| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:34 pm Post subject: Commentary: Bridges too far |
| General (Ret) James David is mentioned on the cover of former Republican Congressman Paul Findley's 'They Dare to Speak Out' (the third edition) about the power/influence of the pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC and similar) in the USA:
General James David wrote:
"The bill for urgent work on the nation's bridges is estimated at $80 billion."
We have bridges in our country falling in the rivers because we don't have the money to repair them, but just this week the Bush administration announced that it will sign a ten-year agreement for $30 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel . The deal is reported to include a new generation of F-35 fighter jets, advanced bombs, and laser-guided missiles. It was just last summer that the Israelis bombed and destroyed more than a dozen bridges in Lebanon and completely wiped out a major electricity power plant in Gaza. Where in the world are our priorities? Wake up America before it's too late.
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Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 16:28:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Subject: Commentary: Bridges too far
To: caffertyfile@cnn.com
What about the 1.4 trillion that support for Israel has cost US taxpayers (see the Paul Findley article which is referenced below the latest piece by Arnaud de Borchgrave for UPI) to include the additional 30 billion that the Bush regime wants to send to Tel-Aviv:
Subject: Commentary: Bridges too far
Date: Thursday, August 2, 2007
Commentary: Bridges too far
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- The collapse of an eight-lane interstate bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis that was under repair reminds us that 30 percent of America's almost 500,000 bridges are categorized as "deficient" and in "urgent need of repair." The Iraq and Afghan wars have cost more than half a trillion dollars so far. The two conflicts are running at the rate of $12 billion a month, or $400 million a day. The bill for urgent work on the nation's bridges is estimated at $80 billion.
The general need for repairs of the nation's bridges has been reported scores of times by all media. Congress and states seldom agree about their respective funding responsibilities. Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war shrunk funding for bridge repairs.
In 11 Northeastern states, 50 percent of bridges not only need urgent repairs but are not designed to handle current traffic levels. The situation is more acute in these states because of winter-weather corrosion. Many of the bridges are 50 years or older.
In New York , the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883. The George Washington Bridge is one of a network of spans that link New York 's five boroughs as well as the Big Apple and New Jersey . It was opened in 1931 and now carries 300,000 vehicles a day. The New York State Department of Transportation anticipated spending $1 billion a year through 2010 on its bridges. Minor fixes for the 51-year-old Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson north of the GW are running at $500 million. A new bridge with a commuter rail line would set back state and federal budgets $13 billion.
There is a constant race between the cost of building materials and the steady increase in traffic, especially trucks. NYSDOT projects the number of miles traveled in this one state alone at 180 billion in the next two decades, up from 137.5 billion today.
The Federal Highway Administration's Strategic Plan stated in 1998 that it planned to decrease the percentage of deficient bridges to 25 percent by 2008. This, too, was a bridge too far. Research labs in the United States and abroad have developed a new generation of construction materials -- glass, plastic and carbon -- for bridges that will resist corrosion. But they are costly. China , which went from bicycles to automobiles and trucks in less than a generation, has been building new bridges with polymer composites.
Despite major renovations of U.S. infrastructure, an estimated $1.6 trillion is still needed over five years to bring it to "safe standards." Bridges, roads, railroads and waterways all have been short-changed by the war on terror. Even before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks a "Report Card for America 's Infrastructure" graded 12 infrastructure categories at a D-plus.
"The nation is failing to even maintain the substandard conditions we currently have," said the report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers, "a dangerous trend that is affecting highway safety, as well as the health of the economy."
The Federal Highway Administration added in its own report card after the invasion of Iraq , "Traffic congestion costs the economy $67.5 billion annually in lost productivity and wasted fuel. ... The average rush hour grew more than 18 minutes" in three years ending in 2000. It has added another seven minutes since then.
At the very least, bridge deficiencies, or fixes alone, should be funded at the rate of $12 billion a year.
