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Local News & Opinion
01.26 Local Democrats Invited to Brainstorming Session on Sun., Jan. 31 Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Books, Films, Arts & Education
02.04 'The Power of Nightmares': Underwear vs. Reason Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 02.03 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients 01.18 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients Media Watching
02.04 Err-America 02.03 The Right Gets Itself 'Wired' Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
01.25 Thinking About Fictions 01.24 US Democracy's End of the Road 01.22 Editorial: U.S. Supreme Court Nails Down the Coffin of Democracy 01.22 Security Fools US Politics, Policy & Culture
02.09 Growing Hunger in America 02.08 The US Government has Lost its Reason for Being 02.08 Thinking About Oracles 02.06 No Direction Home: Pakistan and the Imperial Principle 02.04 Howard Zinn and the State of the Union 02.04 The US Supreme Court: Vanguard of Friendly American Fascism? 02.04 The New War Against Money 02.04 David Brooks Goes After Greedy Geezers 02.02 Obama's Budget Ducks Pentagon Cuts 02.02 Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite 02.01 Thinking About Definitives 02.01 Remembering Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010) 01.29 American History 101: We Are Devo 01.29 Obama's Outreach to Americans: Empty Rhetoric, Business As Usual 01.28 The Supreme Court's Partisanship 01.27 Freeze Frame: Flopsweat and Farce in the Hollow Halls of Power 01.25 Granny D on Campaign Finance Reform 01.25 S.C. Republican’s Plan: Starve the Poor So They’ll Stop “Breeding” 01.23 It's Time for Kucinich, Conyers, Feingold and Other `Progressives' in Congress to Take a Stand 01.21 Massachusetts' Message of Stupid 01.21 Terrorism Defined: Bill Clinton Lights Our Way to Truth 01.21 How Obama Lost His Way 01.21 Political Earthquake Rocks Massachusetts 01.20 Obama Cuts Deal that Will Reduce Social Security, Medicare and all Entitlements 01.20 Critical Mass: Dem Agenda Opens Right-Wing Doors 01.19 Outsourcing War: The Rise of Private Military Contractors High Crimes?
01.25 The Silence and the Shield: Depraved Indifference to the Atrocities of Power 01.19 Dark as a Dungeon: A Brutal System Stripped Bare Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
02.07 AIG-Gate: The World's Greatest Insurance Heist 02.06 The Free Market Fetish 02.04 The Crisis is Not Over 02.03 States Face Worsening Recession with Health Care Funds on the Chopping Block 02.02 Rule by the Rich 01.29 The Battle of the Titans: JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs 01.27 State of the Union: Obama’s “Automatic IRA” Plan Could Make Bush’s Wildest Dreams Come True 01.26 Obama, Read Your Reagan on Capital Gains Taxation 01.24 Funding Public Health Care with a Publicly-Owned Bank: How Canada Did It 01.18 Thinking About Accelerants International
02.08 Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Injustic 02.07 Annals of Liberation: Obama Surge Driving Thousands From Their Homes 02.05 Human Rights Abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestine 02.03 Child Slavery in Haiti 01.30 Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry" 01.28 Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning 01.27 Haiti's Earthquake: Natural or Engineered 01.26 Helping Haiti’s Elders 01.26 Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs 01.25 Focus on Haiti: Washington's Militarized Takeover 01.22 The Lessons of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions 01.18 Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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CLEVER IMPERIALISM:Senators Kyle and Lieberman and their Stealth War Authorization
Any member of Congress who supports this sleazy, ill-founded amendment should be hounded from office.
Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Sen. Jon Kyle (R-AZ) want the US to attack Iran, but because they know most Americans know that is a crazy idea at a time that the US is already bogged down in a losing war in Iraq, they want to authorize this disastrous expansion of the conflict secretly.That’s why, instead of introducing a war authorizing bill in the Senate, they have introduced a war-authorizing amendment, attached to the latest Defense Authorization Bill currently working its way through Congress.
Their proposed amendment cites the dubious claims made to Congress last week by Gen. David “Peaches” Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker that Iran is promoting the violence in Iraq, and then seeks to authorize “the prudent (sic) calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence and military instruments.” Any member of Congress who supports this sleazy, ill-founded amendment should be hounded from office as the ultimate weasel and coward. It bears mentioning that the leading weasels in this despicable effort to pour more accelerant on the fires of the Middle East, Lieberman and Kyle, are themselves both notorious “chickenhawks”—that is, neither of these gung-ho warmongers ever wore a military uniform, much less faced the horrors of combat. The biggest challenge these two worthies ever faced was first-year law school classes. Putting aside the assininity of bombing and/or invading Iran—an action that would instantly more than double world oil prices, and precipitate a global economic collapse, and that would cause an eruption of violence against already beleaguered US forces in Iraq—even if one thought invading that nation of 70 million and taking on its battle-hardened military was somehow a good idea, it hardly makes sense to do so without the support of the American public. Bush put the US into a war with Iraq in 2003 by way of lies and deception, knowing that the vast public did not support such an invasion. By lying about Saddam Hussein’s links to 9-11 and about Iraq’s having or trying to obtain nuclear weapons, Bush was able to forge an artificial consensus in favor of war, but we’ve watched that support evaporate as the deceit was exposed. This time around, Lieberman and Kyle aren’t even bothering with a propaganda campaign of lies. They’re going straight to the deceit, trying to pass what amounts to a war authorization by tucking it into a larger military spending bill. No general in his or her right mind would want to march into battle with that kind of Congressional “support.” But it’s just the kind of thing you’d expect from a devious slimeball like Lieberman or Kyl. Every American should be contacting their members of Congress to demand that they have no part of this nefarious scheme. The Kyle-Lieberman amendment must be killed. If Congress wants war with Iran, the pro-war faction should have the gonads to write and then formally pass a resolution authorizing, and explaining the justification for authorizing, such a war. When others were volunteering to support their country during the Cold War by signing up with one of the military services back in the early 1960s, Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl, like their patron Vice President Dick Cheney, had “other priorities.” They were busy earning undergraduate and law degrees so they could make the big bucks and then go into politics. Now they are the big war hawks in Congress, ready to authorize an action that will most assuredly lead to the deaths and maimings of tens of thousands more young Americans and hundreds of thousands or even millions of innocent Iranians. I say, if Lieberman and Kyl want war with Iran so badly, they should go to the Persian Gulf and hang out on one of the destroyers that are likely to get hit by one of Iran’s shore-to-ship missiles once hostilities begin. At least they should finally be willing to put their lives on the line with the people they want to place in harm’s way. About the author: Philadelphia journalist Dave Lindorff is co-author, with
Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for ImpeachmentCopyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on September 26, 2007. |
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