Why World War II ended with Mushroom Clouds

Why World War II ended with Mushroom Clouds

65 years ago, August 6 and 9, 1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki

by Jacques R. Pauwels

Global Research, August 6, 2010 “On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, the nuclear bomb ‘Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima by an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000-140,000.”[1] “On August 9, 1945, Nagasaki was the target of the world's second atomic bomb attack at 11:02 a.m., when the north of the city was destroyed and an estimated 40,000 people were killed by the bomb nicknamed ‘Fat Man.’ The death toll from the atomic bombing totalled 73,884, as well as another 74,909 injured, and another several hundred thousand diseased and dying due to fallout and other illness caused by radiation.”[2] In the European Theatre, World War II ended in early May 1945 with the capitulation of Nazi Germany. The “Big Three” on the side of the victors –Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union – now faced the complex problem of the postwar reorganization of Europe. The United Stateshad entered the war rather late, in December 1941, and had only started to make a truly significant military contribution to the Allied victory overGermany with the landings in Normandy in June 1944, less than one year before the end of the hostilities. When the war against Germany ended, however, Washington sat firmly and confidently at the table of the victors, determined to achieve what might be called its “war aims.” As the country that had made the biggest contribution and suffered by far the greatest losses in the conflict against the common Nazi enemy, the Soviet Union wanted major reparation payments from Germany and security against potential future aggression, in the form of the installation in Germany, Poland and other Eastern European countries of governments that would not be hostile to the Soviets, as had been the case before the war. Moscow also expected compensation for territorial losses suffered by the Soviet Union at the time of the Revolution and the Civil War, and finally, the Soviets expected that, with the terrible ordeal of the war behind them, they would be able to resume work on the project of constructing a socialist society. The American and British leaders knew these Soviet aims and had explicitly or implicitly recognized their legitimacy, for example at the conferences of the Big Three in Tehran and Yalta. That did not mean that Washington and London were enthusiastic about the fact that the Soviet Union was to reap these rewards for its war efforts; and there undoubtedly lurked a potential conflict with Washington’s own major objective, namely, the creation of an “open door” for US exports and investments in Western Europe, in defeated Germany, and also in Central and Eastern Europe, liberated by the Soviet Union. In any event, American political and industrial leaders - including Harry Truman, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt as President in the spring of 1945 - had little understanding, and even less sympathy, for even the most basic expectations of the Soviets. These leaders abhorred the thought that the Soviet Union might receive considerable reparations from Germany, because such a bloodletting would eliminateGermany as a potentially extremely profitable market for US exports and investments. Instead, reparations would enable the Soviets to resume work, possibly successfully, on the project of a communist society, a “counter system” to the international capitalist system of which the USA had become the great champion. America’s political and economic elite was undoubtedly also keenly aware that German reparations to the Soviets implied that the German branch plants of US corporations such as Ford and GM, which had produced all sorts of weapons for the Nazis during the war (and made a lot of money in the process[3]) would have to produce for the benefit of the Soviets instead of continuing to enrich US owners and shareholders.   Negotiations among the Big Three would obviously never result in the withdrawal of the Red Army from Germany and Eastern Europe before the Soviet objectives of reparations and security would be at least partly achieved. However, on April 25, 1945, Truman learned that the US would soon dispose of a powerful new weapon, the atom bomb. Possession of this weapon opened up all sorts of previously unthinkable but extremely favorable perspectives, and it is hardly surprising that the new president and his advisors fell under the spell of what the renowned American historian William Appleman Williams has called a “vision of omnipotence.”