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Copyright 2007 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
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THE HIGH COST OF SUBSERVIENCE TO ISRAEL (by Paul Findley)
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/06/15/the_high_cost_of_subservience_to_israel?blog=7&posts=25&c=1&page=1&more=1&title=the_high_cost_of_subservience_to_israel&tb=1&pb=1&disp=single
http://tinyurl.com/396x44
by Paul Findley
In the greatest service of his long public life, former President Jimmy Carter warns of the grave consequences of America ’s phenomenal subservience to Israel . In his latest book and recent lectures, he focuses on how Israel ’s cruel occupation, made possible by massive and unconditional U.S. support, has subjected the Palestinian people to terrible suffering for forty long years. Beyond that grave human tragedy, candid observers must cite U.S. complicity in Israeli lawlessness as the major factor that prompted the horror of 9/11 and lured America into launching three costly, wrong-headed, and failing wars—Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror
The linkage is easily identified.
America ’s support of Israel ’s brutality was the main motivation for 9/11. It was the ultimate expression of Arab fury over America ’s double standard that routinely ignores Israeli violations of Arab human rights. Nine-eleven would not have happened if any U.S. president in the last forty years had refused to finance Israel ’s humiliation and destruction of Palestine . Michael Scheuer, a former CIA analyst now a consultant to CBS News, recently told a congressional committee that “our unqualified support of Israel ” was the main reason for 9/11. Marine General Anthony Zinni, President George W. Bush’s first special envoy to the Middle East , has stated that the United States invaded Iraq for Israel and oil. Osama bin Laden repeatedly said it was payback for U.S. support of Israel ’s brutal treatment of Palestinians and other Arabs and for U.S. complicity in 1982 when Israeli forces used U.S.-donated munitions to massacre over 18,000 innocent Arabs in Lebanon .
The U.S. acts of war in Afghanistan and the War on Terror were President Bush’s retaliation for 9/11. Israel —and only Israel —urged the United States to invade Iraq . Israel ’s lobby in Washington pushed hard and prevailed. To our foreign critics, these wars focus on killing people outraged by our pro-Israel bias. Our government has done nothing to redress the grievances of Israel ’s victims.
Despite this grim record, U.S. subservience to the wishes of Israel ’s leaders does not change. Unconditional aid to Israel keeps flowing, as does Israel ’s savage treatment of Palestinians and other Arabs. Moreover, the Bush administration is fully and openly pledged to do whatever is necessary—even acts of war--to halt Iran ’s nuclear program even if its projects are lawfully limited to peaceful purposes. Israel is the only nation urging the United States to attack Iran . The lobby is pushing hard again. If the U.S. assaults Iran it will be on Israel ’s behalf.
Congress, like the rest of America , is totally devoid of debate on the amazing role of this small nation in critical U.S. policy. Members are fulsome in public praise of the Jewish state, but no politician mentions the illegal behavior of Israel or the staggering burden it imposes on our country.
How did Israel gain this influence?
It all started 40 years ago. On June 8, 1967 , the U.S. commander-in-chief, President Lyndon B. Johnson, turned his back on the crew of a U.S. navy ship, the USS Liberty, despite the fact that the ship was under deadly assault by Israel ’s air and sea forces. The Israelis were engaged in an ugly scheme to lure America into their war against Arab states. They tried to destroy the Liberty and its entire crew, then pin the blame on the Arabs. This, they reasoned, would outrage the American people and immediately lead the United States to join Israel ’s battle against Arabs.
The scheme almost worked. It failed because, despite the carefully-planned multi-pronged assault, the Liberty crew managed to broadcast an SOS over a makeshift antenna. When the appeal reached U.S. aircraft carriers nearby, the commanders immediately launched fighter planes to defend the ship. Informed of the launch, President Johnson ordered the rescue planes to turn back immediately.
For the first time in history, forces of the U.S. Navy were denied the right to defend a Navy ship under attack. Johnson said, “I don’t care if the ship sinks, I am not going to embarrass an ally.” Those were his exact words, heard by Navy personnel listening to radio relays. The ally Johnson refused to embarrass was Israel . To him, saving Israel from embarrassment was more important than saving the lives of the Liberty crew.
