TELEGRAPH– There are not many sane people who can say with confidence that, had a president of America only listened to them, they could have saved $1.3 trillion and many hundreds of thousands of lives. Michael Scheuer can.

COMMON DREAMS–  Memorial Day will be celebrated … by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.

In 1974, I was invited by Tom Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, who had been bold enough in 1971 to print part of the top secret Pentagon Papers on the history of the Vietnam War, to write a bi-weekly column for the op-ed page of the newspaper. I did that for about a year and a half. The column below appeared June 2, 1976, in connection with that year’s Memorial Day. After it appeared, my column was canceled.

* * * * *

Memorial Day will be celebrated as usual, by high-speed collisions of automobiles and bodies strewn on highways and the sound of ambulance sirens throughout the land.

It will also be celebrated by the display of flags, the sound of bugles and drums, by parades and speeches and unthinking applause.

It will be celebrated by giant corporations, which make guns, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers and an endless assortment of military junk and which await the $100 billion in contracts to be approved soon by Congress and the President.

There was a young woman in New Hampshire who refused to allow her husband, killed in Vietnam, to be given a military burial. She rejected the hollow ceremony ordered by those who sent him and 50,000 others to their deaths. Her courage should be cherished on Memorial Day. There were the B52 pilots who refused to fly those last vicious raids of Nixon’s and Kissinger’s war. Have any of the great universities, so quick to give honorary degrees to God-knows-whom, thought to honor those men at this Commencement time, on this Memorial Day?

No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars he honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again.

“The shell had his number on it. The blood ran into the ground…Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the DSC, the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, The Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania. All the Washingtonians brought flowers .. Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies.”

Those are the concluding lines of John Dos Passos angry novel 1919. Let us honor him on Memorial Day.

And also Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War.

And Mark Twain, who denounced our war against the Filipinos at the turn of the century.

And I.F. Stone, who virtually alone among newspaper editors exposed the fraud and brutality of the Korean War.

Let us honor Martin Luther King, who refused the enticements of the White House, and the cautions of associates, and thundered against the war in Vietnam.

Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.

On Memorial Day we should take note that, in the name of “defense,” our taxes have been used to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a helicopter assault ship called “the biggest floating lemon,” which was accepted by the Navy although it had over 2,000 major defects at the time of its trial cruise.

Meanwhile, there is such a shortage of housing that millions live in dilapidated sections of our cities and millions more are forced to pay high rents or high interest rates on their mortgages. There’s 90 billion for the B1 bomber, but people don’t have money to pay hospital bills.

We must be practical, say those whose practicality has consisted of a war every generation. We mustn’t deplete our defenses. Say those who have depleted our youth, stolen our resources. In the end, it is living people, not corpses, creative energy, not destructive rage, which are our only real defense, not just against other governments trying to kill us, but against our own, also trying to kill us.

Let us not set out, this Memorial Day, on the same old drunken ride to death.

Written by Howard Zinn

© 2011 Common Dreams

Photo by flickr user Beverly & Pack

TARPLEY.NET– China has officially put the United States on notice that Washington’s planned attack on Pakistan will be interpreted as an act of aggression against Beijing. This blunt warning represents the first known strategic ultimatum received by the United States in half a century, going back to Soviet warnings during the Berlin crisis of 1958-1961, and indicates the grave danger of general war growing out of the US-Pakistan confrontation.

“Any Attack on Pakistan Would be Construed as an Attack on China”

Responding to reports that China has asked the US to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty in the aftermath of the Bin Laden operation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu used a May 19 press briefing to state Beijing’s categorical demand that the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan must be respected.” According to Pakistani diplomatic sources cited by the Times of India, China has “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China.” This ultimatum was reportedly delivered at the May 9 China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington, where the Chinese delegation was led by Vice Prime Minister Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo. [Reference] Chinese warnings are implicitly backed up by that nation’s nuclear missiles, including an estimated 66 ICBMs, some capable of striking the United States, plus 118 intermediate-range missiles, 36 submarine-launched missiles, and numerous shorter-range systems.

Support from China is seen by regional observers as critically important for Pakistan, which is otherwise caught in a pincers between the US and India: “If US and Indian pressure continues, Pakistan can say ‘China is behind us. Don’t think we are isolated, we have a potential superpower with us,’” Talat Masood, a political analyst and retired Pakistani general, told AFP. [Reference]

The Chinese ultimatum came during the visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani in Beijing, during which the host government announced the transfer of 50 state-of-the-art JF-17 fighter jets to Pakistan, immediately and without cost. [Reference] Before his departure, Gilani had stressed the importance of the Pakistan-China alliance, proclaiming: “We are proud to have China as our best and most trusted friend. And China will always find Pakistan standing beside it at all times….When we speak of this friendship as being taller than the Himalayas and deeper than the oceans it truly captures the essence of our relationship.” [Reference] These remarks were greeted by whining from US spokesmen, including Idaho Republican Senator Risch.

The simmering strategic crisis between the United States and Pakistan exploded with full force on May 1, with the unilateral and unauthorized US commando raid alleged to have killed the phantomatic Osama bin Laden in a compound at Abottabad, a flagrant violation of Pakistan’s national sovereignty. The timing of this military stunt designed to inflame tensions between the two countries had nothing to do with any alleged Global War on Terror, and everything to do with the late March visit to Pakistan of Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian National Security Council chief. This visit had resulted in a de facto alliance between Islamabad and Riyadh, with Pakistan promising troops to put down any US-backed color revolution in the kingdom, while extending nuclear protection to the Saudis, thus making them less vulnerable to US extortion threats to abandon the oil-rich monarchy to the tender mercies of Tehran. A joint move by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to break out of the US empire, whatever one may think of these regimes, would represent a fatal blow for the fading US empire in South Asia.

