Backlog of Links

Here are some of the links I've accumulated over the past week or so. Also note that I've taken down the "Stop Bush. Stop the War." icon to the right (again, thanks to LAM).

The "war" is over, but I reserve the right to throw the icon back up if (when?) the administration gets ready to move on. I've also reorganized the "iraq war" links section. I was tempted to take it down, but will leave it up for the time being.

Here we go...

* Violence is as American as apple pie.

* The battle for the soul of the American republic has just begun. Robert Parry explains how the fight is taking shape.

* "America's key adviser on a new Iraqi constitution has said that the United States should accept the country becoming an Islamic democracy," reports the BBC.

* Neil Mackay of the Glasgow Sunday Herald reports on how Iraq is going to be cut up by US multinationals in a showcase for privatization.

* The NY Times reports that the "number of black Americans under 18 years old who live in extreme poverty has risen sharply since 2000 and is now at its highest level since the government began collecting such figures in 1980, according to a study by the Children's Defense Fund."

* The US is detaining minors on Guantanamo.

* The US is going to begin pulling troops out of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden has been appeased.

* Hey, did you know the Bush administration deceived its way into the Iraq war? It turns out the road to Baghdad was paved with lies. Au contraire, say the Bushies. They weren't lying. The administration merely harped on Saddam's WMDs "to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans," ABC News reports.

* The pro-Israel lobby has plans on exploiting the war in Iraq to get across its message. A document commissioned by the Wexner Foundation "spells out the tactics that Israel and its US advocates should use to maintain support for Israel and its hardline policies," according to Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada.

* The evidence connecting Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden is bogus, according to Wayne Madsen. British intelligence is skeptical, too.

* Ashleigh Banfield speaks her mind about the US media's woeful war reporting and is chopped down by her handlers. Friggin hypocrites.

* Muslims eye the euro as the new oil currency? Maybe William Clark was right all along...

* Neocons don't like the "Road Map" to peace in the Mid East.

* The Bush administration has taken aim at the core civil rights values of the United States, according to a new report from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund.

* Many of the missing Iraqi antiquities "are speeding through the underground art market into the hands of foreign collectors," according to William Langley of the Telegraph.

* Phil Brennan details how the CIA defeated Saddam Hussein. In a related story, Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times chronicles the widespread belief in the Arab world that Hussein made a deal to turn over Baghdad to the invading forces.

* In an article for the Progressive, Robert Jensen writes that the Pentagon owned the American media during the Iraq war. Much of the reporting was merely stenography, a perfect example of the bankruptcy of contemporary journalism.

* So you didn't support the Iraqi invasion, eh? It's payback time!

* To imply that the neocons drove the US to war in Iraq makes you a conspiracy theorist and borderline anti-Semite, according to Robert J. Lieber, a professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University.

* EPA agents "are being diverted from their normal investigative work to provide security and drivers for agency chief Christie Whitman," John Heilprin of the Associated Press reports.

* The Bush White House wants to keep the secrets of 9/11 hidden. Justin Raimondo elaborates.

* "According to journalists close to the Vatican," Wayne Madsen alleges, "the Pope and his closest advisers are...concerned that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda."

* Republicans are looking to exploit the 9/11 tragedy in order to get Bush re-elected in 2004. Bush is cozying up to the military, too, hoping to refine his image for the campaign.

* William Greider argues that the Right's grand ambition is to rollback the 20th century.

* Saddam gassed his own people! So did the US government.

* "The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations," the NY Times reports.

* Bill "Our Guide to Moral Clarity" Bennett is a hypocrite. Try to act surprised.