[4] It certainly no longer appeared necessary to engage in difficult negotiations with the Soviets: thanks to the atom bomb, it would be possible to force Stalin, in spite of earlier agreements, to withdraw the Red Army from Germany and to deny him a say in the postwar affairs of that country, to install “pro-western” and even anti-Soviet regimes in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and perhaps even to open up the Soviet Union itself to American investment capital as well as American political and economic influence, thus returning this communist heretic to the bosom of the universal capitalist church. At the time of the German surrender in May 1945, the bomb was almost, but not quite, ready. Truman therefore stalled as long as possible before finally agreeing to attend a conference of the Big Three in Potsdam in the summer of 1945, where the fate of postwar Europe would be decided. The president had been informed that the bomb would likely be ready by then - ready, that is, to be used as “a hammer,” as he himself stated on one occasion, that he would wave “over the heads of those boys in the Kremlin.”[5]  At the Potsdam Conference, which lasted from July 17 to August 2, 1945, Truman did indeed receive the long-awaited message that the atom bomb had been tested successfully on July 16 in New Mexico. As of then, he no longer bothered to present proposals to Stalin, but instead made all sorts of demands; at the same time he rejected out of hand all proposals made by the Soviets, for example concerning German reparation payments, including reasonable proposals based on earlier inter-Allied agreements. Stalin failed to display the hoped-for willingness to capitulate, however, not even when Truman attempted to intimidate him by whispering ominously into his ear that America had acquired an incredible new weapon. The Soviet sphinx, who had certainly already been informed about the American atom bomb, listened in stony silence. Somewhat puzzled, Truman concluded that only an actual demonstration of the atomic bomb would persuade the Soviets to give way. Consequently, no general agreement could be achieved at Potsdam. In fact, little or nothing of substance was decided there. “The main result of the conference,” writes historian Gar Alperovitz, “was a series of decisions to disagree until the next meeting.”[6] In the meantime the Japanese battled on in the Far East, even though their situation was totally hopeless. They were in fact prepared to surrender, but they insisted on a condition, namely, that Emperor Hirohito would be guaranteed immunity. This contravened the American demand for an unconditional capitulation. In spite of this it should have been possible to end the war on the basis of the Japanese proposal. In fact, the German surrender at Reims three months earlier had not been entirely unconditional. (The Americans had agreed to a German condition, namely, that the armistice would only go into effect after a delay of 45 hours, a delay that would allow as many German army units as possible to slip away from the eastern front in order to surrender to the Americans or the British; many of these units would actually be kept ready - in uniform, armed, and under the command of their own officers – for possible use against the Red Army, as Churchill was to admit after the war.)[7] In any event, Tokyo’s sole condition was far from essential. Indeed, later - after an unconditional surrender had been wrested from the Japanese - the Americans would never bother Hirohito, and it was thanks to Washington that he was to be able to remain emperor for many more decades.[8] The Japanese believed that they could still afford the luxury of attaching a condition to their offer to surrender because the main force of their land army remained intact, in China, where it had spent most of the war. Tokyo thought that it could use this army to defend Japan itself and thus make the Americans pay a high price for their admittedly inevitable final victory, but this scheme would only work if the Soviet Union stayed out of the war in the Far East; a Soviet entry into the war, on the other hand, would inevitably pin down the Japanese forces on the Chinese mainland. Soviet neutrality, in other words, permitted Tokyo a small measure of hope; not hope for a victory, of course, but hope for American acceptance of their condition concerning the emperor. To a certain extent the war with Japan dragged on, then, because the Soviet Union was not yet involved in it. Already at the Conference of the Big Three in Tehran in 1943, Stalin had promised to declare war on Japan within three months after the capitulation of Germany, and he had reiterated this commitment as recently as July 17, 1945, in Potsdam. Consequently, Washington counted on a Soviet attack on Japan by the middle of August and thus knew only too well that the situation of the Japanese was hopeless. (“Fini Japs when that comes about,” Truman confided to his diary, referring to the expected Soviet entry into the war in the Far East.)