VA Loans Guidelines

by Stephen Lendman

 

Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller now writes Times op-eds on alternate Mondays, as well as articles for The New York Times Magazine.

Too bad his columns get failing grades. Scoundrel journalism is featured. Truth and full disclosure are excluded. His March 18 article is typical.

Headlined, “Falling In and Out of War,” it began well. He admitted he’s been wrong on war and wants “to avoid repeating the mistake.” To his credit, he also said “it’s immeasurably more true for those in a position to actually start a war.”

He stopped short of explaining the vital role media scoundrels play, especially The Times as America’s most influential broadsheet. It’s major front page stories get global attention. As executive editor, and earlier as managing editor, he decided what got featured.

Many promoted war and support for wealth and power. Populism was excluded. So was and remains telling readers what they most need to know. Suppressing it is standard Times policy.

In his latest article, Keller wrote:

“What are the right questions the president should ask — and we as his employers should ask — when deciding whether going to war is (a) justified and (b) worth it?”

He asked five “plus two caveats, and some thoughts about how all this applies to” America’s wars and prospective ones.

Too bad he omitted what most need saying. More on that below. His questions included:

“1. How is this our fight?”

In 2001, he claimed protecting America’s “national interest” required “go(ing) after the homicidal zealots” responsible for 9/11, “and the Afghan regime that hosted them.”

Neither Afghan officials, bin Laden, or others there had anything to with it. Kellers knows or should. Yet he lied to readers, calling it the right thing to do.

Francis Boyle is an international law expert. His latest article is titled “End the Crime That Is the War on Afghanistan,” saying:

“….the Bush administration’s war against Afghanistan cannot be justified on the facts or the law. It is clearly illegal. It constitutes armed aggression. It is creating a humanitarian catastrophe for the people of Afghanistan.”

Bush and Obama bear main responsibility for millions of lives lost, mass destruction, unspeakable human misery, daily violence including rape, murder and torture, and Washington’s shocking indifference to extreme suffering.

After over a decade, it’s also America’s longest war. It’s unwinnable. Pentagon, administration, and Congressional officials know it. Yet no end of conflict’s planned, nor is ending an illegal occupation as Afghans demand immediately.

“2. At what cost?”

Keller claimed overthrowing Gaddafi was right and easy. Ousting Assad is also just but tough. He’s dead wrong on both counts.

Putting “a price on freedom” demands not overspending, he claims. Doing so may force Washington “to contract its global posture” like Britain and other empires had to do.

In other words, winning wars at the right price advance America’s imperium. Counterproductive ones should be avoided. Keller ignored rule of law principles, right and wrong, and other issues mattering most. It was typical NYT journalism.

“3. Or what?”

What if alternate strategies short of war fail? “The ultimate ‘or what’ question about Iran is, if sanctions and threats fail, could we live with a nuclear Iran?”

Again, Keller knows or should that Iran threatens no one. It hasn’t attacked another country in over 200 years, and US intelligence, Mossad, and IAEA inspectors find no evidence whatever of a nuclear weapons program or intention to have one.

Moreover, possessing any type weapons suggests no intent to use them. In contrast, America’s the only country ever to use nuclear weapons – gratuitously, in fact, when Japan was negotiating surrender.

Doing so was cold-blooded murder. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died. Killing them was criminal wrongdoing. Lawlessness is replicated in all US war theaters.

Today, America maintains a preemptive nuclear first-strike policy against perceived or manufactured threats, including non-nuclear states. Israel also is nuclear armed and dangerous.

In his 1997 book, “Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies,” Israel Shahak said:

“Israel (is) clearly prepar(ing) itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East (with no) hesitati(on) to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones.”

Iran threatens no one. Neither does Syria. America and Israel menace humanity.

“4. And who else?”

Keller favors US wars when allies “share the cost to spread the risk.” In other words, he endorses coalition-of-the-willing lawlessness with enough co-conspirators.

