From The Nation
By George McGovern

I’m glad to be back at the National Press Club. Indeed, at the age of eighty-four, I’m glad to be anywhere. In my younger years when the subject of aging came up, trying to sound worldly wise, I would say, “It doesn’t matter so much the number of years you have, but what you do with those years.” I don’t say that anymore. I now want to reach a hundred. Why? Because I thoroughly enjoy life and there are so many things I must still do before entering the mystery beyond. The most urgent of these is to get American soldiers out of the Iraqi hellhole Bush-Cheney and their neoconservative theorists have created in what was once called the cradle of civilization. It is believed to be the location of the Garden of Eden. I mention the neoconservative theorists to recall Walter Lippman’s observance, “There is nothing so dangerous as a belligerent professor.”

One of the things I miss about my eighteen years in the US Senate are the stories of the old Southern Democrats. I didn’t always vote with them, but I loved their technique of responding to an opponent’s questions with a humorous story. Once when Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina had to handle a tough question from Mike Mansfield, he said, “You know, Mr. Leader, that question reminds me of the old Baptist preacher who was telling a class of Sunday school boys the creation story. ‘God created Adam and Eve and from this union came two sons, Cain and Abel and thus the human race developed.’ A boy in the class then asked, ‘Reverend, where did Cain and Abel get their wives?’ After frowning for a moment, the preacher replied, ‘Young man–it’s impertinent questions like that that’s hurtin’ religion.’”

Well, Mr. Bush, Jr. I have some impertinent questions for you.

Read more Questions

From The Toronto Star
Disenchantment and growing irritation with the U.S. South could lead northern American states to seek a union with Canadian provinces

By Stéphane Kelly

In 1891, the intellectual Goldwin Smith caused a furor when he published Canada and the Canadian Question. He suggested that if Canadians believed in the democratic ideal, they must accept the inevitable: Annexation of Canada by the American republic.

The writer noted that the divide created by the English Civil War, which pitted Puritans against Cavaliers, had replicated itself in North America. Canadians embraced the aristocratic ideal of the Cavaliers while Americans held dear the democratic ideal of the Puritans.

Who would have thought that roles would have reversed themselves a century later? That the United States would be seen as a society with an affinity for aristocratic values while Canada would be perceived as an alternative model, because of its attachment to democratic values?

This reversal could change the political landscape of North America.

American society’s slide toward the aristocratic ideal risks exacerbating the anger of the northern states, and possibly convincing them to leave the union.

In this context, among the political possibilities that face Canadians in 2020, it would not be far-fetched to include political integration with New England.

But before looking at how events and trends could make this possible, let’s try to understand why the South and the North have become like two different nations.

Read More Northern America

From The Seattle Times
By Jere L. Bacharach

The perspective from Cairo on the Bush-Cheney plans for Iraq is that they have no relation with the reality of the Middle East. The overwhelming consensus is that they are doomed from the start.

Assuming that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the head of a coalition government, is going to be able to deliver on verbal promises to take military action against the same factions that keep him in power is naïve, at best. Al-Maliki’s goal is to stay in office and he will not seriously attack his base of power.

For Middle Easterners, al-Maliki’s position parallels that of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who also runs a coalition government. Olmert may promise Washington that there will be no Israeli expansion of the settlements on the West Bank, but in order to retain power, Olmert has no intention of alienating key partners in his coalition by implementing those promises.

Another explosive idea circulating in the region is that the U.S. wants to move Kurdish troops from Northern Iraq to Baghdad to help stabilize the situation in the city. Both Sunni and Shiite Arabs in Baghdad will see the premise of Kurdish forces as a vehicle for Kurds to seek revenge for Saddam Hussein’s policies against Kurds. Rather than being welcomed, the Kurds will quickly become a target for attacks by both Sunni and Shiite Arabs and a very bad situation will be worse.

A bolder U.S. plan would be to begin serious planning for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, including the abandonment of all our military bases in Iraq. As long as we attempt to keep a military presence in Iraq, it will be used by all parties opposed to U.S. policies in the region as a symbol of our continuing occupation of Iraq.

Read more Reality

From The Guardian UK
By Mikhail Gorbachev

A watershed in international relations has occurred in recent months. Indeed, the past year may well have seen the end of an entire era in world affairs – the post-cold war period of unilateralism and missed opportunities.

When the cold war ended, avenues opened up for progress toward a better world. Major powers, particularly the United States, the Soviet Union and China, were working constructively together in the United Nations security council. International conflicts, including those in Angola, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cambodia, were brought to an end. Nuclear and conventional arms control agreements were concluded, and democratic changes were under way in dozens of countries in Asia, Latin America and central and eastern Europe.

The Charter of Paris for a New Europe, signed in 1990, marked the beginning of a process that was expected to lead to a new, peaceful and democratic world order. But the movement in that direction soon stalled. The break-up of the Soviet Union was followed by changes in the political elites of the United States and other countries. The Charter of Paris was forgotten. Instead of moving towards a new security architecture, it was decided to rely on the tools inherited from the cold war. The United States – and the west as a whole – succumbed to the “winner’s complex”.

Europe was shaken by the tragedies in the Balkans. Waves of instability swept through the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Africa as the struggles for spheres of influence, resources and markets gathered momentum.

Read more Cold War

From Washington Post
By David S. Broder

The third or fourth time I heard Vice President Cheney tell Fox News’s Chris Wallace on Sunday that al-Qaeda was gambling that the United States “doesn’t have the stomach” to keep up the fight in Iraq, it crossed my mind that Cheney may be staring at the wrong part of the national anatomy.