As for the US claims concerning the supposed Bin Laden raid of May 1, they are a mass of hopeless contradictions which changes from day to day. An analysis of this story is best left to literary critics and writers of theatrical reviews. The only solid and uncontestable fact which emerges is that Pakistan is the leading US target — thus intensifying the anti-Pakistan US policy which has been in place since Obama’s infamous December 2009 West Point speech.

Obama Has Already Approved Sneak Attack on Pakistan’s Nukes

According to the London Sunday Express, Obama has already approved an aggressive move along these lines: “US troops will be deployed in Pakistan if the nation’s nuclear installations come under threat from terrorists out to avenge the killing of Osama Bin Laden… The plan, which would be activated without President Zardari’s consent, provoked an angry reaction from Pakistan officials… Barack Obama would order troops to parachute in to protect key nuclear missile sites. These include the air force’s central Sargodha HQ, home base for nuclear-capable F-16 combat aircraft and at least 80 ballistic missiles.” According to a US official, “The plan is green lit and the President has already shown he is willing to deploy troops in Pakistan if he feels it is important for national security.” [Reference]

Extreme tension over this issue highlights the brinksmanship and incalculable folly of Obama’s May 1 unilateral raid, which might easily have been interpreted by the Pakistanis as the long-awaited attack on their nuclear forces. According to the New York Times, Obama knew very well he was courting immediate shooting war with Pakistan, and “insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops.”

Read the full article about US, Pakistan Near Open War

Written by Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.

© 2011 Tarpley.net

Photo by Flickr user Coda2

COMMON DREAMS– President Obama failed to seek a declaration of war before ordering U.S. attacks on Libya. Now, he faces a challenge under the War Powers Resolution.

By any reasonable reading of the Constitution, that was a violation of the provision in the founding document that requires the executive to attain authorization from Congress before launching military adventures abroad. But presidents have skirted that requirement in recent decades by claiming that the 1973 War Powers Resolution — an act originally intended to constrain presidential warmaking — affords them the freedom to fight first and consult Congress later.

The War Powers Resolution, enacted in the late stages of the Vietnam War over a veto by President Richard Nixon, requires the commander in chief to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action that he or she determines is necessary in the face of  “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” The resolution also forbids armed forces from remaining in action for more than 60 days without congressional authorization of the use of military force.

That’s not supposed to be a blank check from White House wars of whim, even if successive presidents have relied on self-serving interpretations of the law to lauch and maintain military endeavors.

Read the full article about A War Powers Challenge to President Obama’s Libya Project

© 2011 Common Dreams

Article originally appear in The Nation

NATO’s campaign in Libya rumbles on, two months after it started. The U.S., which led the operation, is still highly engaged without official consent from Congress. According to the Constitution, America’s military action over Libya is now illegal. But as RT’s Lauren Lyster reports, few on Capitol Hill seem concerned.

Photo by Flickr user state_library_south_australia

ACLU– We called for your attention and you responded. Members of Congress are starting to pay attention, and many media outlets quickly followed your lead. But that wasn’t enough. We needed more attention brought to an upcoming House vote on a sleeper provision tucked deep inside the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would be a new law for this president and all his successors to wage an endless worldwide war without any further consent of Congress.

The very problematic provision in the NDAA will be considered on House floor as early as Tuesday or Wednesday of next week and it is starting to receive the attention it deserves. Academics as well as lawmakers, who despite coming from different places on the political spectrum find themselves in agreement in opposing worldwide war.

Today, The Detroit News ran an op-ed from freshman Republican Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who was endorsed by the Tea Party, that addresses and opposes the House provision for worldwide authorization of use of military force:

Our Armed Forces are stretched thin across three theaters and constrained by a record deficit in Washington. And while we enter our 10th year of sacrificing blood and treasure to build democracies, a home-grown democratic revolution in the Arab world has overturned several dictatorships, largely without America’s help.

There has been no better time to regain our Constitutional balance and check the president’s war powers. Congress is a co-equal branch — and it should start acting like it.

In addition, this week Northwestern University law professor Joseph Margulies wrote in the The New Republic:

[T]he proposed AUMF authorizes a substantially greater role for the U.S. military than it had even at the height of the cold war: the use of force against an enemy the Obama administration considers it “neither possible nor advisable” to describe, anywhere in the world, without regard to whether the proposed targets had anything to do with September 11 or whether they threaten “future acts” against the United States. There is no end in sight. Whatever else may be true, this is not what the founders intended, and not what the nation has practiced.

[N]early ten years after September 11, days after the death of Osama bin Laden, and in the absence of any imminent threat, Congress is poised to give President Obama and his successors substantially more authority to use force than it granted to President Bush only 72 hours after the attacks. It is an odd and distinctly un-American state of affairs when the clamor for war outpaces the war itself

We often hear that the attacks of September 11 “changed everything.” It would be sad indeed if, among the things that collapsed and changed that day, was the salutary idea that we might be “a humble nation,” determined to “project the power for good that America can represent,” as Bush and Gore put it back in the 2000 debate. For these are not merely platitudes to be trotted out days before an election. They are the ideals that sustain us through adversity.

Your efforts to engage members of the media, academics and, most importantly our congressional lawmakers, are beginning to gain momentum—and we are all grateful for the leadership of House members of both parties in stepping up their opposition to this dangerous proposal. But we can’t stop now. We must continue to take action to oppose endless worldwide war.

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© 2011 ACLU

Photo by Flickr user kwerfeldein