The day yielded infamy—deceit, lies and cover-up at the highest level. When the SOS reached the top military commanders in Israel , they immediately cancelled ousHous the assault, claiming it was a case of mistaken identity. ousHous At the White House, Johnson accepted Israel ’s claim, even though he knew it was a lie. Then Johnson magnified the day’s infamy by ordering a cover-up of the truth. Liberty survivors were sworn to secrecy. Even those in hospital beds and badly wounded were threatened with court martial if they told anyone what actually happened. The cover-up has been continued by every administration since Johnson’s.
It proved to be a fateful turning point in Israel ’s power over U.S. foreign policy. The Liberty experience convinced Israeli officials that they could get by with literally anything—even the murder of U.S. sailors--in their manipulation of the U.S. government. Financial aid to Israel began to pour like a river, all of it with no stings attached. According to The Christian Science Monitor, this outpouring has now cost U.S. taxpayers over $1.4 trillion. Costs go far beyond money. Thousands of American families are blighted forever, with America ’s once high moral standing in shambles. Because of its unqualified support of Israel , Washington is hated worldwide as never before.
The principal source of Israel ’s influence is the fear it seems to instill in every sector of our society. The most effective instrument of intimidation employed by its lobby is the reckless accusation of anti-Semitism, often leveled at anyone criticizing any aspect of Israeli behavior. Several organizations, fundamentalist Christian as well as Jewish, lobby for Israel , but the principal one is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]. I can personally certify that for many years it has cast a blanket of fear over Capitol Hill and blocked any semblance of unfettered discussion.
I unintentionally contributed to that fear in 1985 when my book, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s lobby, was published. It reports in detail the efficiency of Israel ’s U.S. lobby, its history and tactics. Most of the text arose from my personal experience as AIPAC’s prime target during my last five years as a Member of Congress. It also details the lobby’s important role in the defeat of Senators Percy and Adlai Stevenson, and U.S. Rep. Paul “Pete” McCloskey. In a rare burst of public candor about its partisan activities, AIPAC claimed credit for defeating reelection bids by myself in 1982 and Senator Charles Percy in 1984.
My book became a bestseller. I hoped it would inspire public officials and other citizens to revolt against the lobby’s influence on U.S. policy, but several of my former colleagues told me it had the opposite effect. One said, “After what AIPAC did to you and Percy, I vote with the lobby every time.”
Israel ’s grip on America seems impervious. Two distinguished political scientists, John Mearshiemer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, strode resolutely into the Middle East minefield a year ago by co-authoring a paper on Israel ’s lobby. More recently, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, a book written by former President Carter, revered worldwide for his effective work on international conflict resolution, was published.
These brave statements should have produced a groundswell of public protest demanding America ’s liberation from Israel . Although the professors and Carter have pursued the lecture circuit, no tide of outrage has developed. With few exceptions, America ’s major editors, producers, commentators, academics and politicians have given these courageous initiatives the silent treatment. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill simply said, “Carter doest not speak for the Democratic Party.”
Nationwide, the lobby’s influence is pervasive, sustained and deep, a phenomenon unprecedented in U.S. history. Because of that power, the “other” Israel is almost never discussed openly and candidly any place in America , even in private conversation. It is impossible to explain the silence except as a reflection of profound fear.
The situation is highly dangerous. America has already paid a towering price for our subservience to Israel , and great additional burdens seem inevitable. If the United States is involved in acts of war against Iran , anti-American protest will rise to new heights, especially throughout the Islamic world. It will inevitably deepen the widely-held belief among Muslims that America seeks to undermine Islam.
The outlook for reform is grim. Elected officials of both major political parties in Washington seem hopelessly captured by Israel ’s agents. So does every serious candidate for the presidency in 2008. A senior U.S. Senator told me recently that Israel cannot expect to experience true security until Palestinians are secure in an independent state of their own, but he spoke off the record and has not made that wise declaration in public.
All U.S. citizens must accept a measure of responsibility for Israel ’s grip on America . Those of us who knew what was happening did not protest with sufficient force and clarity. Those who did not know should have taken their responsibility as citizens more seriously. They should have informed themselves.
The scene is likely to improve only if U.S. elected officials are criticized so forthrightly from home that they fear a constituent revolt more than they fear Israel ’s lobby. This, of course, will not happen until the countryside benefits from a rigorous and edifying public debate about Israel ’s role in our national life.
