The American Century: Neoconservatism

[Armenian]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

The Neoconservative Agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet – The New Pearl Harbor


Yakhont, supersonic anti-ship missile adjacent to Russian Su-33 Flanker. Note centerline Moskit/Sunburn

The Bush administation has covered up and ignored dissenting Pentagon war games analysis that suggests an attack on Iran’s nuclear or military facilities will lead directly to the annihilation of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet now stationed in the Persian Gulf. Lt. General Paul Van Riper led a hypothetical Persian Gulf state in the 2002 Millennium Challenge wargames that resulted in the destruction of the Fifth Fleet. His experience and conclusions regarding the vulnerability of the Fifth Fleet to an assymetrical military conflict and the implications for a war against Iran have been ignored. Neoconservatives within the Bush administration are currently aggressively promoting a range of military actions against Iran that will culminate in it attacking the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet with sophisticated cruise anti-ship missiles. They are ignoring Van Riper’s experiences in the Millennium Challenge and how it applies to the current nuclear conflict with Iran.

Iran has sufficient quantities of cruise missiles to destroy much or all of the Fifth Fleet which is within range of Iran’s mobile missile launchers strategically located along its mountainous terrain overlooking the Persian Gulf. The Bush administration is deliberately downplaying the vulnerability of the Fifth Fleet to Iran’s advanced missile technology which has been purchased from Russia and China since the late 1990’s. The most sophisticated of Iran’s cruise missiles are the ‘Sunburn’ and ‘Yakhonts’. These are missiles against which U.S. military experts conclude modern warships have no effective defense. By deliberately provoking an Iranian retaliation to U.S. military actions, the neoconservatives will knowingly sacrifice much or all of the Fifth Fleet. This will culminate in a new Pearl Harbor that will create the right political environment for total war against Iran, and expanded military actions in the Persian Gulf region.

The Fifth Fleet’s Vulnerability to Iran’s Anti-Ship Missile Arsenal

The U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet is headquartered in the Gulf State of Bahrain which is responsible for patrolling the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Suez Canal and parts of the Indian Ocean. The Fifth Fleet currently comprises a carrier group and two helicopter carrier ships. Its size peaked at five aircraft carrier groups and six helicopter carriers in 2003 during the invasion of Iraq. Presently, it is led by the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier commissioned in 1961, and on November 2, began participating in a Naval exercise in the Persian Gulf .

The Fifth Fleet’s base in Bahrain, is only 150 miles away from the Iranian coast, and would itself be in range of Iran’s new generation of anti-ship cruise missiles. Also, any Naval ships in the confined terrain of the Persian Gulf would have difficulty in maneuvering and would be within range of Iran’s rugged coastline which extends all along the Persian Gulf to the Arabian sea. Iran began purchasing advanced military technology from Russia soon after the latter pulled out in 2000 from the Gore-Chernomyrdin Protocol, which limited Russia’s sales of military equipment to Iran. . Russia subsequently began selling Iran military technology that could be used in any military conflict with the U.S. This included air defense systems and anti-ship cruise missiles in which Russia specialized to offset the U.S. large naval superiority.

Moskit/Sunburn, supersonic anti-ship missile

The SS-N-22 or ‘Sunburn” has a speed of Mach 2.5 or 1500 miles an hour, uses stealth technology and has a range up to 130 miles. It contains a conventional warhead of 750 lbs that can destroy most ships. Of even greater concern is Russia’s SSN-X-26 or ‘Yakhonts’ cruise missile which has a range of 185 miles which makes all US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf vulnerable to attack. More importantly the Yakhonts has been specifically developed for use against Carrier groups, and has been sold by Russia on the international arms trade.

Both the Yakhonts and the Sunburn missiles are designed to defeat the Aegis radar defense currently used on U.S. Navy ships by using stealth technology and low ground hugging flying maneuvers. In their final approaches these missiles take evasive maneuvers to defeat anti-ship missile defenses. So great is the threat posed by the Sunburn, Yakhonts and other advanced anti-ship missiles being developed by Russia and sold to China, Iran and other countries, that the Pentagon’s weapons testing office in 2007 moved to halt production on further aircraft carriers until an effective defense was developed. Iran has purchased sufficient quantities of both the Sunbeam and Yakhonts to destroy much or all of the Fifth Fleet anywhere in the Persian Gulf from its mountainous coastal terrain.

Millennium Challenge Wargames

The “Millennium Challenge” was one of the largest wargames ever conducted and wargames involved 13,500 troops spread out at over 17 locations. The wargames involved heavy usage of computer simulations, extended over a three week period and cost $250 million. Millennium Challenge involved asymmetrical warfare between the U.S military forces, led by General William Kernan, and an unnamed state in the Persian Gulf. According to General Kernan, the wargames “would test a series of new war-fighting concepts recently developed by the Pentagon.” Using a range of asymmetrical attack strategies using disguised civilian boats for launching attacks, planes in Kamikaze attacks, and Silkworm cruise missiles, much of the Fifth Fleet was sunk. The games revealed how asymmetrical strategies could exploit the Fifth Fleet’s vulnerability against anti-ship cruise missiles in the confined waters of the Persian Gulf.

In a controversial decision, the Pentagon decided to simply ‘refloat’ the Fifth Fleet to continue the exercise which led to the eventual defeat of the Persian Gulf state. The sinking of the Fifth Fleet was ignored and the wargames declared a success for the “new war-fighting concepts” adopted by Gen. Kernan. This led to Lt General Paul Van Riper, the commander of the mythical Gulf State, calling the official results “empty sloganeering”. In a later television interview, General Riper declared “when the concepts that the command was testing failed to live up to their expectations, the command at that point began to script the exercise in order to prove these concepts. This was my critical complaint.”