Syria’s another matter because “no one is volunteering to join us yet.”

In other words, collective might is right no matter how wrong.

“5. Then what?”

He’s right. Unintended consequences matter, but not ones he mentioned. Invading Iraq, he said, “distracted our attention and energy from the far more important undertaking in Afghanistan.”

In other words, unwinnable quagmires are bad enough. “(R)ushing too fast for the exists” exacerbates things. Syria poses the same dilemma. What comes after Assad, and does anyone support occupying another Muslim country?

Before waging war and deploying troops, said Keller, “deploy the fact-checkers” to assure it’s done for the rights reasons.

Excluded from Keller’s equation was fundamental international and US law. They’re clear, unequivocal, and violations constitute lawless aggression.

No nation may interfere in the internal affairs of others for any reason except self-defense when attacked or if clear evidence shows one’s imminent.

Moreover, declaring war is the most serious decision nations make. America’s founders understood. As a result, they afforded Congress alone the power “to declare war,” not presidents on their own authority.

After Vietnam, the War Powers Resolution gave executives the power to act unilaterally for 60 days in response to a “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” They have another 30 days to disengage, short of congressional assent to continue.

All US post-WW II wars were illegal, including current ones. So will attacking Iran and/or Syria. Compelling reasons, according to law, don’t exist. No other justification’s legal.

Keller omitted what most needs explaining, highlighting, and repeating. Grade him “F” for his latest op-ed. Give him a second one for betraying his readers.

Give the Times one also for daily scoundrel journalism instead of mandating what writers are supposed to do – their job.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

The Progressive News Hour.

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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=194498

 

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

 

Every year we pass a National Defense Authorization Act.  Each year, it has something hidden in it, secret tax breaks for big party contributors, pork barrel projects but this year we have gone too far.  This year’s bill officially recreates the equivalent of the East German or North Korean police state here at home, as usual, “to protect us from terrorism.”

Here, Senator Rand Paul makes it clear as day as does Senator John McCain.  It is quite obvious, John McCain has totally broken with reality.   Problem is, he stands here with the majority.  What does this tell you?

YouTube – Veterans Today -

I want protection from our own government, me and, thus far, about 250 million other Americans.  We have seen what they can do, and many of us know they are willing to go much further, we don’t just think it, we know it and we know why.

THE POLITICS

The Senate, all Republicans and too many key Democrats are pushing through the most insane legislation in our history, at a time when America hasn’t had a functioning Supreme Court for years.  The law, how do we describe it, is very clear.  It creates a permanent state of martial law in the United States, unlimited wire tapping, unlimited warrant-less searches, “stop, search and question” checkpoints at state borders, no more right to legal counsel.

It also authorizes torture, it authorizes transfer and detention of American citizens at “offshore” prisons, Europe, Africa, who knows?

Why?  Why now?  What is driving this, is this really about terrorism, is America facing a massive terrorist threat despite all reports to the contrary including estimates by CIA Director Leon Panetta that Al Qaeda may be down to less than 12 members?  There are, of course, those who believe there never has been an “Al Qaeda.”  The BBC almost imploded when this piece was released and, of course, later suppressed:

YouTube – Veterans Today -

Let’s be clear.  There is a threat, not against America but against our politicians.  The threat is that if they don’t bow down to special interests by protecting Wall Street from “Occupy” or by attacking Iran though “proof” of Irans weapons programs has again been “debunked,” a flood of what used to be illegal cash will go to their opponents.

Nobody wants to leave their seat on the “gravy train.”  If a very real version of “Arab Spring” comes to America and the people get a real whiff of democracy, the American people will set on their politicians like ravaging dogs.

After watching government after government fall, only starting with the Middle East, including a very viable threat against the current ultra-nationalist military dictatorship in Israel..