Paul Findley, a U.S. Representative from Illinois 1961-83, resides in Jacksonville, Illinois. He is the author of five books, including the Washington Post seven-week bestseller, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby, Chicago Review Press [Lawrence Hill Books)
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One can see Christopher Hedges during the Iraq war panel discussion at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA in Los Angeles this past April.. To watch online, simply go to www.booktv.org and do a search for 'LA Times Festival of Books' in the search field there and click on the Iraq war panel.. Hedges was excellent. Perhaps the guy who posed the question/comment about the Mearsheimer/Walt paper in the 'Q & A' inspired Hedges to write about Israel like he did below as he included mention of Mearsheimer/Walt as well..
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070702_a_declaration_of_independence_from_israel/
A Declaration of Independence From Israel
Posted on Jul 2, 2007
AP Photo/Hatem Moussa
Armed Palestinian women burn Israeli and U.S. flags during a protest against Israel’s operations in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
By Chris Hedges
Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist. The country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973 war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the Suez and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American military transport planes came to the rescue. They began landing every half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of its heavy armor. By the time the war was over, the United States had given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid.
The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies. This was perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system the United States has provided to the Jewish state.
Israel was born at midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S. recognized the new state 11 minutes later. The two countries have been locked in a deadly embrace ever since.
Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was able to be a moderating influence. An incensed President Eisenhower demanded and got Israel’s withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes bombed the USS Liberty. The ship, flying the U.S. flag and stationed 15 miles off the Israeli coast, was intercepting tactical and strategic communications from both sides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S. sailors and wounded 171. The deliberate attack froze, for a while, Washington’s enthusiasm for Israel. But ruptures like this one proved to be only bumps, soon smoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and well-financed Israel lobby that set out to merge Israeli and American foreign policy in the Middle East.
Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this alliance. It has been given more than $140 billion in U.S. direct economic and military assistance. It receives about $3 billion in direct assistance annually, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. foreign aid budget. Although most American foreign aid packages stipulate that related military purchases have to be made in the United States, Israel is allowed to use about 25 percent of the money to subsidize its own growing and profitable defense industry. It is exempt, unlike other nations, from accounting for how it spends the aid money. And funds are routinely siphoned off to build new Jewish settlements, bolster the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories and construct the security barrier, which costs an estimated $1 million a mile.
The barrier weaves its way through the West Bank, creating isolated pockets of impoverished Palestinians in ringed ghettos. By the time the barrier is finished it will probably in effect seize up to 40 percent of Palestinian land. This is the largest land grab by Israel since the 1967 war. And although the United States officially opposes settlement expansion and the barrier, it also funds them.
The U.S. has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems and given Israel access to some of the most sophisticated items in its own military arsenal, including Blackhawk attack helicopters and F-16 fighter jets. The United States also gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its NATO allies. And when Israel refused to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the United States stood by without a word of protest as the Israelis built the region’s first nuclear weapons program.
U.S. foreign policy, especially under the current Bush administration, has become little more than an extension of Israeli foreign policy. The United States since 1982 has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It refuses to enforce the Security Council resolutions it claims to support. These resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
There is now volcanic anger and revulsion by Arabs at this blatant favoritism. Few in the Middle East see any distinction between Israeli and American policies, nor should they. And when the Islamic radicals speak of U.S. support of Israel as a prime reason for their hatred of the United States, we should listen. The consequences of this one-sided relationship are being played out in the disastrous war in Iraq, growing tension with Iran, and the humanitarian and political crisis in Gaza. It is being played out in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is gearing up for another war with Israel, one most Middle East analysts say is inevitable. The U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is unraveling. And it is doing so because of this special relationship. The eruption of a regional conflict would usher in a nightmare of catastrophic proportions.
There were many in the American foreign policy establishment and State Department who saw this situation coming. The decision to throw our lot in with Israel in the Middle East was not initially a popular one with an array of foreign policy experts, including President Harry Truman’s secretary of state, Gen. George Marshall. They warned there would be a backlash. They knew the cost the United States would pay in the oil-rich region for this decision, which they feared would be one of the greatest strategic blunders of the postwar era. And they were right. The decision has jeopardized American and Israeli security and created the kindling for a regional conflagration.