Chinese manufactured C-802 anti-ship missile

Most significant was General Riper’s claims of the effectiveness of the older Cruise missile technology, the Silkworm missile which were used to sink an aircraft carrier and two helicopter-carriers loaded with marines in the total of 16 ships sunk. When asked to confirm Riper’s claims, General Kernar replied: “Well, I don’t know. To be honest with you. I haven’t had an opportunity to assess what happened. But that’s a possibility… The specifics of the cruise-missile piece… I really can’t answer that question. We’ll have to get back to you”

The Millennium Challenge wargames clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of the US Fifth Fleet to Silkworm cruise missile attacks. This replicated the experience of the British during the 1980 Falklands war where two ships were sunk by three Exocet missiles. Both the Exocet and Silkworm cruise missiles were an older generation of anti-ship missile technology that were far surpassed by the Sunburn and Yakhonts missiles. If the Millennium Challenge was a guide to an asymmetrical war with Iran, much of the U.S Fifth Fleet would be destroyed. It is not surprising Millennium Challenge was eventually scripted so that this embarrassing fact was hidden. To date, there has been little public awareness of the vulnerability of the US Fifth Fleet while stationed in the Persian Gulf. It appears that the Bush administration had scripted an outcome to the wargames that would promote its neoconservative agenda for the Middle East.

The Neo-Conservative Strategy to Attack Iran

Neoconservatives share a political philosophy that US dominance of the international system as the world’s sole superpower needs to be extended indefinitely into the 21st century. In early 2006 neoconservatives within the Bush administration began vigorously promoting a new war against Iran due to the alleged threat posed by its nuclear development program. Iran has consistently maintained that its nuclear development is lawful and in compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Since 2004, The Bush administration has been citing intelligence data that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and must under no circumstances be allowed to do this.

Much of Iran’s nuclear development has occurred in underground facilities built at a depth of 70 feet with hardened concrete overhead that protect them from any known conventional attack. This led to the Bush administration arguing in early 2006 that tactical nuclear weapons would need to be used to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. This culminated in a fierce debate between leading neo-conservatives such as xxxx Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff which remained adamantly opposed. Seymour Hersh in May 2006, reported the opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.'

Subsequent efforts by the neo-conservatives to justify a conventional military attack have been handicapped by widespread public skepticism by the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, and Iran’s compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty according to Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA. ElBaradei cites U.S. military assessments that Iran is a few years away from developing weapons grade nuclear fuel that could be used for nuclear weapons. The Bush administration, frustrated by the determined opposition both within the U.S bureaucracy, military and the international community to its plans has adopted a three pronged track strategy for its goal of ‘taking out’ Iran.

[...]

Consequences of Iran being Attacked

In an effort to intimidate Iran, the Bush administration has regularly placed two aircraft carrier group formations in the Persian Gulf . The size and timing of possible U.S. military attacks on Iran’s nuclear and/or military facilities, will influence the speed and scale of an Iranian response. Iran’s response will predictably result in a military escalation that culminates in Iran using its arsenal of anti-ship cruise missiles on the U.S. Fifth Fleet and closing off the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping. Iran’s ability to hide and launch cruise missiles from mountainous positions all along the Persian Gulf will make all Fifth Fleet ships in the Persian Gulf vulnerable. The Fifth Fleet would be trapped and unable to escape to safer waters. The Millennium Challenge wargames in 2002 witnessed the sinking of most of the Fifth fleet.

If an attack on Iran were to occur before the end of 2007, it would lead to the destruction of the USS Enterprise with its complement of 5000 personnel on board. Further losses in terms of support ships and other Fifth Fleet naval forces in the Persian Gulf would be catastrophic. An Iranian cruise missile attack would replicate losses at Pearl Harbor where the sinking of five ships, destruction of 188 aircraft and deaths of 2,333 quickly led to a declaration of total war against Imperial Japan by the U.S. Congress.

The declaration of total war against Iran by the U.S. Congress would lead to a sustained bombing campaign and eventual military invasion to bring about regime change in Iran. Military conscription would occur in order to provide personnel for the invasion of Iran, and to support U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan that would come under greater pressure. Tensions would rapidly escalate with other major powers such as Russia and China who have supplied Iran with sophisticated weapons systems that could be used against U.S. military assets. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping and total war conditions in the U.S. would lead to a collapse of the world economy, and further erosion of civil liberties in a U.S. engaged in total war.

Conclusions

The above scenario is very plausible given the military capacities of Iran’s anti-ship cruise missiles and the U.S. Navy’s vulnerability to these while operating in the Persian Gulf. The Bush administration has hidden from the American public the full extent of the Fifth Fleet’s vulnerability, and how it could be trapped and destroyed in a full scale conflict with Iran. This is best evidenced by the controversial decision to downplay the real results of the Millennium Challenge wargames and the dissenting views of Lt. General Van Riper over the lessons to be learned. This culminated in General Van Riper joining a group of retired generals in calling for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld.

Neo-conservatives within the Bush administration are fully aware of the vulnerability of the Fifth Fleet, yet have at times tried to place up to three carrier groups in the Persian Gulf which would only augment U.S. losses in any war with Iran. Yet the Bush administration has still attempted to move forward with plans for nuclear, conventional and/or covert attacks on Iran which would precipitate much of the terrible scenario described above.

A reasonable conclusion to draw is that neoconservatives within the Bush administration are willing to sacrifice much or all of the U.S. Fifth Fleet by militarily provoking Iran to launch its anti-ship cruise missile arsenal in order to justify ‘total war’ against Iran, and force regime change. A new Pearl Harbor can be averted by making accountable Bush administration officials willing to sacrifice the Fifth Fleet in pursuit of a neoconservative agenda.

