On January 5 John Bolton, the former unconfirmed U.S. envoy to the United Nations, advocated in The Washington Post a "three-state solution" to the Palestinian problem. This "solution" involved returning Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan because the Palestinian state has manifestly failed.
There is a deep affinity between the United States and Israel. I’m not talking about the Israel Lobby, which concentrates its influence in Washington. Or the connections between neoconservatives and the Israeli right wing. Or the rhapsodizing of fundamentalist Christians, who embrace Israel as part of their scenario for the Apocalypse.
In discussing his plans for the Iraq War during the presidential campaign, one group that Barack Obama seldom, if ever, mentioned as supporting his proposed policy was the Iraqi people.
It was about midnight last Sunday when my phone rang. “I’m not sure I will survive tonight, the Israelis are bombing us everywhere.” It was Mahmoud, a young resident of Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt. We first met when I visited the troubled coastal territory after Israel dismantled its settlements there in September 2005. On December 27, just before midday, Israel’s powerful air force, the fourth largest in the world, commenced a deadly air assault on over 40 separate locations in the Gaza Strip. The strikes were as calculated as they were cold – the targets were almost entirely people and facilities vital to the Hamas government. In one of the areas hit, where police officers had gathered for a parade, body parts were strewn along a courtyard.
Ignoring the pleas of those calling for a more credible figure, Senate Democrats have instead chosen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to lead the Senate Committee on Intelligence. Feinstein was among those who falsely claimed in 2002 — despite the lack of any apparent credible evidence — that Saddam Hussein had somehow reconstituted Iraq’s arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, as well as its nuclear weapons program.
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Aaron Glantz’s The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle against America’s Veterans (University of California Press). Tragically, the death described here occurred nearly six months after the Walter Reed Scandal broke.
A distinct mixture of cross-cultural communication, intra-gender relations, and love of all things soccer, Football Under Cover (2008) documents the story of one German recreational female soccer team’s quest to play a historical game of soccer against the "international" female soccer team of Iran. Due to Iran’s strict cultural and religious laws, Tehran’s team had never played a game against another team.
John McCain and his "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran" lost the presidential election. George W. Bush and his view of Iran as an "evil" nation will soon leave the White House. Barack Obama could open a new chapter in U.S.-Iranian relations by visiting Iran. He wouldn’t be alone.
Key Points
(Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the book Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations, by Iraq Veterans Against the War and Aaron Glantz. For more about the Winter Soldier hearings, read this FPIF commentary by Glantz, an FPIF contributor. You can also watch Rosas’ testimony.)