The alliance, which makes no sense in geopolitical terms, does makes sense when seen through the lens of domestic politics. The Israel lobby has become a potent force in the American political system. No major candidate, Democrat or Republican, dares to challenge it. The lobby successfully purged the State Department of Arab experts who challenged the notion that Israeli and American interests were identical. Backers of Israel have doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to support U.S. political candidates deemed favorable to Israel. They have brutally punished those who strayed, including the first President Bush, who they said was not vigorous enough in his defense of Israeli interests. This was a lesson the next Bush White House did not forget. George W. Bush did not want to be a one-term president like his father.
Israel advocated removing Saddam Hussein from power and currently advocates striking Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. Direct Israeli involvement in American military operations in the Middle East is impossible. It would reignite a war between Arab states and Israel. The United States, which during the Cold War avoided direct military involvement in the region, now does the direct bidding of Israel while Israel watches from the sidelines. During the 1991 Gulf War, Israel was a spectator, just as it is in the war with Iraq.
President Bush, facing dwindling support for the war in Iraq, publicly holds Israel up as a model for what he would like Iraq to become. Imagine how this idea plays out on the Arab street, which views Israel as the Algerians viewed the French colonizers during the war of liberation.
"In Israel,” Bush said recently, “terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq.”
Americans are increasingly isolated and reviled in the world. They remain blissfully ignorant of their own culpability for this isolation. U.S. “spin” paints the rest of the world as unreasonable, but Israel, Americans are assured, will always be on our side.
Israel is reaping economic as well as political rewards from its lock-down apartheid state. In the “gated community” market it has begun to sell systems and techniques that allow the nation to cope with terrorism. Israel, in 2006, exported $3.4 billion in defense products—well over a billion dollars more than it received in American military aid. Israel has grown into the fourth largest arms dealer in the world. Most of this growth has come in the so-called homeland security sector.
The key products and services,” as Naomi Klein wrote in The Nation, “are hi-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems—precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories. And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn’t threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the ‘global war on terror.’ ”
The United States, at least officially, does not support the occupation and calls for a viable Palestinian state. It is a global player, with interests that stretch well beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, and the equation that Israel’s enemies are our enemies is not that simple.
"Terrorism is not a single adversary,” John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote in The London Review of Books, “but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organizations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonize the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around.”
Middle Eastern policy is shaped in the United States by those with very close ties to the Israel lobby. Those who attempt to counter the virulent Israeli position, such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, are ruthlessly slapped down. This alliance was true also during the Clinton administration, with its array of Israel-first Middle East experts, including special Middle East coordinator Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, one of the most powerful Israel lobbying groups in Washington. But at least people like Indyk and Ross are sane, willing to consider a Palestinian state, however unviable, as long as it is palatable to Israel. The Bush administration turned to the far-right wing of the Israel lobby, those who have not a shred of compassion for the Palestinians or a word of criticism for Israel. These new Middle East experts include Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, the disgraced I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser.
Washington was once willing to stay Israel’s hand. It intervened to thwart some of its most extreme violations of human rights. This administration, however, has signed on for every disastrous Israeli blunder, from building the security barrier in the West Bank, to sealing off Gaza and triggering a humanitarian crisis, to the ruinous invasion and saturation bombing of Lebanon.
The few tepid attempts by the Bush White House to criticize Israeli actions have all ended in hasty and humiliating retreats in the face of Israeli pressure. When the Israel Defense Forces in April 2002 reoccupied the West Bank, President Bush called on then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to “halt the incursions and begin withdrawal.” It never happened. After a week of heavy pressure from the Israel lobby and Israel’s allies in Congress, meaning just about everyone in Congress, the president gave up, calling Sharon “a man of peace.” It was a humiliating moment for the United States, a clear sign of who pulled the strings.