Source: http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/hom.../08/01932.html

[Armenian]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

A very important and revealing publication has come out recently regarding the Bush dynasty in America and its intimate connections to the Saudi Royal family. Here is the transcript of the author's interview with Democracy Now. I hope you find it interesting.

Armenian

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House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between The World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties

Download MP-3 of Interview: http://www.archive.org/download/dn20...318-1_64kb.mp3

We speak with Craig Unger, author of the new book, "House of Bush, House of Saud" that details the complex negotiations on war, oil, illegal arms deals and murky banking deals conducted between the Bushes and the Saudis - connecting a US presidential dynasty to a foreign power.

AMY GOODMAN: The long-term relationship between the Bush family and the Saudi Royal family that dates back over two decades. And the subject of a new book by Craig Unger, which is called "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties." In it, Craig Unger writes that in order to understand this relationship, one would have to journey back to the time to the birth of Al-Qaeda. One would have to study the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's, the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraq War of 2003. One would have to try to deduce what had happened within the corporate suites of the oil barons, of Dallas and Houston, the executive offices of Carlyle Group. Finally, one would have to put all this information together to shape a continuum, a narrative in which the House of Bush and the House of Saud dominated the world stage together in one era after another. Having done so, one would have to come to a singular, inescapable conclusion, namely that horrifying as it sounds, the secret relationship between these two great families helped to trigger the age of terror and give rise to see the tragedy of 9-11. Powerful words, Craig Unger.

CRAIG UNGER: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about why you see this relationship as key to understanding 9-11?

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, to me this has been sort of the elephant in the living room, a powerful piece of logic that's really in plain sight and has been ignored by most of the American press. And it goes something like this, that is without the Saudis, you really don't have 9-11. And we haven't focused on that. It's not just that 15 out of 19 of the hijackers were Saudis, that it was master minded by Osama bin Laden who, of course, is Saudi. If you look at the roots of Al-Qaeda, it was largely funded by Saudi Arabia and that includes members of the House of Saud, the Saudi merchant elite, great billionaire bankers who do lots of work with the United States, and have had relationships with the Bush family itself. So, that is one element. Two is that Saudi Arabia is supposedly our friend, our ally. And with friends like these, you’ve got to wonder who needs enemies? But the entire country, the entire United States has been sort of in bed with Saudi Arabia. Anyone who benefits from it, who's filled up their tank with a cheap gallon of oil, and this dates back to the 1940's when Franklin Roosevelt made an alliance with Saudi Arabia. The Bush family in particular, has played a huge, huge role in all of this. That is they've been the architects of the policy for the last generation. The elder George Bush, James Baker, of course, who was his close friend, ally and secretary of state, and the younger George Bush. They've been active in this, in the private sector and the public sector, back and forth as they've been in and out of power. So, the question arises, are they ultimately so compromised they can't really fight the war on terror? Shouldn't this be one of targets of the war on terror?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, one of things that surprised me is how you have been – we’ve discussed the flight of the Saudis out of the country before. We've interviewed Kevin Phillips here on his recent book. But you've managed to put together the entire story from the early days of the first Bush, Bush the father, through actually most amazing part of your book seemed to me the relationship between the two 2000 election and the Saudis and the Bush family. Could you talk a little bit -- for instance, you mentioned one guy, Sami al-Arian in Florida and his relationship with the Bush family. Could you talk about that?

CRAIG UNGER: It is an extraordinary story that's largely untold. And it's interesting, only, I think, the right-wing press has been talking about this. And I saw a quote by David Frum, the Bush speech writer, who was very critical of his boss, President Bush, and said fortunately, we Republicans have enemies -- our rivals, the Democrats, are so crippled they won't discuss this politically. It goes back to the election of 2000, and one of the great untold stories is how the Bush administration had a secret strategy to win the Muslim-American vote. And I think very few people realize there are actually more Muslim-Americans than there are xxxs in the United States. There are roughly seven million. But they've almost never been approached as a block vote and, in fact, it's probably silly to regard them as a block vote. Muslims are not necessarily Arabs. Arabs are not necessarily Muslims. There are black Muslims who have no real allegiance to the Middle East particularly. It's much more religious and Wahhabism, and the militant Wahhabism is not really part of the entire Muslim-American community, except that the Saudis do play a huge role in funding that. Nevertheless, the Bush campaign aggressively went after this vote. And in Tampa, Florida, they began campaigning with Muslim leader, including this man you mentioned, Sami al-Arian, who was a professor at the University of South Florida. And it turns out he is now under indictment for alleged terrorist activities, for allegedly playing a key role as a leader in the Palestinian Islamic jihad, and funding suicide bombings that killed over 100 people in Israel, including two Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is the connection to this story?

CRAIG UNGER: Well, what’s extraordinary is that Bush not only campaigned with him, and there’s a photo of them campaigning together in Tampa in my book "House of Bush, House of Saud," and they -- he actually invited him to the White House after the election. And I think a very strong case can be made that Bush would not be president today, not having done that. During the second presidential debate with Al Gore, Bush suddenly became this rabid civil libertarian, which is extraordinary given his past. And he said that he was against racial profiling of Arab-Americans, and this came out of the blue. No, such question had been asked, there had been questions about racism against African-Americans, but not about Arab-Americans. And these were sort of code words he uttered to win that vote. Immediately after he said that, during the debate, an Arab – a Muslim-American leader got 31 calls on his cell phone, and said we have to now endorse Bush. The endorsements poured in. Bush won the Muslim-American vote in Florida by more than 90%. This proved obviously a key factor in winning Florida, and more than provided the difference of the 500 votes by which he allegedly won Florida.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Craig Unger, his book is "House of Bush, House of Saud." You begin with the great escape.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. I think the extraordinary story, again, it’s not been widely told. It has been referred to fleetingly in the American press. And here you have two days after 9-11 -- I mean, this is the most horrifying atrocity in American history, the worst crime in American history, 3,000 people are killed. Prince Bandar, the Saudi-Arabian ambassador to the United States, who had been a close, close member for -- well, I think he is virtually a member of the Bush family. Barbara Bush, the former first lady, calls him Bandar Bush, allows him to be the only person who is allowed to smoke in her home. And he has been a close friend of former president Bush. If you look at his body language in photos of him and President Bush, this is not a guy standing in awe of the president of the United States. This is a guy who is visiting his friend’s son, and he’s sort of lounging on the arm of a big armchair as if -- I wish I could be that relaxed, you know? But -- so they were meeting by 9/13 at the White House having cigars on the balcony on September 13.

