The following post was published on Truth Dig

Posted on Feb 1, 2008
By Barry Lando
As I was reading through several news items last week on the Internet about the appalling situation in Gaza, I received an e-mail alert from my wife. It had...

Last Friday, President George Bush called for a $150 billion dollar stimulus package to "jump start" America's flagging economy. The problem, he assured his viewers, was temporary.

"I'm optimistic about our economic future," said the president, "because Americans have shown time and again that they are the most industrious,...

For late-night talk show hosts, yukking up George W. Bush's visit to the Middle East was like shooting fish in a barrel. Supposedly on a mission promoting peace (between Israel and the Palestinians) the President spent most of his trip rattling sabers against Iran. He spoke glowingly in Abu Dhabi...

Much of the reporting of President Bush's trip to the Middle East is shadow play, an incredible con game. The suckers are the American public.

Today's headline, for instance, has Bush telling Saudi King Abdullah that the high price of oil is hurting the U.S. economy. This, the...

This morning brings the remarkable news that Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone to work as a part time consultant for the huge JP Morgan investment bank, at a salary estimated at a million dollars a year.

What I find remarkable is not so much the news as...

Like a distant historical footnote to the bloody tragedy raging in Iraq, the trial of Saddam Hussein's cousin, Chemical Ali, and 14 other former lieutenants of Saddam, began this week. The prosecutor accused them of perpetrating" among the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history."

In a just...

While everyone is focusing on the U.S. led surge in Baghdad, Iraq's second largest city Basra--a city that the British army were supposed to be pacifying -- has been going down the tubes. That may well be the fate of Baghdad and much of the rest of Iraq as well,...

As expected the Iraqi Special Tribunal sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid alias Chemical Ali to death, along with two other defendants for their role in the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s.

All the key players in the media were there to capture the dramatic...

With all the talk of the U.S. and Iran working together in Iraq -- here's a modest proposal for possible cooperation: the two countries should join together to arm the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. It's not at all as outrageous an idea as it sounds, since both Iran and the...

The key issue the candidates should be discussing about Iraq is not the way they voted in 2002 , nor whether the U.S. "surge" of 38,000 U.S. troops should continue after September. All this talk is just shadow play -- missing (I would say, purposely) the heart of the matter.

George W. Bush is now attempting to justify a long term American occupation of Iraq by citing non existent parallels between that country and South Korea. The two cases have nothing in common, as Juan Cole details. But Bush's outrageous claim only serves to underline the incredibly wrong headed policies...

We are witness to a spectacular surge of violence across the entire swathe of the Middle East and Central Asia. Some would take it as proof that the clash of civilizations is already upon us.

Marshalling the forces on one side of this conflict is the United States of...

Now that Paul Wolfowitz has been more or less sidelined, how about some questions for Condoleezza Rice?

What's to ask Condi? Well, for starters her role in the Oil-for-Food scandal -- a role she might have played first in private industry, and then, as President Bush's National Security Advisor.

This...

On April 5th, there was a moving ceremony at the State Department. Assistant Secretary Barry Lowenkron presented--as mandated by the U.S. Congress--the fifth annual Supporting Human Rights and Democracy Report, which, said the secretary, " documents the many ways the United States worked worldwide last year to foster respect...

Now let's see if we've got this right:

As negotiations over the 15 captured Brits were going on, an Iranian diplomat, who had been kidnapped in Iraq a couple of months ago, was suddenly freed and returned to his embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday.

That diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, the second...

Former British Ambassador Craig Murray has suggested what would seem to be a sensible solution to the spiraling crisis in the Gulf: The Brits simply admit that the maritime boundaries are not at all clear in the Gulf; therefore both sides may have grounds for believing their positions are correct....

Former British Ambassador Craig Murray is now challenging the legitimacy of the map just published by the British government in the current dispute with Iran over those 15 captured British sailors and marines.

"Fake Maritime Boundaries
I have been unpopular before, but the level of threats...

As always, our mainstream media is loath to reporting all sides to a dispute that is far more complex than our leaders let on.

Despite Tony Blair's adamant denial that the 15 British sailors and marines captured by the Iranians were intruding in Iranian waters, Commodore Nick Lambert, who headed...

It was a small step for a Bush administration which had reviled the Geneva Conventions as "quaint" to run roughshod over diplomatic niceties as well. Part of the payback may be the current crisis involving British seamen seized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy in the disputed waters of the...

It's time for the Iraqis to cease their bloody sectarian rivalries, disband their ruthless militias and death squads and take responsibility for their country's fate. Why should American boys continue dying to save Iraqis from their own perverse selves?

It's a view expressed by all sides in the U.S....