[9] In addition, the American navy assured Washington that it was able to prevent the Japanese from transferring their army from China in order to defend the homeland against an American invasion. Since the US navy was undoubtedly able to force Japan to its knees by means of a blockade, an invasion was not even necessary. Deprived of imported necessities such as food and fuel, Japan could be expected to beg to capitulate unconditionally sooner or later.     In order to finish the war against Japan, Truman thus had a number of very attractive options. He could accept the trivial Japanese condition with regard to immunity for their emperor; he could also wait until the Red Army attacked the Japanese in China, thus forcing Tokyo into accepting an unconditional surrender after all; or he could starve Japan to death by means of a naval blockade that would have forced Tokyo to sue for peace sooner or later. Truman and his advisors, however, chose none of these options; instead, they decided to knock Japan out with the atomic bomb. This fateful decision, which was to cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women and children, offered the Americans considerable advantages. First, the bomb might force Tokyo to surrender before the Soviets got involved in the war in Asia, thus making it unnecessary to allow Moscow a say in the coming decisions about postwar Japan, about the territories which had been occupied by Japan (such as Korea and Manchuria), and about the Far East and the Pacific region in general. The USA would then enjoy a total hegemony over that part of the world, something which may be said to have been the true (though unspoken) war aim of Washington in the conflict with Japan. It was in light of this consideration that the strategy of simply blockading Japan into surrender was rejected, since the surrender might not have been forthcoming until after – and possibly well after - the Soviet Union’s entry into the war. (After the war, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey stated that “certainly prior to 31 December 1945, Japan would have surrendered, even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.”)[10] As far as the American leaders were concerned, a Soviet intervention in the war in the Far East threatened to achieve for the Soviets the same advantage which the Yankees’ relatively late intervention in the war in Europe had produced for the United States, namely, a place at the round table of the victors who would force their will on the defeated enemy, carve occupation zones out of his territory, change borders, determine postwar social-economic and political structures, and thereby derive for themselves enormous benefits and prestige. Washington absolutely did not want the Soviet Union to enjoy this kind of input. The Americans were on the brink of victory over Japan, their great rival in that part of the world. They did not relish the idea of being saddled with a new potential rival, one whose detested communist ideology might become dangerously influential in many Asian countries. By dropping the atomic bomb, the Americans hoped to finish Japan off instantly and go to work in the Far East as cavalier seul, that is, without their victory party being spoiled by unwanted Soviet gate-crashers. Use of the atom bomb offered Washington a second important advantage. Truman’s experience in Potsdam had persuaded him that only an actual demonstration of this new weapon would make Stalin sufficiently pliable. Nuking a “Jap” city, preferably a “virgin” city, where the damage would be especially impressive, thus loomed useful as a means to intimidate the Soviets and induce them to make concessions with respect to Germany, Poland, and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. The atomic bomb was ready just before the Soviets became involved in the Far East. Even so, the nuclear pulverization of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, came too late to prevent the Soviets from entering the war against Japan. Tokyo did not throw in the towel immediately, as the Americans had hoped, and on August 8, 1945 - exactly three months after the German capitulation in Berlin - the Soviets declared war on Japan. The next day, on August 9, the Red Army attacked the Japanese troops stationed in northern China. Washington itself had long asked for Soviet intervention, but when that intervention finally came, Truman and his advisors were far from ecstatic about the fact that Stalin had kept his word. If Japan’s rulers did not respond immediately to the bombing of Hiroshima with an unconditional capitulation, it may have been because they could not ascertain immediately that only one plane and one bomb had done so much damage. (Many conventional bombing raids had produced equally catastrophic results; an attack by thousands of bombers on the Japanese capital on March 9-10, 1945, for example, had actually caused more casualties than the bombing of Hiroshima.) In any event, it took some time before an unconditional capitulation was forthcoming, and on account of this delay the USSR did get involved in the war against Japan after all. This made Washington extremely impatient: the day after the Soviet declaration of war, on August 9, 1945, a second bomb was dropped, this time on the city of Nagasaki. A former American army chaplain later stated: “I am of the opinion that this was one of the reasons why a second bomb was dropped: because there was a rush. They wanted to get the Japanese to capitulate before the Russians showed up.”