AMY GOODMAN: September 13, 2001.

CRAIG UNGER: Exactly. And suddenly, flights began going out. I talked to two people on a flight from Tampa to Lexington, and that included three Saudi Royals on it as passengers, and the flights began. I found eight airplanes stopping in at least 12 American cities. This was a massive operation. It required White House authorization. It went from Los Angeles to -- there was Dallas, Houston, Cleveland, Boston, Newark. I mean, it is interesting. Two planes actually took off from -- flights from within cities from which the hijacked planes -- the hijackings had originated. And the airport officials were just agog that this was happening.

AMY GOODMAN: This was at Logan and Boston?

CRAIG UNGER: Exactly. And Newark. And the flights went out. I was --

AMY GOODMAN: All private jet plane traffic was grounded at that point?

CRAIG UNGER: Right. In fact, three private planes were forced down on September 13. Now the entire process took about two weeks. But the point is that it originated at a time when it required White House approval. And I was able to talk to Richard Clark, the former counterterrorism czar who was in the Situation Room at the White House at that time. And he told me that, in fact, he had been involved in discussions about it and he had said it was ok, so long as everyone was vetted by the FBI. Well, the problem is they were not really vetted by the FBI. I mean, in the most common place murder investigation, you want to talk to friends and relatives of the perpetrator, even if they're innocent, and you want to have serious investigation. Well, here you have such a humongous crime -- and their passports were identified, they were ID'd. But in many cases -- in virtually all cases, there was no serious interrogation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And who were some of the bin Laden family members that were here?

CRAIG UNGER: Well, what I was able to do for the first time was to obtain passenger lists for four of those flights. And the most astonishing name I found was a man named Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who is a very high ranking member of the royal family. A Saudi billionaire again. He was in Lexington, Kentucky. And he was best known to Americans as the owner of the Kentucky Derby winner, War Emblem. He was a great horse race owner.

AMY GOODMAN: War Emblem?

CRAIG UNGER: War Emblem, and he also owned Point Given, which won two legs of the Triple Crown the previous year. His horses won a total of four legs of the Triple Crown, and he was at the Yearling Sales in Lexington, Kentucky, and said he was very upset by 9-11. On September 12, he bought $1.2 million worth of horses. I don't know how upset he really was. And on September 13, that flight landed in Lexington, Kentucky from Tampa, and a couple of days later, flights took off and took him from Lexington to London.

AMY GOODMAN: Only one newspaper in Tampa reported that these flights had taken off. Even the old – was it an FBI-guy, a police guy who was sent to protect these people never believed they would get off the ground.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. That's right. The former FBI-men who were escorts said they went to the airport because they were being paid to do it.

AMY GOODMAN: Who were they paid by?

CRAIG UNGER: By the Saudis. And this one Tampa paper did an excellent job of reporting it, the Tampa Tribune. But not a single paper in the United States picked up on it. I eventually did a story in "Vanity Fair" that became part --

AMY GOODMAN: Was there a record at the airport that these planes had taken off, a ledger?

CRAIG UNGER: It was actually not terribly difficult to pin down. Again, the Tampa Tribune had done a very good job. I retraced the steps. I mean, essentially they printed the names, people were on the records. I got them from information. It doesn't take a genius to do this.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Craig Unger, author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties.” We'll come back with him, and talk about issues like what did global PR-firm Burson-Marsteller do to help the Saudis deal with the fallout of 9-11? Stay with us.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You talk in the book, obviously about the relationship over many years between the Bin Laden's and the Bush family and the Saudis in general. But clearly the Clinton Administration also, in many ways, had to deal with the Saudis and, to a certain degree, the Bin Laden family. You talk about the transition period also between -- as President Bush came in and Sandy Berger and the other Clinton officials briefed them on the war on terrorism and how they responded. Can you talk about that a little bit?

[...]

Source: http://www.democracynow.org/article....4/03/18/157206

[Armenian]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Hunting the Russian Bear - Why they're after Putin

At times it seems as though we've gone back in a time machine to the darkest, sub-zero days of the Cold War era, when Americans were frantically digging bomb shelters in their back yards, Godless Communism was on the march, and the jackboots of the KGB were just inches away from our waiting necks. Tony Blair, lecturing the Russian leader at the G-8 meeting, opined that the Western world, on behalf of which he presumed to speak, is "becoming worried, fearful about what was happening in Russia today, the external policy." These remarks echoed xxxx Cheney's sally last year against Russia's alleged attempt to use oil and gas as "tools of intimidation or blackmail, either by supply manipulation or attempts to monopolize transportation." That was said in response to Russia's threat to raise the price of energy previously sold at subsidized Soviet-era rates to Ukraine – a capitalistic act that was a bit too radical for the supposedly pro-free-market Cheney.