Oh, you didn’t know Israel was a military dictatorship and that 500,000 Israeli Jews are in the streets demanding Netanyahu’s ouster?  We call this “censorship.”  Why are Jews leaving Israel and being replaced with Russian non-Jews?  Why is Israel aligning itself away from the United States and becoming closer and closer to Russia each day?

This has nothing to do with the Jewish people, its geopolitics, its preparing for the global financial meltdown and quite perhaps a global Armageddon as well.  However, the realignments have nothing to do with people or politics.  The folks at “Occupy” have it right, 100%, its about a global ruling class and the spats every now and then between power groups over the remains of what is left of the rest of us.  They are fighting over our bones and we are stupid enough to do the fighting for them.

You may have heard something about Egypt and Syria but, chances are, you were too busy watching Libya to realize that that the entirety of the world has changed in the past 3 months.

Europe is broke, utterly defenseless and the European Union is coming apart.  NATO will die with it.  Russia is being reassembled under Putin, with “former republics,” one after the other rejoining a new Soviet Union, this time one with more money, more efficiently run and very very angry at the United States.

America is surrounded, Mexico in upheaval to the south, Canada sick of us to the north, Europe dismembered as an economic and military unit.  France, Britain and Italy were overwhelmed by the very minor UN operation in Libya.  Any  real enemy and they would fail entirely.

Italy and Greece just had groups of “international bankers” walk in and appoint new heads of state, no election, both new national leaders former executives of Goldman Sachs, the most corrupt and predatory financial organization on earth.

This is why America is pushing through what I would like to call “stealth legislation” that totally abrogates our constitution.  There is nothing “stealth” about it, it is being done in plain sight.

DICTATORSHIP BY A FAILED MILITARY

The idea of the military running America is a joke.  Fighting in Iraq, after years of stalemate, a war planned by morons, was reached by paying off the enemy and agreeing to keep ourselves locked up on our own bases like prisoners of war.  By that standard, 48,000 American troops are POWs in Iraq, a war that goes into the “loss” column like none other.  Vietnam was a “big win” in comparison.

Nothing whatsoever came of Iraq other than 6000 dead, 400,000 wounded and disabled, 2 million Iraqis dead and 3 trillion dollars of debt.  We left behind a country in total chaos that will hate us until the end of time, perhaps longer.

Do we want to discuss Afghanistan?  What have we done there?  Our ally for 65 years, Pakistan, hates us now.  Why?  Our Afghan allies, almost all members of the Taliban, tricked us into attacking our own ally, and not for the first time.  Afghanistan hates us, like no other nation on earth but is also dependent on us as well.  Why?

Afghanistan produces $80 billion in heroin, not opium, that was the past.  They produce heroin.  Their cut is around $2 billion, enough to enrich warlords across the country.  Who gets the rest?  We checked.  400 members of congress get million in drug money laundered through offshore corporation as “soft money contributions.”  “Fat envelopes” to go Pentagon officials who “look the other way” and the rest goes to the CIA and its bankers.  As to who they are, they are, we could simplify things and call them “Wall Street.”

They want protection and the new Defense Authorization Act will give them that and more, much more.

Best of all, America’s military during its worst failures, under its worst management, facing massive cutbacks, is now maneuvering itself to take over police powers inside the United States.  Why?

The “War on Terror” is over.  Did we win or lose?  Neither, we made the whole thing up, invented it as a cheap replacement for the Cold War.  Who has that power?

Ever hear of the “Military, Industrial Complex?”  Add huge international drug cartels, the Israel lobby and Wall Street to it and you have all the power in the world and all the bad intentions with it.  What do they want?  I can tell you what they don’t want.

The don’t want free elections, they don’t want an America with a constitutional government, they don’t want peace and plenty, they don’t want “civilians” and “intellectuals” telling them what to do.  They don’t get along well with lawyers and courts and things like “justice,” words that mean nothing to them but represent “freedom” and “liberty” to the rest of us who don’t seem to matter a hill of beans anymore.

