Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski of The Last Ditch was Mark Dankof's guest on the Republic Broadcasting Network for 3 hours on Wednesday, March 28th. Sniegoski emphasized the following letter he sent to The Navy Times in response to the news that the Navy had removed John Sharpe from active duty. Sharpe is the editor of the series Neo-Conned! and Neo-Conned! Again.

The Navy Times's account of the affair is "Carrier PAO relieved pending investigation," by Andrew Scutro. ("PAO" stands for "public-affairs officer.") The subtitle is, "Navy examining lieutenant commander's alleged involvement in anti-Semitic groups."

See also the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary's news release entitled, "John Sharpe's Naval Career Unjustly Assaulted." Click here.


To the Editor [of The Navy Times]:

The gratuitous smearing of Lieutenant Commander John Sharpe is a blot on the Navy's honor. The Navy Times inadvertently portrays the flimsiness of the Navy's case: "'Evidently he's affiliated with an anti-Semitic group, and that's illegal in the U.S. Navy,' Brantley [a spokesman for Fleet Forces Command] said. Brantley cited Navy Regulation 1167, which states, "No person in the Naval Service shall participate in any organization that espouses supremacist causes."

These assertions are made without any apparent realization of the need for proof.

What "supremacist causes"? What constitutes "anti-Semitism?" How can a leap be made from the accusation of "anti-Semitism" to the charge of "participating in any organization that espouses supremacist causes?" "Anti-Semitism" is a nebulous term with no precise meaning, which is promiscuously thrown around to intimidate and silence. President Jimmy Carter was labeled an "anti-Semite" for his latest book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Retired Marine general and former Middle East mediator Anthony Zinni was called an "anti-Semite" for maintaining that the safety of Israel was the motivating factor for the war on Iraq. The charge of anti-Semitism was leveled against two leading scholars in the field of international relations, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University, for their study "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," which describes the role of pro-Israel interest groups in shaping American Middle East policy. Former Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings of South Carolina similarly was branded an "anti-Semite" for claiming that America invaded Iraq because of "President Bush's policy to secure Israel."

These examples clearly illustrate that in being accused of "anti-Semitism," Sharpe is in good company. Undoubtedly, "anti-Semitism" does not have to mean seeking to do harm to Jews. It need not constitute any hatred, or even dislike, of Jews. In essence, views branded as "anti-Semitic" need not entail any malevolence whatsoever and would be completely acceptable if other countries, interests, or ethnic groups were involved. To give a recent example, almost any charge seems to have been permissible regarding Arab and Islamic countries and people, even the use of the most horrendous lies that led to the maiming and deaths of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Arabs. No lethal charges have been hurled against the perpetrators of these murderous falsehoods who continue to hold high places in the major media and government.

In the anthologies on the Iraq war, Neo-Conned! and Neo-Conned! Again, edited by Sharpe and published by his IHS Press, a few of the articles do deal with the role of the neoconservatives and Israel in the war on Iraq. (My article is one of these.) This subject is often deemed "anti-Semitic," just as are the aforementioned writing and views of Carter, Zinni, Mearsheimer and Walt, and Hollings. Most of the articles in Sharpe's two Iraq war anthologies, however, do not deal at all with the issue of Israel or the pro-Israel neoconservatives. A number of the articles were authored by Jews: Paul Gottfried, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Jeff Steinberg. But then even Jews can be victimized by the lethal charge of "anti-Semitism."

The Navy's assault on Sharpe is even more far-fetched than simply the meaningless charge of "anti-Semitism." For even if some people regard any reference to pro-Israel influence in shaping American foreign policy as "anti-Semitism," this has absolutely nothing to do with Navy Regulation 1167, which prohibits "participating in an organization that espouses supremacist causes." There is absolutely no trace of any "supremacist causes" here.

The United States is supposed to be a country of laws. It is supposed to honor freedom of speech. The Navy's treatment of Lieutenant Commander John Sharpe, however, approximates the type of "justice" meted out in Stalinist Russia where truth and logic played no role.

Stephen J. Sniegoski

Vice President Cheney at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Forum.

