The spiritually inclined individuals must disavow the crimes of our nation in order to advance to a far more divine realm, where the wanton killing of children does not occur.
Just as Nixon’s opening to China helped Washington achieve numerous mutually beneficial objectives in East Asia, only rapprochement with Tehran can bring stability to the Persian Gulf, to its critical oil flows and for that matter to Iran’s chaotic eastern neighbor, Afghanistan.
Some images move us, or at least should move us, to sudden insight into the consequences of our actions. Images of innocent victims of violence, particularly children, should have the capacity to penetrate the most hardened defenses and touch our hearts.
If the new round of negotiations in Almaty are to be productive, the P5+1 should take a more serious approach to diplomacy, because if this offer is any indication, Iran won’t be taking their proposals very seriously. Nor should it.
His mortal sin — he rejected AIPAC’s core principle on Capitol Hill, which is that US senators and representatives should always act as if they were Israeli senators and representatives on any and all matters of even the slightest interest to Israel, and he refused to blindly endorse AIPAC’s episodic resolutions circulating on Capitol Hill.
The neoconservatives have been in the forefront in attacking Hagel while AIPAC has stayed in the background. Should the neocons ultimately stop Hagel, it would be an amazing success. A perceived enemy of Israeli interests would be defeated without any negative political ramifications for Israel or the Israel lobby
Why is it a benign redundancy? There is absolutely no evidence that the intelligence agencies here, as well is in Israel, are wrong in their assessment that Iran is not in the process of developing a nuclear arsenal.
Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern warns, CIA Director-to-be John Brennan played fast and loose on Iran’s nuclear program in his Senate testimony, a troubling sign he might undermine the principle of honest analysis just like his mentor, George Tenet.
Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern recalls a decade ago, only a few people had a chance to stop the rush to war with Iraq, but one – Colin Powell – instead joined the stampede.
SALEHI: We have a morally driven political system, and a system that is morally driven will never think of inflicting harm to any people. We have no animosity toward the Jewish people. In fact, for your information, the largest Jewish community after Israel in the Middle East is in Iran. We have about 20-30,000 Jewish people still living in Iran. They have members in our parliament. In fact, when you speak to an Iranian Jew, he says he is an Iranian Jew, not a Jew and then an Iranian. He is first an Iranian and then a Jew.
The country has changed: the dark days of the Bush era, when smear campaigns aimed at anyone who challenged the Lobby’s dominance usually ended in the target’s political destruction, are over. The fury and energy of the anti-Hagel campaign only served to underscore its complete impotence and irrelevance: the country has moved on, even if [...]
So, maybe Hagel will be a Shockley and make it to City Hall despite the bullet holes and betrayals, or maybe he will “assimilate” and end up talking and operating just like everyone else. For our part, as long as we keep the blinders off, we should keep our hopes up – and “nag, nag, nag”* all the way.
A major issue in Washington pertaining to foreign policy and national security affairs is the fight over President Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. Why is it so important?
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