“President Trump’s recent cabinet shake-up looks to be a real boost to hard-line militarism and neo-conservatism. If his nominees to head the State Department and CIA are confirmed, we may well have moved closer to war.”
“February 7, 2002 remains a grim day in the modern American calendar, and one that, I think, should be marked every year, along with other key dates — August 1, 2002, for example, when the ‘torture memos,’ seeking to redefine torture so that it could be used by the CIA, were issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, written by John Yoo and approved by his boss, Jay Bybee, and December 2, 2002, when Donald Rumsfeld approved his own specific torture program for use at Guantánamo, which was initially intended for use on just one prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani, but which ended up being used on one in six of the prisoners, according to a former interrogator who spoke to Neil A. Lewis for a New York Times article in January 2005.”
“From Abu Ghraib in Iraq to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the U.S. has engaged in brutal and violent abuse toward detainees suspected of terrorism — despite the fact that such brutality and abuse is what may have motivated many of those detainees to begin with.”
Read more: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/12/torture-terrorists-guantanamo-abu-ghraib/
“George W. Bush should have permanently taught Americans that presidents are most dangerous when seeking to con the nation into unnecessary wars — for democracy or any other pretext. Unfortunately, the recent media consecration of Bush may be expunging that bitter lesson.”
“The U.S. attack is completely illegal under such international law as exists. The U.N. charter is very clear on that. One cannot help but reach the conclusion that something is dreadfully wrong in our system. Germany, Italy and Japan, when they were fascist-controlled, similarly launched expansionary and aggressive moves against various regions.”
Read more: https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/u-s-bombs-assad-forces-openly/
“It would be a worrying development if any president of the United States announced, with little debate or discussion, a plan both to build more tactical nuclear weapons and use them in response to non-nuclear attacks; a nuclear strategy that makes the use of nukes more, not less, likely. But when that president is Donald J. Trump, it should be deemed a national, if not a global, emergency.”
Read more: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/08/donald-trump-nuclear-war/
“This is an insane escalation. It tells every country that the US government believes in the first use of nuclear weapons against any and every country. Those responsible for this document should be committed to insane asylums, not left in policy positions where they can put it into action.”
“So, why is Vice-president Mike Pence attending the Winter Olympics in South Korea? Is it because he’s a sports fan who just wants to enjoy the quadrennial spectacle of the Olympic games? Unfortunately, no. Pence is going to the games for political purposes. He intends to use them as an opportunity to level a propaganda attack against North Korea, the communist regime that the U.S. government has long been committed to regime-changing.”
Read more: https://www.fff.org/2018/02/08/political-gamesmanship-olympics/
“It’s true that the federal government used to consist of three branches. Bu that quaint notion disintegrated when the federal government was converted to what is known as a ‘national-security state’ after World War II. Even though it was done without a constitutional amendment, that conversion effectively added a fourth branch of government to the federal government — the national-security branch, which consists of the NSA, the CIA, and the Pentagon. The addition of that fourth branch fundamentally altered the original three-branch concept, especially because the fourth branch quickly became the most powerful branch. The reason is because ultimately government is force, and the fourth branch is where the most force was concentrated within the new, altered governmental structure.”
Read more: https://www.fff.org/2018/02/05/america-military-nation/
“Not only will the B-61’s new modification make it ideal for destroying dug-in bunkers, the kind in which North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might hide during a conflict, but it has an adjustable nuclear yield that could limit harmful radioactive fallout after a nuclear attack.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-stealth-bombers-guam-tactical-nuclear-strike-north-korea-2018-1