There were several reasons for the war in Iraq. The desire for American control of oil, the belief that Washington could build puppet states in the region, and a real, if misplaced, fear of Saddam Hussein played a part in the current disaster. But it was also strongly shaped by the notion that what is good for Israel is good for the United States. Israel wanted Iraq neutralized. Israeli intelligence, in the lead-up to the war, gave faulty information to the U.S. about Iraq’s alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And when Baghdad was taken in April 2003, the Israeli government immediately began to push for an attack on Syria. The lust for this attack has waned, in no small part because the Americans don’t have enough troops to hang on in Iraq, much less launch a new occupation.
Israel is currently lobbying the United States to launch aerial strikes on Iran, despite the debacle in Lebanon. Israel’s iron determination to forcibly prevent a nuclear Iran makes it probable that before the end of the Bush administration an attack on Iran will take place. The efforts to halt nuclear development through diplomatic means have failed. It does not matter that Iran poses no threat to the United States. It does not matter that it does not even pose a threat to Israel, which has several hundred nuclear weapons in its arsenal. It matters only that Israel demands total military domination of the Middle East.
The alliance between Israel and the United States has culminated after 50 years in direct U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. This involvement, which is not furthering American interests, is unleashing a geopolitical nightmare. American soldiers and Marines are dying in droves in a useless war. The impotence of the United States in the face of Israeli pressure is complete. The White House and the Congress have become, for perhaps the first time, a direct extension of Israeli interests. There is no longer any debate within the United States. This is evidenced by the obsequious nods to Israel by all the current presidential candidates with the exception of Dennis Kucinich. The political cost for those who challenge Israel is too high.
This means there will be no peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It means the incidents of Islamic terrorism against the U.S. and Israel will grow. It means that American power and prestige are on a steep, irreversible decline. And I fear it also means the ultimate end of the Jewish experiment in the Middle East.
The weakening of the United States, economically and militarily, is giving rise to new centers of power. The U.S. economy, mismanaged and drained by the Iraq war, is increasingly dependent on Chinese trade imports and on Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. China holds dollar reserves worth $825 billion. If Beijing decides to abandon the U.S. bond market, even in part, it would cause a free fall by the dollar. It would lead to the collapse of the $7-trillion U.S. real estate market. There would be a wave of U.S. bank failures and huge unemployment. The growing dependence on China has been accompanied by aggressive work by the Chinese to build alliances with many of the world’s major exporters of oil, such as Iran, Nigeria, Sudan and Venezuela. The Chinese are preparing for the looming worldwide clash over dwindling resources.
The future is ominous. Not only do Israel’s foreign policy objectives not coincide with American interests, they actively hurt them. The growing belligerence in the Middle East, the calls for an attack against Iran, the collapse of the imperial project in Iraq have all given an opening, where there was none before, to America’s rivals. It is not in Israel’s interests to ignite a regional conflict. It is not in ours. But those who have their hands on the wheel seem determined, in the name of freedom and democracy, to keep the American ship of state headed at breakneck speed into the cliffs before us.
Last edited by Alpha on Fri Aug 03, 2007 8:38 pm; edited 1 time in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:32 pm Post subject: |
| All Fall Down
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/2089/1/
Written by Stephen P. Pizzo
Thursday, 02 August 2007
by Stephen P. Pizzo
I wonder how many of those Minnesota commuters were listening to news on their car radios as they approached the I-35W bridge yesterday afternoon? Those who were probably had just listened to GOP members of the House urging their Democratic party colleagues to hurry up and pass legislation re-authorizing the “Terrorist Surveillance Act.”
"It is absolutely vital at the time of a heightened threat environment to realize the present system simply is not as responsive as it needs to be in terms of providing the flexibility and speed in acting on actionable intelligence," pronounced White House spokesman, Tony Snow.
Maybe that's what the victims thought was happening as the bridge collapsed under them yesterday -- that “the terrorists,” had struck again. After all, since 2001 terrorism has been about the only threat to American's safety, lives and wellbeing this administration mentions -- and they mention it often.
So, as those poor folks dropped 65 feet towards the Mississippi below, surely they must have figured that was the cause of their pending misfortune – terrorism.
Those who survived the fall quickly learned that it wasn't terrorism at all. What killed or almost killed those Americans wasn't al-Qaeda but al-George and his administration's neglect, mismanagement, misdirection and mis-allocation of our nation's attention, priorities and resources.