[11] (The chaplain may or may not have been aware that among the 75,000 human beings who were “instantaneously incinerated, carbonized and evaporated” in Nagasaki were many Japanese Catholics as well an unknown number of inmates of a camp for allied POWs, whose presence had been reported to the air command, to no avail.)[12] It took another five days, that is, until August 14, before the Japanese could bring themselves to capitulate. In the meantime the Red Army was able to make considerable progress, to the great chagrin of Truman and his advisors. And so the Americans were stuck with a Soviet partner in the Far East after all. Or were they? Truman made sure that they were not, ignoring the precedents set earlier with respect to cooperation among the Big Three in Europe. Already on August 15, 1945, Washington rejected Stalin’s request for a Soviet occupation zone in the defeated land of the rising sun. And when on September 2, 1945, General MacArthur officially accepted the Japanese surrender on the American battleship Missouri in the Bay of Tokyo, representatives of the Soviet Union - and of other allies in the Far East, such as Great Britain, France, Australia, and the Netherlands - were allowed to be present only as insignificant extras, as spectators. Unlike Germany,Japan was not carved up into occupation zones. America’s defeated rival was to be occupied by the Americans only, and as American “viceroy” inTokyo, General MacArthur would ensure that, regardless of contributions made to the common victory, no other power had a say in the affairs of postwar Japan. Sixty-five years ago, Truman did not have to use the atomic bomb in order to force Japan to its knees, but he had reasons to want to use the bomb. The atom bomb enabled the Americans to force Tokyo to surrender unconditionally, to keep the Soviets out of the Far East and - last but not least - to force Washington’s will on the Kremlin in Europe also. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated for these reasons, and many American historians realize this only too well; Sean Dennis Cashman, for example, writes: With the passing of time, many historians have concluded that the bomb was used as much for political reasons...Vannevar Bush [the head of the American center for scientific research] stated that the bomb “was also delivered on time, so that there was no necessity for any concessions to Russiaat the end of the war”. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes [Truman’s Secretary of State] never denied a statement attributed to him that the bomb had been used to demonstrate American power to the Soviet Union in order to make it more manageable in Europe.[13] Truman himself, however, hypocritically declared at the time that the purpose of the two nuclear bombardments had been “to bring the boys home,” that is, to quickly finish the war without any further major loss of life on the American side. This explanation was uncritically broadcast in the American media and it developed into a myth eagerly propagated by the majority of historians and media in the USA and throughout the “Western” world. That myth, which, incidentally, also serves to justify potential future nuclear strikes on targets such as Iran and North Korea, is still very much alive - just check your mainstream newspaper on August 6 and 9! Jacques R. Pauwels, author of The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, James Lorimer, Toronto, 2002 Notes [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagasaki. [3] Jacques R. Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, Toronto, 2002, pp. 201-05. [4] William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, revised edition, New York, 1962, p. 250. [5] Quoted in Michael Parenti, The Anti-Communist Impulse, New York, 1969, p. 126. [6] Gar Alperovitz Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power, new edition, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1985 (original edition 1965), p. 223. [7] Pauwels, op. cit., p. 143. [8] Alperovitz, op. cit., pp. 28, 156. [9] Quoted in Alperovitz, op. cit., p. 24. [10] Cited in David Horowitz, From Yalta to Vietnam: American Foreign Policy in the Cold War, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1967, p. 53. [11] Studs Terkel, "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two, New York, 1984, p. 535. [12] Gary G. Kohls, “Whitewashing Hiroshima: The Uncritical Glorification of American Militarism,” http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/kohls1.html.[13] Sean Dennis Cashman, , Roosevelt, and World War II, New York and London, 1989, p. 369.