The Brits' beef with Putin also has to do with oil and gas. The Russian seizure of British oil assets in Siberia is being cited by free-market types as evidence that Putin is moving toward "corporatism," but is this any more "corporatist" than legislation currently on the books in the U.S. that forbids foreign ownership of key industries such as airlines and telecommunications? The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Who can forget the Dubai port-management brouhaha, when Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike demagogued the issue to score political points by conjuring the alleged threat posed by a Middle Eastern-based company having anything to do with maintaining our – rapidly decaying – "vital" infrastructure? The Dubai episode inaugurated a crackdown by U.S. regulators and inspired a host of economically disastrous yet politically popular measures in Congress that confirm "corporatism" is on the march in Washington at least as much as it is in Moscow. Remember when Chinese investors sought to buy out the oil company Unocal? The uproar was deafening, and the deal was scotched. So it turns out that British Petroleum is no more badly treated in Russia than Chinese-owned CNOOC Ltd. is in the U.S. – which, come to think of it, is perhaps why the Brits are so irked.

According to the mainstream news media's pampered pet pundits, Russian President Vladimir Putin is the reincarnation of Josef Stalin, and Russia under his rule is rapidly "backsliding" into "authoritarianism." According to Andrei Illarionov, a former economic adviser to Putin and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the resurgent Russian military is about to take out its neighbors and seal a reestablished Warsaw Pact in the blood of Georgian, Ukrainian, and possibly even Polish innocents. The British, in particular, have been hyping this "new Cold War" narrative for all it's worth – which, when it comes right down to it, isn't very much.

Is Russia embarked on a return to authoritarianism? The answer has to be an unequivocal no. After all, Putin has not closed down a single Russian "dissident" media outlet – instead, like their counterparts in the U.S., Russian media barons, at the head of vast corporate conglomerates, have bought up the major television networks and newspapers and imposed a Fox News-like unanimity on correspondents and pundits alike. While this may make for boring television and patently predictable punditry, it doesn't make Russia a fascist state, as all too many people who ought to know better are trying to imply.

I had to laugh when I heard the thrilling news that "hundreds of people" marched through the streets of St. Petersburg recently to protest Putin's supposedly repressive regime. This was one of a series of "dissidents' marches" being held by the "opposition" – a seriocomic coalition of chess champion Gary Kasparov and neo-fascist crackpot Eduard Limonov. Hundreds, eh? Hundreds of thousands of antiwar marchers over the years protesting America's policy in Iraq have failed to garner as much publicity as this little band did in record time – now isn't that odd?

Odder still is the nature of the "opposition" itself: Limonov is a punk-rock skinhead "idol" and sometime novelist whose crazed views are best summed up by his National Bolshevik Party's graphic incorporation of Soviet and Nazi symbols to create the single most repulsive party emblem in all of recorded history. Kasparov, aside from his well-known exploits in the game of chess, is a pawn of American neoconservatives: his real constituency isn't in Russia, where he remains an obscure political figure, but in Washington, D.C., where he stands amid such neocon luminaries as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and James Woolsey as a member of the Center for Security Policy. The Center is a major neocon propaganda outfit headed by longtime neocon activist Frank Gaffney, whose name is virtually synonymous with the military-industrial complex. Kasparov served on the Center's National Security Advisory Council along with Woolsey.

The neocons, by the way, are deeply committed to the Chechen cause and have been in the vanguard of the movement to demonize Putin as a latter-day Stalin: the list of endorsers of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya replicates the seating arrangements at the front table at an American Enterprise Institute awards dinner. It was Richard Perle, you'll recall, who averred that Russia ought to be expelled from the G-8 on account of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's arrest for crimes ranging from embezzlement to conspiracy to commit murder.

The neocons have allied themselves with the Russian oligarchs, who amassed fantastic wealth in post-communist Russia by means that might meet the approval of Tony Soprano, not the Better Business Bureau. These oligarchs seethe at their expulsion as they plot from abroad to return the country to their clutches. For years now, an unsavory popular front of Chechen terrorists, neoconservative hawks, and shady Russian oligarchs wearing Moss Lipow dark sunglasses and gobs of gold chains has massed at the gates of Moscow, demanding the ouster of the czar – and the clamor has now been taken up by Western governments. "It would be funny if it wasn't so sad" was Putin's response to the U.S. insistence that Poland and Czechoslovakia put anti-missile technology in place in order to guard against the supposed "threat" from an attack… launched by Iran. The joke is that the Iranians don't have missiles that can reach either Warsaw or Prague. To pretend that these anti-missile systems are aimed at an "enemy" other than Russia is the measure of the West's disdain for Putin: like a schoolyard bully who "accidentally" shoves his victims on the playground, they don't even bother to convincingly conceal their belligerence.

Putin's counterproposal to help set up a missile-interception system in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan is a deft deflection of Western claims that Putin poses a renewed Russian threat to the security of Europe. If the U.S. and Britain are genuinely concerned about a possible Iranian strike at the former Eastern bloc, then they'll sign on to Putin's generous offer. Their hesitation, one has to conclude, speaks volumes about their real motives for putting up the missile shield in the first place. Just as the demonstrators in the streets of Russian cities are seemingly intent on provoking the Russian police into a violent response, so the Western powers – alarmed at the rise of Putin on the world stage as the Americans' chief antagonist and most eloquent critic – are engaged in a series of large-scale provocations, including but not limited to the Eastern European missile shield.

Another irritant to Russia's increasingly fractious relations with the West is the issue of Kosovo's independence. Again, the Western love of double standards comes into play here, with Kosovo's alleged "right" to nationhood being upheld by an American president while the corresponding "right" of Russian-speaking (or pro-Russian) areas of the former Soviet Union, such as Abkhazia and the Transdniester Republic, to independence goes unrecognized by the West.

The real evidence, however, of just how badly relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated is the strange case of Alexander Litvinenko and the mystery surrounding his death. Having covered this subject at length in previous columns, I won't elaborate on the arcane technical and other details of this downright weird episode, which seems like a story straight out of a Hollywood thriller, except to say that the "official" version of how Litvinenko came to be poisoned by a rare radioactive substance, polonium-210, stinks to high heaven.