CONSPIRACY

There is always a conspiracy somewhere.  After all, America has 880,000 people in the military, government and industry with “top secret” security clearances.  As many as half of these are in the private sector.

What do they do, the private ones, any of them?  I can tell you.  We don’t know and never will but if you did know you would stop it immediately.

That’s the whole reason for secrecy.

Did you think it was about spying?  American nuclear secrets, battle plans, space technology and such has been peddled around the world on an open market for so many years it is a joke.  Here is a classic.

We spent $300,000,000,000 developing the F 35 Joint Strike Fighter.  Before the first one went into production, 67.9 Tb of data, every plan for every aspect of the system from metalurgy to stealth to weapons systems was stolen and sold.  India, China and Russia have the plans, having bought them from Israelis spies who were given security clearances and simple uploaded the whole thing.

Now our “air superiority” for the next 40 years is gone, as is $300 billion in research and development and potential enemies have moved forward 3 generations in technology overnight.  You didn’t hear it?  Want to see the Chinese version?

YouTube – Veterans Today -

Ever bit of technology here is America.  Duplicating the engines will take a bit longer so the Chinese borrowed Russian engines to test their new American technology which they bought from certain Israeli/American defense specialists at bargain basement prices.

There was no investigation nor will there ever be one.  Jonathan Pollard was the last Israeli spy the US was allowed to arrest and he turned over the names of every CIA intelligence asset, all our nuclear codes, our war plans, our weapons systems to Russia.  This is why he is doing life in prison and still, members of congress are trying to get him released, many of the same members of congress who are now trying to pass the new “no more America” law.

Why? Simple.  They are being bribed or blackmailed.  What can you give a congressman, someone who has had an inside track on theft for years?  Here’s one for you.  You offer them organ transplants for them or any member of their family.  This is just one of the things put on the table, confirmed, very confirmed.  They also get enough money to stay in office for life, protection against prosecution and a guarantee that no scandals will ever reach the press.

Who has this kind of power?  You don’t know?

MORE CONSPIRACY

Why does the government want the ability to arrest any American that they choose to label a “terror suspect?”  What is a terror suspect?  I have 4 friends accused of terror crimes.  I used to work for the Reagan Administration in an unspecified capacity.  Other friends did as well.  Lee Wanta, who was imprisoned served as President Reagan’s Director of National Intelligence.  He was sent to prison for siding with President Reagan against the wishes of the Bush family.  The issue was money.  Wanta sided with America and, though he spent his life working for the President of the United States and the CIA, went to prison without any real trial at all.

Anther friend, a close friend, former member of Congress, good friend to President Reagan, former US Ambassador to the United Nations was charged with 52 counts of terrorism.  His crime?  He privately submitted “slam dunk” proof to the President of the United States that information that was leading the United States into invading Iraq was false.

Another friend, Director of Intelligence for a major ally, a nuclear power, was put on a “terrorist list” for publicly announcing that the 9/11 attacks were performed with full complicity of the Bush administration.  He can prove it as can so many more.  They will never be asked.  He was, at one time, perhaps the most valuable friend the US had.  Then he decided to place honor above all else.  That make him a “terrorist.”

Others around me have been put under house arrest, one locked in a mental hospital, others silenced or worse.  Why?

These were people with high security classification who learned of plots against America by other Americans and tried to stop them.

Some day a memorial will be built to such people.  Will it have more names than the Vietnam Wall?

WHAT IS A PATSY?

Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for murdering President John F. Kennedy.  Recent research done by Dr. James Fetzer of the University of Minnesota, which includes an analysis of the confession of former Watergate figure and top CIA operative Howard Hunt, debunks the Oswald theory.  So does physics, witness statements and years of credible research.  Nobody really has taken the “Oswald theory” seriously since congress officially cast it aside in 1975.  Oh, you didn’t know?

 

Oswald, when arrested said:  “I am just a patsy.”

