March 25, 2013

News of Assad Assassination is greatly exaggerated

News of Assad Assassination is greatly exaggerated
By Michael Collins, on March 24th, 2013



There’s a strange story out there about Syrian President Bashar Assad’s assassination and possible death. It has little merit but the sourcing is interesting.

Gateway Pundit reported: BREAKING: Assad Shot By Bodyguard – Hospitalized in Damascus – Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, March 24, 2013, 12:22 PM

The sourcing on this leads to a French publication, JSS. Gateway Pundit listed the link as “Translated from JSS News:”

JSS, a French online publication. cites the “Arab Media” as its source on Assad’s death. This is when the story falls apart.

Link http://agonist.org/news-of-assad-assassination-is-greatly-exaggerated/

March 23, 2013

Geopolitical shifts from the Second Gulf War

This article is a nearly perfect summation of the disasterous outcome of the Iraq invasion. It shows the utter disaster created by Bush-Cheney. It should be required reading for all the neocons who visited this disaster on Iraq and the United states

The Second Gulf War has left the U.S. in an increasingly uncomfortable and potentially agonizing strategic position between the democracy in Iraq, which it helped install, and the Gulf monarchies, which the U.S. has long aligned with, but which now seek to eradicate democracy from the region root and branch. Siding with one will anger the other, balancing will anger both, and neutrality is impossible.

The perspective offered in the decade since the outbreak of the war does not show gains for U.S. national interests. China and Iran have come out much the better, and the region is much less stable for the war. This dismaying strategic position today, between democracy and autocracy, suggests that in another ten years the war’s denouement might be even less welcome than it now appears.

Link: http://agonist.org/geopolitical-shifts-from-the-second-gulf-war/

March 18, 2013

Blair Cornered on War Crimes - Even BBC s on his case

By Michael Collins
The Agonist



If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth? Desmond Tutu

Tony Blair's war crimes are official, well almost official. Tonight, the BBC’s Panorama will roll out yet more serious evidence that Tony Blair knew Saddam Hussein had NO weapons of mass destruction for months prior to the United States – British invasion of Iraq.

“Fresh evidence is revealed today about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.

“Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was active, growing and up and running.” Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, March 18

Specifically, according to Panorama, British intelligence had a critical meeting in Amman, Jordan three months before the invasion. The head of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency confirmed that there were no WMD. The British Dodgy Dossier was published days after this information was gathered. That Google generated fabrication pushed for war and conveniently left out the Amman intelligence. This is both fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

Link http://agonist.org/blair-cornered-on-war-crimes-in-iraq/