This narrative, which holds that Litvinenko was targeted by the KGB because of his alleged status as a Russian "dissident" living in exile in London, doesn't hold up under even the most forgiving scrutiny. After all, why kill him with a rare and easily traced substance – and with such an overdose that the cost alone would seem to rule out this method – when a simple shot in the back of the head would suffice? The sheer amount of disinformation and propagandistic nonsense dished out by the British tabloids alone on the subject probably consumed enough paper to deforest half of South America. Nor is the British indictment of Andrei Lugovoi enough to paper over the huge holes in the "official" story. Lugovoi, at any rate, is fighting back, with revelations that the Brits and Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky tried to recruit him to root out the dirt on Putin. In any case, the Litvinenko affair emanates the aura of a gigantic, somewhat sinister scam, perhaps involving the smuggling of polonium and the involvement of Islamic terrorist cells associated with the Chechens. What ought to worry us is that someone was possibly trying to assemble a "dirty bomb" of the type Jose Padilla was accused of masterminding – in the heart of London.

There seems little doubt the color-coded "revolutions," with Western material and moral support, targeted the former Soviet "near abroad" and aimed at reducing Russian influence and putting Putin on the defensive. The construction of a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe was the last straw. What had been primarily a propaganda campaign aimed at the Kremlin has now taken a decidedly military turn, one that bodes ill for the future and the cause of peace. There are those who never reconciled themselves to the end of the Cold War – that crucible in which the pestilential sect known as the neoconservatives was born and raised – and it seems a supreme effort is being made to revive it.

Today we hear endless stories about how the Russian leader and his country pose a threat to Western interests: Russia is "authoritarian," newly aggressive, "anti-Semitic," and, yes, even "homophobic." As the memory of 9/11 fades and the meaning of that historic disaster is increasingly disputed, the War Party needs fresh enemies whose alleged evil will thrill the popular imagination and satiate their hunger for villainy. Putin, flush with oil money and eager to regain Russia's place in the sun, fits the bill nicely. The truth is more prosaic. Putin is no dictator, and Russia, far from backsliding into neo-communism, is in a better position than ever to create a middle-class-based liberal democracy with the rule of law roughly comparable to the system that prevails in the West. The general rise in the Russian standard of living, after a catastrophic post-communist decline, puts a brake on any backward-looking authoritarian movement (neo-communist or otherwise) making appreciable progress.

That this occurred under Putin is the reason for the Russian president's enormous popularity and accounts for the marginalization of his opponents. As much as Western liberals and neocons loathe Putin and the prospect of a resurgent Russia, it doesn't look like regime change is on the agenda in the former Soviet Union, in spite of millions being poured into the region by Western governments to aid the opposition. The endless provocations aimed at the Kremlin will only have the effect of irritating the Russian bear – and creating yet more anti-American and anti-Western sentiment. As if we don't have enough of that already…

Russia has come a long way from being the land of the gulags, and it is never going to go back to that – not unless the West succeeds in looting that country, once again, and creating a Russian version of the Weimar Republic. This is precisely why lunatics of Eduard Limonov's ilk have joined the opposition as its noisiest and most visible wing – because the rise of Putin, who created order out of mafia-inspired chaos, short-circuited the Weimar Russia scenario and diverted the Russians down a different path.

Source: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11115

[Virgil]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

....

US Democrats want rethink on Iran

The Democrats in the United States have called for a rethink of policy on Iran.

It comes after a major new intelligence assessment suggested the government in Tehran is not trying to develop nuclear weapons at present.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate says it is now believed Iran stopped its weapons programme in 2003.

The Democrat leader of the US Senate, Harry Reid, said he hoped the White House would undertake "a diplomatic surge" to engage with Iran.

"I hope this administration reads this report carefully and appropriately adjusts its rhetoric and policy vis-a-vis Iran," said Mr Reid.

He added that the Bush administration should emulate former President Ronald Reagan's engagement with the Soviet Union.

The BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb says the Democrat response is a sign of the pivotal importance the new intelligence assessment might turn out to have.

But, our correspondent adds, Washington's Iran hawks are horrified.

In particular they are concerned that news of that key assessment will drown out other findings in the document - for instance, that Tehran is keeping open its option to develop a nuclear weapon and would have all the capacity to do so in the future if its leaders decided to go ahead.

A senior advisor to President Bush said the report was "positive" but the risk of a nuclear Iran remained "serious".

Iran is currently under sanctions from both the UN Security Council, which is demanding the end of uranium enrichment, and unilateral US sanctions.

'Technical problems'

The declassified summary of the report, which draws together information from the US's 16 intelligence agencies, says with "high confidence" that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 "in response to international pressure".

The assessment says with "moderate confidence" that the programme has not restarted.

This is a turnaround from previous assessments, when US intelligence agencies believed Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

Iran made "significant progress" in 2007 installing gas centrifuges used to enrich uranium - a process necessary for producing the fissile nuclear material needed to build a nuclear bomb, the report says.

But the report's authors judge with "moderate confidence" that Iran "still faces significant technical problems" operating the new equipment.

And they conclude that the country is not likely to have enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb until 2010-2015.

'Right strategy'

US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said the report's findings confirmed the US was "right to be worried" about Iran's nuclear ambitions and that President George W Bush had "the right strategy".

The international community should "turn up the pressure on Iran" using diplomatic isolation, UN sanctions and other financial leverage, he said.

The BBC News website's world affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds, says the report is cautious in its assessment of Iran's nuclear activities and provides little evidence for those who would like an early military attack.

He says it will strengthen the hand of those who want further sanctions since it states that past pressure has worked.

Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...as/7126177.stm

[Virgil]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Karzai seeks more Afghan forces

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has said that he needs more help from the international community to help build his country's armed forces.

Mr Karzai's comments come despite Afghan troops taking the lead in retaking the town of Musa Qala from the Taleban with Nato troops.

UK and US troops are now in the town, trying to secure it.

Nato forces fear there may be mines or booby-traps waiting for them and are unwilling to declare the battle over.

An Afghan ministry of defence statement recently said that the Afghan armed forces should be 200,000 strong.

But the BBC David Loyn in Kabul says there is no international support for that figure.

ASSAULT ON MUSA QALA
7 December: Major offensive begins, led by Afghan forces. US soldiers dropped by helicopter to carry out overnight assault

8 December: Twelve insurgents and two children reported dead after attack on town. One British soldier killed. British and Afghan troops take positions to south, west and east of town

9 December: Two men said to be senior Taleban leaders captured. One Nato soldier killed as town surrounded

10 December: Musa Qala re-taken by Afghan forces

[Yedtarts]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3HV39S6VEFHVZ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

[Armenian]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

An excellent commentary, I urge you all to read this.

Bringing Death and Destruction to Muslims

by Paul Craig Roberts

After pandering to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's right-wing government last week, US president George W. Bush carried the Israeli/neoconservative campaign against Iran to Arab countries. Sounding as authentic as the "Filipino Monkey," Bush told the Arab countries that "Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terror," and that "Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere." To no effect. Every country in the world, except America, knows by now that the US is the world's leading state sponsor of terror and that the neoconservative drive for US hegemony over the world threatens the security of nations everywhere. But before we get into this, let's first see what Bush means by "terrorist" and Iran's sponsorship of terrorism.

Bush considers Iran to be the leading state sponsor of terror, because Iran is believed to fund Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian ghetto. Hezbollah and Hamas are two organizations that exist because of Israeli aggression against Palestine and Lebanon. The two organizations are branded "terrorist" because they resist Israel's theft of Palestine and Israel's designs on southern Lebanon. Both organizations are resistance organizations. They resist Israel's territorial expansion and this makes them "terrorist." They are terrorists because they don't receive billions in US military aid and cannot put armies in the field with tanks, fighter jets and helicopter gunships, backed up by US spy satellites and Israel's nuclear weapons – although Hezbollah, a small militia, has twice defeated the Israeli army. However, Palestine is so thoroughly under the Israeli heel that Hamas can resist only with suicide bombers and obsolete rockets. It is dishonest to damn the terrorist response but not the policies that provoke the response.

The US is at war in Iraq, because the neoconservatives want to rid Israel of the Muslim governments – Iraq, Iran and Syria – that are not American surrogates and, therefore, are willing to fund Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to Israeli aggression. Israel, protected by the US, has disobeyed UN resolutions for four decades and has been methodically squeezing Palestinians out of Palestine. Americans do not think of themselves or of Israel as terrorist states, but the evidence is complete and overwhelming. Thanks to the power of the Israel Lobby, Americans only know the Israeli side of the story, which is that evil anti-semite Palestinians will not let blameless Israelis live in peace and persist in their unjustified terror attacks on an innocent Israeli state.

The facts differ remarkably from Israel Lobby propaganda. Israel illegally occupies Palestine. Israel sends bulldozers into Palestinian villages and knocks down Palestinian houses, occasionally killing an American protester in the process, and uproots Palestinian olive groves. Israel cuts Palestinian villages off from water, hospitals, farmlands, employment and schools. Israel builds special roads through Palestine on which only Israelis can travel. Israel establishes checkpoints everywhere to hinder Palestinian movement to hospitals, schools and from one enclave or ghetto to another. Many Palestinians die from the inability to get through checkpoints to medical care. Israel builds illegal settlements on Palestinian lands. Israeli Zionist "settlers" take it upon themselves to evict Palestinians from their villages and towns in order to convert them into Israeli settlements. A huge wall has been built to wall off the stolen Palestinian lands from the remaining isolated ghettoes. Israeli soldiers shoot down Palestinian children in the streets. So do Israeli Zionist "settlers."

All of this has been documented so many times by so many organizations that it is pathetic that Americans are so ignorant. For example, Israeli peace groups such as Gush Shalom or Jeff Halper's Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions provide abundant documentation of Israel's theft of Palestine and persecution of Palestinians. Every time the UN passes a resolution condemning Israel for its crimes, the US vetoes it. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees' film, The Iron Wall, reveals the enormity of Israel's crimes against Palestine. President Jimmy Carter, Israel's friend, tried to bring peace to the Middle East but was frustrated by Israel. Carter was demonized by the Israel Lobby for calling, truthfully, the situation that Israel has created "apartheid." Historians, including Israel's finest, such as Ilan Pappe, have documented The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the title of Pappe's book published in 2006.

Israelis, such as Uri Avnery, a former member of Israel's Knesset, are stronger critics of Israel's policies toward Palestine than can be found in America. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is more outspoken in its criticism of Israeli policies than any newspaper would dare to be in North America or Europe. But it is all to no avail in brainwashed America where Israelis wear white hats and Arabs wear black hats. The ignorance of Americans commits US foreign policy to the service of Israel. As Uri Avnery wrote recently, a visitor from another planet, attending the recent press conference in Jerusalem, would conclude that Olmert is the leader of the superpower and that Bush is his vassal. Americans don't know what terror is. To know terror, you have to be a Palestinian, an Iraqi, or an Afghan.