Jacques R. Pauwels is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Jacques R. Pauwels

Shadowy Spy Group Building Dossiers On Internet Users For Feds

Project Vigilant: New Face of Total Information Awareness Goes Public

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, August 2, 2010

An organization that tracks 250 million IP addresses a day has been developing portfolios on Internet users and handing the information to U.S. federal agencies as the latest incarnation of the supposedly defunct Total Information Awareness spy program is revealed.

A group calling itself Project Vigilant went public at yesterday’s Defcon security conference in an effort to add more recruits to its 600 member strong cyber spy force. The outfit announced that it had been tracking “Internet villains” for no less than 14 years and handing the information to federal authorities as part of a massive intelligence gathering program.

However, the target of one such investigation did not fall into the category of cyber criminals – “terrorists, drug cartels, mobsters” – that the group claims to be fighting.

The organization “encouraged one of its “volunteers”, researcher Adrian Lamo, to inform the federal government about the alleged source of a controversial video of civilian deaths in Iraq leaked to whistle-blower site Wikileaks in April,” reports Forbes.

Project Vigilant director Chet Uber used Lamo’s friendship with Bradley Manning, the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who allegedly released the classified video, to out Manning, who now faces criminal charges. Uber told Lamo that it was his “patriotic duty” to inform on the man who was instrumental in bringing to light the war atrocities witnessed in the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, which shows U.S. troops slaughtering over a dozen innocent people and injuring others, including two children, Sajad Salah and his little sister Duaa Salah.

“According to Uber, one of Project Vigilant’s manifold methods for gathering intelligence includes collecting information from a dozen regional U.S. Internet service providers,” states the report. “Uber declined to name those ISPs, but said that because the companies included a provision allowing them to share users’ Internet activities with third parties in their end user license agreements (EULAs), Vigilant was able to legally able to gather data from the Internet carriers and use it to craft reports for federal agencies. A Vigilant press release says that the organization tracks more than 250 million IP addresses a day and can “develop portfolios on any name, screen name or IP address.”

Uber also founded InfraGard, the ominous FBI-affiliated public-private partnership that is a key component of the unfolding implementation of martial law in the United States.InfraGard made its intentions to act as a political police force clear in March 2009 when the group announced that questions surrounding Barack Obama’s presidential eligibility were “potentially harmful to civil order and national security”.

Uber’s organization poses as a volunteer orientated crime-fighting private outfit, and yet it is nothing more than a tentacle of the military-industrial complex’s sprawling unconstitutional internal spy apparatus.

Project Vigilant is an offshoot of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Total Information Awareness, a program designed to catalogue, “Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend,” as the New York Times’ William Safire wrote in November 2002.

TIA, symbolized by its logo of an all-seeing eye atop a pyramid shining upon the globe, was supposedly nixed by Congress shortly after it became public, but the program merely went underground and continued as a part of the Pentagon’s “black budget” and in conjunction with a plethora of private contractors in the same mould as Project Vigilant.

NYC Metro InfraGard Members Alliance Ultimate Reference CD

The Open Source Guide to Electromagnetic Weapons: Defensive Strategies

As Capitol Hill Blue reported back in 2004, “Despite Congressional action cutting funding, and the resignation of the program’s controversial director, retired admiral John Poindexter, DARPA’s TIA program is alive and well and prying into the personal business of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

DARPA has hired private contractors to perform the exact same duties set out in Total Information Awareness, and Project Vigilant is undoubtedly one of them. By hiring private companies to do the dirty work of spying on the American people, Congressional audits can be avoided and legal barriers can be sidestepped.

Project Vigilant is clearly nothing less than a government controlled attack dog fulfilling its role to implement the cybersecurity agenda, which as we have exhaustively documented has nothing to do with security and everything to do with political oppression, Chinese style Internet censorship, and the total evisceration of free speech on the world wide web.

Obama Boasts ‘End of Iraq War’ as Iran War Kicks into High Gear

Aaron Dykes
Infowars.com
August 2, 2010

In attempt to posture as a man of peace and kept-promises in the lead-up to the midterm elections, President Obama has declared the “End of the War in Iraq,” claiming that withdrawal of troops from Iraq with be completed by August 31, 2010 and is ‘on schedule, as promised.’

“As a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end. I made it clear that by August 31, 2010, America’s combat mission in Iraq would end. And that is exactly what we are doing — as promised and on schedule,” President Obama stated.

Believing this fiction involves ignoring the fact that 50,000 troops or more, as well as countless contractors, would remain in Iraq. In addition, it would involve forgetting about Barack Obama’s campaign promises to bring troops home starting “day one” of his administration, or his other promise to bring them home by the end of 2009.

