[...]As I continued to press for legal counsel, a female officer who had been busy typing on her laptop in the front of the restaurant, walked over and put her finger in my face. "We are at war, we are at war and this is for your safety," she exclaimed. As she walked away from the table, she continued to repeat it to herself? "We are at war, we are at war. How can they not understand this."

"Are the people who are caught up in a mass delusion ever aware that they are living in a malignant fantasyland? Did the puritans of the Salem colony suspect that they were not hanging real "witches," but instead were collectively engaged in a monstrous injustice? Did the "good Germans" in the 1930s ever doubt that Adolf Hitler was anything less than what the captive press said he was: the "savior of the nation and the protector of the Aryan race?" Did the "good patriots" of the 1950s ever ask for proof that Senator Joe McCarthy really had a list in his hand of "known communists in the State Department?" (The number changed with each speech). How long did we persist in believing the telegenic generals' reassurances that "we've turned the corner in Viet Nam," and that "there was a light at the end of the tunnel?"

How many Americans today are aware, or if aware, care, that the Bush regime's justifications for the Iraq war were based upon lies, forgeries, and plagiarisms, and that the images of the "coalition's" "triumphs" (e.g., the toppling of the Saddam statue and the "rescue" of Private Lynch) were staged.

When society has gone mad, does the "conventional belief" somehow "feel different" to those within the society? The question virtually answers itself and history confirms that when reason departs and collective insanity takes over, it all seems "perfectly sensible" from the inside. True, in all such cases, a few discerning individuals stand apart, like the child who saw no clothes on the Emperor. But such individuals are quickly marginalized as they are denounced as "traitors," shouted into silence, exiled if they are lucky, and liquidated if they are not. After the madness has passed, statues are cast and monuments built in their name—names familiar to us all: Dietrich Bonheoffer, Klaus von Stauffenberg, Hans and Sophie Scholl ("The White Rose"), Andrei Sakharov, Joseph Welch, Edward R. Murrow, George Ball, Daniel Ellsberg, John Dean.

These heroes see what almost anyone might see—anyone who prizes his and her liberty and independence, whose wits are operational, and whose moral principles are intact. Add to this, the courage to speak out against the madness and to defend the betrayed moral principles, whatever the cost, and you have a hero."

Washington- Environmental activists and community groups from more than twenty cities around the nation held demonstrations, marches, sit-ins and rallies to protest the Bush administration's attempts to weaken environmental laws protecting public land, including endangered forests. These Earth Day protests come just one week before the U.S. House will consider legislation containing parts of President Bush's controversial, "Healthy Forest Initiative." The cities included Atlanta, New York, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.

"The Bush administration assumes Americans are too distracted by global politics to care about our national forests here at home," said Andrew George, Campaign Coordinator for the National Forest Protection Alliance, a coalition of 130 forest protection groups, including Greenpeace. "This national day of protest serves to demonstrate how much the public cares about national forests and signals the beginning of an escalating campaign to expose, confront and prevent attempts to undermine our environmental laws and the forests those laws safeguard."

In 2001, the Bush administration handpicked former logging lobbyist Mark Rey to serve as the Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment, and oversee the management of 192 million acres of national forest lands. A industry lobbyist for 18 years, Rey has since initiated a series of unprecedented rollbacks to the nation's environmental laws that protect clean water and wildlife habitat and guarantee public oversight and participation.

The director general said he was confused by the lack of any formal notices, and had a only a vague idea of the committee, backed by the Iraqi National Congress, the formerly exiled opposition group. "I don't honestly know who they are, who chose them, how they are being motivated. I know I am in contact with no one and no one is in contact with me." However, he lamented the whole US approach to dealing with post-war Iraq. "We have a lot of experience with coups d'etat and this one is the worst," he said. "Any colonel in the Iraqi army will tell you that when he does a coup he goes to the broadcasting station with five announcements. "The first one is long live this, down with that. The second one is your new government is this and that. The third is the list of the people to go on retirement. The fourth one, every other official is to report back to work tomorrow morning. The fifth is the curfew." This is usually done within one hour, he added. "Now we are waiting more than a week and still we hear nothing from them."

Can the United States provide the necessary cash, even in the form of private-sector money? The answer is yes — so long as foreign countries are willing to lend it to the United States. For the fact is that America is not only the world's biggest economy. It is also the world's biggest borrower. Its muscular military power is underwritten by foreign capital.

This is an unusual circumstance. In the prime of the European empires, when the British ran much of the Middle East, the dominant power was supposed to be a creditor, not a debtor, investing large chunks of its own savings in the economic development of its colonies. Hegemony also meant hegemoney. Britain, the world's banker before 1914, never had to worry about a run on the pound during its imperial heyday.

But today, as America overthrows "rogue regimes," first in Afghanistan and now in Iraq, it is the world's biggest debtor. This could make for a fragile Pax Americana if foreign investors decide to reduce their stakes in the American economy, possibly trading their dollars for the increasingly vigorous euro.

"Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours."

"The Bush Administration's media manipulation skills never ceases to amaze me. As the war in Iraq skewers away from the chickenhawks dream plans its starting to become clearer just how the Karl Rove media technique works. Its all pretty simple really, it can be broken down into 3 steps:

1. Keep the message simple
2. Keep the details secret
3. Never admit you are wrong

Follow those steps and you look like you are doing a good job in the mass media. Up close or under close scrutiny all the lying and bullshitting the administration engages in is pretty evident. But when broadcast over mass media it looks like the administration is right on track.

Never admitting you are wrong is the most important step. Once you admit you are wrong your words become circumspect when broadcast. Bush always maintains that things are going well, and because he never entertains the possibility of being wrong, he projects and image of being right and believable. Not everyone buys it off course, but in the mass media and winner takes all democracy all you need is a healthy percentage of the population to buy it.

Clinton used this technique as well, but not quite as deftly as Bush. Clinton's problem was the details, he was too willing to dig into them. Once the details are out its harder to maintain the image of always being right. And Clinton missed the secrecy as well, Bush keeps as much info secret as possible so there are less details to complicate the projection of being right.

Perhaps the greatest tactical failing of the Bush administration is the way they've let the success of these media techniques infect their attempts at diplomacy. These techniques work when broadcast in the media, as I said before they fail completely when used up close and in person. They just don't work in diplomacy, hence the outrageous failings of the Bush administration in the UN, Turkey and elsewhere."