Layla Anwar, an Iraqi Internet blogger, describes what terror is like. Terror is families attending a wedding being blown to pieces by an American missile or bomb and the survivors being blown to pieces at the funeral of the newlyweds. Terror is troops breaking down your door in the middle of the night, putting guns to your heads, and carrying off brothers, sons, and husbands with bags over their heads and returning to rape the unprotected women. Terror is being waterboarded in one of America's torture dungeons. Terror is "when you run from hospital ward to hospital ward, from prison to prison, from militia to militia looking for your loved one only to recognize them from their teeth fillings in some morgue." For people targeted by American hegemony, terror is realizing that Americans have no moral conscience. Terror is the lack of medicines from American embargoes that led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked by Lesley Stahl if the American policy was worth the children's deaths, Madeleine Albright, President Bill Clinton's secretary of state, said "we think the price is worth it."

In the feeble minds of the White House Moron and his immoral supporters, the massive deaths for which America is responsible, including those inflicted by Israel, have nothing to do with Muslim enmity toward America. Instead, Muslims hate us for our "freedom and democracy," the real threat to which comes from Bush's police state measures and stolen elections. There is dispute over the number of Iraqis killed or murdered by Bush's illegal invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard, but everyone agrees the number is very large. Many deaths result from American bombing of civilian populations as the Israelis did in Lebanon and do in Gaza. There is nothing new about these bombings. President Clinton bombed civilians in Serbia in order to dictate policy to Serbia. But when Americans and Israelis bomb other peoples, it is not terror. It is only terror when the US or Israel is attacked in retaliation.

The Israeli assault from the air on Beirut apartment houses is not terror. But when a Palestinian puts on a suicide belt and blows himself up in an Israeli cafe, that's terror. When Clinton bombs a Serbian passenger train, that's not terror, but when a buried explosive takes out an American tank somewhere in Iraq, that's terror. Aggressors always have excuses for their aggression. Hitler was an expert at this. So are the US and Israel. Unfortunately for the world, there's little chance for change in America or Israel. The presidential candidates (Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) who would bring change in Washington, without which there will be no change in Israel, are not in the running for their party's nomination. As John J. Mearsheimer noted on January 12, the candidates in the running are as much under the thumb of the Israel Lobby as Bush. The candidates are Bush clones as strongly committed as Bush to hegemony, war, Israel and executive power.

The possible exception is Obama. If he is an exception, that makes him a threat to the powers that be, and, as we might have witnessed in the NH primary, the Republican-supplied, Republican-programmed Diebold electronic voting machines can easily be rigged to deny him the Democratic nomination. Hillary will not resist Israel's wishes, and her husband's presidency bombed at will his demonized victims. There is no essential difference between the candidates or between the candidates and George W. Bush. Alabama Governor George Wallace, a surprisingly successful third party candidate for the presidency, said as long ago as 1968, "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties." Today, four decades later, there's not a penny's worth of difference, not an ounce of difference. Both parties have revealed themselves to be warmonger police state parties. The US Constitution has few friends in the capital city.

Source: http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=12224

[Armenian]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Study: Bush, Other Officials Issued Hundreds of False Statements Before Iraq Invasion

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism. The White House did not immediately return a phone call for comment.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both. "It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President xxxx Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan. Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida. The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded. "Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

Source: http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=14555

[crusader1492]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Judging from the fact that Bush has less than a year left as president, not much will be said or done about his administrations treachery.

Of course, this is an injustice. But hopefully, the silver-lining in showcasing all the lies is that military action against Iran, (at least in the name of WMD and terrorism), will be strongly opposed.

Then again, I would not underestimate the bottomless apathy and/or the stupididty of the general American public in opposing the will of the next neo-con that enters the oval office.

[Armenian]

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Rummy Resurfaces, Calls for U.S. Propaganda Agency (Updated)

One of the many things I love about Donald Rumsfeld is that he's totally unrepentant. Back in 2001, the Pentagon under his leadership created the controversial Office of Strategic Influence, which was closed down just a few months later after its existence became public. Rightly or wrongly, the Pentagon was accused of creating a propaganda office. Now, the former defense secretary has a bigger vision: he is advocating a "21st century agency for global communications."

This was one of the major themes in one of Rumsfeld's first post-Pentagon public comments at a conference today on network centric warfare sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement. According to Rumsfeld, the United States is losing the war of ideas in the Muslim world, and the answer to that, in part, is through the creation of this new government agency. During the the Q&A after the speech, I asked Rumsfeld what this new agency might entail (he was pretty clear it wouldn't be a resurrected U.S. Information Agency, which was merged into State Department in 1999), and why, when there is an abundance of media available in the private sector, the government needs to get involved.

I'll just let Rumsfeld speak for himself:

Private media does not get up in the morning and say what can we do to promote the values and ideas that the free Western nations believe in? It gets up in the morning and says they're going to try to make money by selling whatever they sell... The way they decided to do that is to be dramatic and if it bleeds it leads is the common statement in the media today. They've got their job, and they have to do that, and that's what they do. We need someone in the United States government, some entity, not like the old USIA . . . I think this agency, a new agency has to be something that would take advantage of the wonderful opportunities that exist today. There are multiple channels for information . . . The Internet is there, blogs are there, talk radio is there, e-mails are there. There are all kinds of opportunities. We do not with any systematic organized way attempt to engage the battle of ideas and talk about the idea of beheading, and what it's about and what it means. And talk about the fact that people are killing more Muslims than they are non-Muslims, these extremists. They're doing it with suicide bombs and the like. We need to engage and not simply be passive and allow that battle of competition of ideas.

What would this agency actually do? Hard to say, but Rumsfeld referred approvingly back to when the Army paid reporters to plant stories in the local press in Iraq. He still thinks that was a good idea (and blames the U.S. press for screwing it up). In Rumsfeld's view, the free press can co-exist with government sponsored/produced/paid news. "It doesn't mean we have to infringe on the role of the free press, they can go do what they do, and that's fine," says Rumsfeld. "Well, it's not fine, but it's what it is, let's put it that way."

Source: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/0...wants-pro.html