Obama’s deceptive announcement coincides with news that July was the deadliest month in Iraq since May 2008, though the Pentagon has attempted to dispute these numbers. While Iraq today is anything but stable, and our continued involvement has helped little if at all. Nevertheless, Quadrennial Defense Report: Meetings America’s National Security Needs in the 21st Century report suggests clearly that these wars which seem never to end, are in fact, not meant to:

“The conflict with Iraq…an effort that—if successful—will stretch indefinitely into an ongoing strategic partnership. But Iraq is neither the only example nor an anomaly: the American commitment to Afghanistan is in its ninth year and disengagement is likely to be many years away. “

In fact, Obama, wary of repeating George W. Bush’s mistake of announcing “Mission Accomplished,” has reluctantly admitted during his announcement that, “The hard truth is we have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq.”

Nevertheless, President Obama needs to appear as a peacemaker to stoke his failing false image, but no matter how many Nobel Peace Prizes or other pins and accolades he holds, it can’t hide the fact that the Afghanistan-Pakistan wars are enlarging or that tensions with Iran have never been higher.

TIMELINE: Obama’s Promise to withdraw troops in Iraq by 2009 

Just over the weekend, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen admitted the United States has an Iran attack plan and is waiting in the event of launch. Top experts have all warned that an Iran war could start anytime in the next few months. Increased sanctions and pressure from Israel make such a dangerous war all the more likely.

Such a war has the extremely dangerous potential of kicking off a wider conflict, even World War III. This threat is too big to allow a puppet president to pose as though he were bringing about peace through diplomacy.

The Pentagon Papers, leaked nearly forty years ago, were shocking enough to bring significant opposition against the Vietnam War and help its end. Today, the prospects for peace appear much different.

The Afghanistan war logs leaked by Wikileaks– which should have led to a societal questioning of our involvement in the protracted engagement, now our nation’s longest in history– instead triggered the Pentagon and White House to dig-in deeper. Congressional opposition from the likes of Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and a number of House Democrats was systematically ignored, while President Obama & co. secured $59 Billion more in funding and a commitment for an additional 30,000 troops in the region. The leaked documents– instead of spotlighting the corruption, shameful provocation and secret funding of the Taliban– were spun to extend claims that Osama bin Laden is still alive, and that Taliban is stronger than previously thought.

Oct. 27, 2007 – Obama’s Promise: Bringing the Troops Home “Will Be the First Thing I Do; You Can Take That To The Bank” 

The quagmire in Afghanistan, spilled over into Pakistan, with simultaneous war in Iraq, and looming war in Iran marks a high-point in American demoralization. Obama’s foreign policy, a dead horse of Bush’s foreign policy, is the height of our empire’s excess and degradation. Ralph Nader observes:

“This is an asymmetrical, multi-matrix war. It is a war defined by complex intrigue, shifting alliances, mutating motivations, chronic bribery, remotely-generated civilian deaths, insuperable barriers of language and ethnic and subtribal conflicts. It is fought by warlords, militias, criminal gangs, and special forces discretionary death squads. Millions of civilians are impoverished, terrified and live with violent disruptions. There is no central government to speak of. The White House uses illusions of strategies and tactics to bid for time. In Afghanistan, the historic graveyard of invaders, hope springs infernal.”

Even Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations admits that Obama should probably concede hopeless defeat in Afghanistan and look for the exit doors:

Though President Obama himself and General Petraeus, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, still call for victory there, it is probably true that Obama and maybe even the general have come to LBJ’s conclusion: “I can’t win, and I can’t get out.”

General McChrystal was recently dismissed by President Obama for stating about as muc.

While President Obama hopes that the appearance of “keeping his promise” on Iraq will boost him in the polls and provide cover for the minefield of his other broken promises and cynical lies, even left-leaning observers like Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic and Harvard professorSteven Walt are commenting the the president is likely to face the record of “0-4 on Foreign Policy” with a war-weary nation looking for other leadership.

President Obama can hope for a small PR victory in portraying the “End of the Iraq War,” long since unpopular with the American people, but in the long run, the real strategy of War is Peace– where the end of one conflict only marks the beginning of another– will only make an angry public more irrate and ready for real change. It is high-time people– who already know they’ve been lied into these wars, with exaggerated and false claims about WMDs, the 9/11 attacks, the boogeyman Osama bin Laden– say no to BOTH of the war parties, and say no to World War III.