The question, really, is not whether we have the stomach for the fight but the brains to figure out what to do in Iraq.

The vice president’s effort to reduce it to a question of courage — to suggest that those who want to expand the war are braver than those urging steps to limit it — is a standard rhetorical trick. Whenever any Bush policy is questioned, someone from the administration almost automatically charges that its critics are soft on terrorism.

Iraq requires thought, not just gut instinct, because we are struggling with a situation we’ve never faced before. What does America really know about how to deal with a Shiite-Sunni civil war in a land devastated by years of dictatorship, damaged by invasion, infiltrated by terrorists and surrounded by countries with their own territorial ambitions? Not much, which is why it behooves us to move with caution.

Read More Wrong Approach

From The BBC News

Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC’s Newsnight programme.

Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

But Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office rejected the plan, the official said.

The offers came in a letter, seen by Newsnight, which was unsigned but which the US state department apparently believed to have been approved by the highest authorities.

In return for its concessions, Tehran asked Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband the Iranian rebel group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and repatriate its members.

Read more Snubbing

From AlterNet
By Sarah Posner

Is Bush pushing for a second war or a Second Coming?

Christian Zionists are dancing the hora in San Antonio. Armageddon appears to be at hand.

As George W. Bush sets his sights on Iran, even Republicans are wondering how to constitutionally contain the trigger-happy king. But for an influential group of Christian fundamentalists — White House allies that garner not only feel-good meetings with the President’s liaisons to the “faith-based” community but also serious discussions with Bush’s national security staff — an attack on Iran is just what God ordered.

Biblical literalists, convened together through San Antonio megapastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI), are now seeing the fruits of their yearlong campaign to convince the Bush administration to attack Iran.

Hagee came to Washington last summer on the warpath, and many Republicans — and even a few Democrats — welcomed him as an alleged supporter of Israel. More than 3,500 CUFI members fanned out across the Capitol to meet with their congressional delegations. Televangelist power brokers, like rising star Rod Parsley of Ohio, who serve as directors of CUFI, now proudly display photographs of their meetings with senators, brows furrowed over the seriousness of the task at hand. But probably Hagee’s most important meeting was smaller and not public, at the White House with deputy national security adviser and Iran Contra player Elliott Abrams.

Read more Apocalypse

From Information Clearing House
By Michel Chossudovsky

At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable, a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread, in terms of radioactive fallout, over a large part of the Middle East.

All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort” have been scrapped. “Offensive” military actions using nuclear warheads are now described as acts of “self-defence”.

The distinction between tactical nuclear weapons and the conventional battlefield arsenal has been blurred. America’s new nuclear doctrine is based on “a mix of strike capabilities”. The latter, which specifically applies to the Pentagon’s planned aerial bombing of Iran, envisages the use of nukes in combination with conventional weapons.

As in the case of the first atomic bomb, which in the words of President Harry Truman “was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base”, today’s “mini-nukes” are heralded as “safe for the surrounding civilian population”.

Known in official Washington, as “Joint Publication 3-12″, the new nuclear doctrine (Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations , (DJNO) (March 2005)) calls for “integrating conventional and nuclear attacks” under a unified and “integrated” Command and Control (C2).

It largely describes war planning as a management decision-making process, where military and strategic objectives are to be achieved, through a mix of instruments, with little concern for the resulting loss of human life.

Read more Nuclear War

From Yahoo News
By Dan Murphy

To the outsider, the differences between the Sunni and Shiite Islamic sects are hard to recognize.

The five pillars of Islam – daily prayer; fasting during Ramadan; alms giving; the pilgrimage to Mecca; and belief in one, unitary god – are at the core of both faiths, and most mainstream clerics in each denomination recognize adherents of the other side as “legitimate” Muslims.

The Koran is the sacred text for both. They believe Muhammad was the prophet and that there will be a resurrection followed by a final judgment when the world ends.

Adding to the potential confusion is the insistence of many Muslims not to be identified as Shiite or Sunni, saying they are Muslims and Muslims only.

But, as recent events in Iraq and Lebanon have shown, the differences between the believers are not only seen as important by the communities but now, as they have for centuries, rest at the core of bloody political struggles.

While there are superficial differences between the sects – differences in prayer and carrying out ritual ablutions, for instance – the arena of conflict between the two has long been political.

Read More Split

From The LA Times
By Louise Roug

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki promised Wednesday to crack down on Shiite Muslim militias and Sunni Arab insurgents, warning that no one — not even political ally Muqtada Sadr — would be above the law.

“We will not allow any politicians to interfere with this Baghdad security plan — whether they are Sunnis or Shiites, Arabs or Kurds, militias or parties, insurgents or terrorists,” Maliki said in a rare interview.

The prime minister’s comments appeared to align his government’s security plan with the Bush administration’s call to confront Shiite militias. But in other remarks, Maliki underscored his differences with the U.S., suggesting that American miscalculations had worsened the bloodshed in Iraq, and warning that his patience for political negotiation with warring factions was wearing thin.

“When military operations start in Baghdad, all other tracks will stop,” Maliki said. “We gave the political side a great chance, and we have now to use the authority of the state to impose the law and tackle or confront people who break it.”

U.S. officials have said that renewed military operations should go hand in hand with efforts at political reconciliation between warring Shiites and Sunnis.

Read more Pledge