YouTube – Veterans Today -

A “patsy” is someone conveniently available, often carefully selected and groomed, some we are told are subjected to “mind control” or simply drugs and hypnosis, people used as tools so powerful groups can commit acts of terror, assassinations and have someone to blame.

A “patsy” has to be silenced.

Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby who was then sequestered and silenced.

The Detroit “crotch bomber,” Abdullah Mohammed was a “patsy” as was the “Times Square Fizzler.”  Their phony terror attacks were carefully timed to news cycles and funding authorizations.

The supposed 9/11 hijackers, the 19 who proved invisible to airport cameras, 10 of whom claim they are still alive despite a fiery death, were patsies.

They had to be sequestered, drugged, intimidated and manipulated in order to provide the useful ”service” that we seem to so often need, the carefully timed terror threat or news story, like so many of the Osama bin Laden videos we were subjected to after his untimely death in 2001.  Oh, you didn’t know?  There is no more secure patsy than one already dead.

When you are done with him, you simply have to pretend to kill him again, throw his non-existent body into the sea and then kill off anyone who might rat you out in a series of helicopter crashes. 

Now we want to take it a step further, no more risks of trials and lawyers, no more embarrassing Arab hijackers on talk shows proving they aren’t as dead as they are supposed to be.

WHY THE CHANGES, WHY NOW

America has never been as militarily weak as we are now.  Last week, Germany tried to sell a few billion in bonds and had few buyers.  They have the world’s highest credit rating.  The lesson?  If America went to war, it would be unable to borrow money to support our military because our ability to market treasuries, how we finance debt, is at an end.  If Germany can’t borrow, we can’t.

Our primary NATO allies are even broker than we are, have no money even for ammunition.  We stand alone, not just because, as with Bush, we are a pariah state fighting an aggressive war for drugs, oil and Israel but because we no longer have the economic capacity to support military power.

Our military, as we know it is temporary.  It will be going away, the process has already begun.

Our only hope for new wars and new wars are the only hope that some have, that “some” being the ruling class that is pushing the new Defense Authorization Act forward, with its martial law provisions, are based on our ability to fool the world into believing America has been attacked.

Our plan, as with 9/11, is to attack ourselves.  Britain did it on 7/7.  Britain was caught, a jury decided it but you will never read it, not in any newspaper you will be able to buy without a transaction that looks like a drug deal.

For those who don’t know, the proof on the 9/11 conspiracy, Israel’s part, the Pentagon missile, all of it has leaked onto the internet and into some of the world’s press.  You may learn about it next week or next year but you will learn about it.

“They” don’t want you  to ever be able to find out the truth again and this is what this bill is about.  America won’t be able to go to China and Japan and ask for billions, even trillions of dollars to invade Iran or fight Russia, where we are really heading unless you haven’t been paying attention, without being able to claim that terrorists used a nuclear weapon to attack an American city.

We’ve all been hearing the horror stories about economic collapse.  With that collapse goes all miltiary power as well.  Even China can collapse, they are sitting on the edge themselves.  What the ability to stage terror attacks, even nuclear false flag terrorism can do is act as a giant “reset” button.  Borrowing, if anything is left, is one ploy but, as things stand, debt repudiation and restructuring of currencies, that New World Order we hear about, control of governments, control of economies, centralized control of money and all resources becomes an “easy sell.”

Maybe it won’t be a big bomb, only a hundred thousand dead or so.  maybe “they” have something else in mind, 9/11 was certainly dramatic, it will be hard to top.

The only way that “they” can maintain “damage control” over a story like this with government credibility totally non-existent is to use martial law to jail the phony terrorists, to “disappear” investigative journalists, to “pull the plug” on the internet, it is all heading one way.

It is all part of the same thing.

Just hope you and yours don’t live close to “ground zero” when the “Masters of the Universe,” the puppeteers pulling John McCain’s strings decide to push the button.

 

 

 

 

 

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