U.S. to strengthen sanctions against N. Korea amid concerns of Chinese influence

By Chico Harlan

Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 2, 2010; 8:47 AM

SEOUL -- The chief U.S. official in charge of nonproliferation outlined a plan Monday to penalizeNorth Korea by choking off the international network of front companies and banks that largely fund its nuclear weapons program and the lifestyles of its elite.

-Reuters July 21, 2010
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shaking hands with
South Korean Foreign Minister following news conference.

Robert Einhorn, the U.S. State Department's special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control, said during a trip to Seoul on Monday that new sanctions against North Korea will be finalized within several weeks. But he also emphasized the need for cooperation from other countries -- China, in particular -- to target the entities that do illegal business with North Korea.


Einhorn called it a "serious concern" held by many countries that China could capitalize on the situation, increasing its business dealings with a desperate Pyongyang. China could seize upon similar opportunities in Iran, which in June was hit by the latest round of U.N. sanctions.


"We want China to be a stakeholder in the international system," Einhorn said, "and not take advantage of the restraint of other countries."
(Read more about the U.S. relationship with China.)

The desire to increase pressure on North Korea -- yet another attempt to push Kim Jong Il's government toward denuclearization -- comes as a direct response to the March sinking of the Cheonan warship, which killed 46 South Korean sailors and raised fears of further provocations on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has denied involvement with the sinking, despite an investigation claiming otherwise.


(Read about joint military exercises by the United States and South Korea that were intended to send a message to North Korea, and see video of the exercises.)

According to Einhorn, North Korea accesses hundreds of millions of dollars annually by counterfeiting currency, smuggling narcotics and using overseas banks for illicit activities. Existing U.N. security resolutions already target some of these activities, but Einhorn said that upcoming penalties represented a strengthening of these sanctions.


"Our new measures will allow us to designate entities and individuals involved in these activities and to block any property or assets they posses that are under the control of a U.S. person or bank," Einhorn said. "But by publicly naming these entities, these measures can have the broader effect of isolating them from the international community."


For Einhorn, the trip to Asia -- he'll head to Tokyo on Tuesday -- is a means to gather support for the sanctions, not only against North Korea, but also against Iran. Traveling with Treasury Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Daniel Glaser, Einhorn on Monday encouraged South Korea to approve new sanctions against Iran, as member countries of the European Union did last month.



Though he doesn't yet know when, Einhorn will also travel soon to China, whose financial support of North Korea has buffered it from the worst effects of previous U.N. resolutions. Analysts believe that pending U.S. actions against the socialist dictatorship won't have too much impact unless other countries add their support. Indeed, North Korea has relatively few assets tied to the U.S.


"If we're serious about going after illicit transactions, how do we do that if a lot of it takes place through Chinese firms?" said one U.S. official involved in sanctions discussions, requesting anonymity in order to speak freely about U.S. thinking. "I don't know."
The current U.S. plan resembles 2005 strategy in which the Macao-based Banco Delta Asia bank was targeted by the Treasury for its alleged involvement in a North Korea money-laundering scheme. Other banks around the world, Glaser said, took notice and "decided they'd reexamine their relationship with North Korea."


Einhorn was not ready on Monday to specify the financial institutions that according to the United States are doing business with North Korea. He said identifying those firms will be a part of the finalized sanctions.

Obama Wants to Jail Americans with New Law

Obama Wants to Jail Americans with New Law

By Europe Union TimesJune 15, 2010

Foreign Ministry reports circulating in the Kremlin today are warning that an already explosive situation in the United States is about to get a whole lot worse as a new law put forth by President Obama is said capable of seeing up to 500,000 American citizens jailed for the crime of opposing their government.

Sparking the concern of Russian diplomats over the growing totalitarian bent of the Obama government is the planned reintroduction of what these reports call one of the most draconian laws ever introduced in a free society that is titled “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”.