The day before the I-35W span collapsed we learned that the war in Iraq will eventually drain the US treasury of somewhere between $1- to $2 trillion dollars. Not a dime of that will be available to perform critical, and already too-long delayed, repairs to the tens of thousands of bridges and overpasses that carry tens of millions of Americans every day.
In 2005 the American Society of Civil Engineers reported that $1.6 trillion is needed over a five-year period to repair American's crumbling bridges, highways and other critical public infrastructure.
We didn't, we haven't and we likely won't do that. Instead that money is being spent to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, much of which will either be promptly blown up by Iraqis themselves or simply left to rot.
U.S. overseers and Iraq rebuilding failures
International Herald Tribune -- July 26, 2007: The report, issued Wednesday, is the first of a planned series of audits of Western contractors that have received large slices of the roughly $40 billion in U.S. taxpayer money that has been spent on the troubled program to rebuild Iraq. Previous audits have looked at individual projects but never the performance across Iraq of a single contractor. (Full Story)
Meanwhile, back here at home, a giant 83-year old steam pipe blows leaving a huge crater in the middle of a New York City street, a 40-year old bridge in America's heartland collapses during rush hour, our air traffic control system can just barely operate, saddled by failing, antique computer systems and a shortage of runways. Meanwhile air passengers become accustomed to sleeping on cots at terminals as an ever-growing number of flights are delayed or canceled.
Over at the NOAA another day of reckoning looms. Even as global warming threatens more Katrina-type hurricanes, there are no replacements being readied for America's aging fleet of weather satellites.
I'm not going to belabor the point. You get it. The bottom line is that you are more likely to be killed or injured on American soil by a falling bridge or plane or by falling into a giant sink hole than by a terrorist. And not just a little more likely, but exponentially more likely.
As I write this I am waiting to hear what George Bush is going to say about yesterday's bridge collapse in a scheduled morning news conference. We know what he would have said had a terrorist flown a plane into that bridge. He would have come out swinging, demanding that we “connect the dots,” to discover how such a thing was allowed to happen. He would also use the opportunity to demand more money to fight terrorism and support for proposals to trim back more of our domestic rights so he can protect us from just that kind of threat.
And, we'd likely go along with him too. He is certainly not going to suggest we need to "connect the dots." on yesterday's bridge collapse, because those dots lead right to Oval Office and Congress.
Yesterday's disaster wasn't terrorism. Al-Qaeda didn't take down that bridge. Nor will al-Qaeda bring down who knows how many other bridges, killing who knows how many more Americans in the years ahead. No it wasn't. The "terrorist" this time wasn't al-Qaeda. It was the Bush Administrationm, and Congress' misplaced priorities that killed those Americans yesterday. It was the product of the fatal combination of imperial hubris, military/industrial primacy and the blind greed military spending it fosters once it gets on a roll.
How ironic that it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who championed and built American's interstate highway system back in the 50's.
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, was enacted on June 29, 1956, when a hospitalized Dwight D. Eisenhower signed this bill into law. Appropriating $25 billion for the construction of 40,000 miles of interstate highways over a 10-year period, it was the largest public works project in American history to that point.
The money was handled in a highway trust fund that paid for 90 percent of highway construction costs with the states required to pay the remaining 10 percent. It was expected that the money would be generated through new taxes on fuel, automobiles, trucks and tires. It is said he drew six lines (three vertical and three horizontal) on a piece of paper and told his people to base their freeway system on it. (Full)
It was also as Eisenhower who, on leaving office tried to warn us of the danger created at the nexus of politics, business and the military.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Eisenhower was, of course prescient. We ignored that warning and so it has come to pass. The proof lies among the bodies and wreckage of the I-35W bridge. What Ike could not foresee was that this ascendant military-industrial complex would end up also destroying the crown jewel of his administration -- our national highway and transportation system.
Anyway, that's the way it is. So rather than stockpiling duct tape and plastic to protect yourself from a terrorist attack, it might be wiser to stock your cars with a helmet and life preserver for yourself and each passenger. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