First introduced in the US Congress in 2007 by Democratic Representative Jane Harmon, this new law passed the US House of Representatives by a secretive voice vote, but failed to pass the US Senate, after which it was believed dead until this past week when it was embraced by Obama who became the first American President to name his own citizens as a threat to his Nations security.

In what is called the National Security Strategy document, that is required of US Presidents by their Congress, that embraces the dictatorial ideals of the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”, Obama has ordered his Federal police and intelligence forces to begin targeting Americans opposed to him and his radical socialist polices.

Obama’s top counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, in speaking to reporters about this new “strategy” says it makes the problem of home-grown terrorists a top priority because an increasing number of individuals in the US have become“captivated by extremist ideology or causes.”

The Times of London is further reporting that Obama’s new National Security Strategy “officially” ends America’s “War on Terror” in what they call “a sweeping repudiation of the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes.”

And as Obama begins re-focusing his forces from fighting America’s foreign enemies, to those opposed to him in his own country, it is important to remember the warning about this new law given by the former CIA official, Philip Giraldi, who had previously warned of the Bush-Cheney plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, and who said:

“The mainstream media has made no effort to inform the public of the impending Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. The Act, which was sponsored by Congresswoman Jane Harman of California, was passed in the House by an overwhelming 405 to 6 vote on October 24th and is now awaiting approval by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which is headed by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Harman’s bill contends that the United States will soon have to deal with home grown terrorists and that something must be done to anticipate and neutralize the problem. The act deals with the issue through the creation of a congressional commission that will be empowered to hold hearings, conduct investigations, and designate various groups as “homegrown terrorists.”

The commission will be tasked to propose new legislation that will enable the government to take punitive action against both the groups and the individuals who are affiliated with them. Like Joe McCarthy and HUAC in the past, the commission will travel around the United States and hold hearings to find the terrorists and root them out.

Unlike inquiries in the past where the activity was carried out collectively, the act establishing the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Commission will empower all the members on the commission to arrange hearings, obtain testimony, and even to administer oaths to witnesses, meaning that multiple hearings could be running simultaneously in various parts of the country.

The ten commission members will be selected for their “expertise,” though most will be appointed by Congress itself and will reflect the usual political interests. They will be paid for their duties at the senior executive pay scale level and will have staffs and consultants to assist them.

Harman’s bill does not spell out terrorist behavior and leaves it up to the Commission itself to identify what is terrorism and what isn’t.

Language inserted in the act does partially define “homegrown terrorism” as “planning” or “threatening” to use force to promote a political objective, meaning that just thinking about doing something could be enough to merit the terrorist label.

The act also describes “violent radicalization” as the promotion of an “extremist belief system” without attempting to define “extremist.”

As an example of those American’s Obama will be targeting, Giraldi further writes that The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in testifying before the US Congress in support of this new law, swore that an organization called “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth” was an example of a homegrown terrorist organization, leading one Russian diplomat in this report to state:

 “If 1,200 of America’s top architectural and engineering professionals are deemed terrorists simply  because they question their governments propaganda than truly no one is safe in the United States anymore”. 

As another example of how dictatorial the Obama regime has become, and as the Gulf of Mexico oil debacle has now become the worst ecological disaster our World has ever seen, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, this past week slammed American reporters for “asking too many questions about BP”. 

Leading one to ask that if Obama’s regime can’t be asked about this disaster, what can they be asked about?

The answer is apparently none, as Obama himself, just this past week, in announcing his signing of a new law called the Press Freedom Act refused to answer any reporters’ questions and abruptly left them standing in stupefaction over the irony an ordeal that shows how far America has fallen.

Another irony apparently lost upon the American people is that their President Obama, who has been dubbed “The Great Communicator”, now holds the dubious distinction of having held fewer press conferences than any American President in modern history. 

And if yesterday’s press conference, his first in nearly a year, was any example one can see why as incredulous press corps was left astounded that Obama had no knowledge of the firing/resignation of one of his top officials.

In all of these events one fact, beyond all others, stands out….in what was once called “The Land of the Free, And the Home of the Brave”…..the United States today has become “The Land Of Slave, And the Home of the Coward”….and these Americans have only themselves to blame.

Source: Eu Times