03/12/07 C-Span Runtime 95 Minutes

Little by little, Spanish companies have been moving into Texas, and they are beginning to enjoy the benefits. In the infrastructure sector, Ferrovial, through its highway subsidiary Cintra, has become a strategic partner with the government in developing the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC-35).

If you believe there should be no borders marking a specific entity called the United States of America, then a North American Union will not concern you. If you believe nationalism, meaning love and pride of country, is a bad thing, then a North American Union will not concern you. If you believe government control of the market, of health care, and of energy policy is a positive force, then a North American Union will not concern you. If you believe anyone should be allowed to enter our nation, even illegally, obtain work, taxpayer-paid social programs, and owe no allegiance to the U.S., then a North American Union will not concern you.

On the other hand, if you believe the United States is the most unique nation on Earth with a government designed to protect your natural liberties, an economic system unlike any other -designed to create economic independence, and a judicial system unknown to any other nation, then a North American Union is a threat to all you hold dear.

From the “Queer Texas” website:

The Queer Texas Conference is an action-oriented, 3 day-long educational gathering of youth and students from across Texas…The conference will be held at the University of Texas at Austin April 13-15.

Workshops include:

The Drag King Workshop — Curious about drag kings? Who isn’t? Come and learn a little about the drag king community, our performance, and our politics. Then we’ll demo the basics of binding, packing, applying facial hair, and strutting your stuff - and you’ll have a chance to try it yourself! All genders welcome.

The Gender, Race, and Hip-Hop Workshop will screen segments of Byron Hurt’s new documentary film Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes that explores the director’s love of hip-hop culture and his simultaneous conflict with its marketing of hyper-masculine images of men of color, violence, materialism, homophobia, and misogyny. Using an intersectional approach,the workshop highlights the complicated connections between race, class, and gender in media and the larger American culture. Interactive role playing and skits challenge workshop participants to explore their own racialized and gendered stereotypes, followed by an open dialogue about ways to challenge these structures through petitions, targeted letter writing campaigns, and public education.

Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Caucus — This workshop will be an exploration of participants’ experiences with the language they use to talk about their gender experience, the longings in their lives, and their search and successes in finding legitimacy. Language is a powerful force in our lives. Finding the language that accurately describes our gender experiences can be difficult. Longing is a natural part of life. Giving voice to those longings can be a compelling way to find the means to fulfill them. Legitimacy is something many of us strive for in our families, in our communities, and in the world-at-large.

Among the speakers: Tyrone Hanley of the Nov 2006 “Creating Change” panel on sex workers…which is probably fitting since, sadly, many “transgender” young people are relegated to prostitution in order to survive. Is this the life into which our schools ought to direct confused and vulnerable young people?

The federal government -- and the majority of Americans -- can no longer get by a single day without taking on additional debt. And as more borrowing goes to simply pay off old debt, or to make interest payments, the new debt does little more than increase banking profits.

Eventually the higher levels of debt will lead to higher interest rates, which will lead to more debt, creating a cycle as vicious as it is inevitable. Over the past generation, banks and credit card companies have made trillions of dollars of high-interest, unsecured debt available, and Americans have scooped it up. Our incomes have risen an average of 1 percent in real terms, while our household debt has increased over 1,000 percent. As a result, we no longer save. We have no choice but to keep spending until our credit is exhausted and we own nothing.

As Marriner Eccles, the legendary Fed chairman during the Great Depression, noted, "The economy is like a poker game where only a few people control the chips and the other fellows must borrow to stay in the game. But the moment the borrowing stops, the game is over."

Seymour Hersh's recent report that Iran-Contra veterans working out of Dick Cheney's office are using stolen funds from Iraq to arm al Qaeda-tied groups and foment a larger Sunni-Shia war is a very big deal.

Congressman Ron Paul is a Republican from Texas. An obstetrician by profession, Paul is noted for never voting for legislation unless it is authorized by the U.S. Constitution. He is an advocate of limited government. He has also opposed U.S. military interventions overseas, including Iraq.

In an interview with Mike Wallace broadcast in 1974 on the CBS television show “60 Minutes,” the late Shah of Iran speaks openly about the Jewish control of US policy.

Gary Brummett, survivor of Israel's deliberate and premeditated attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, was the featured guest on Mark Dankof's America on the Republic Broadcasting Network on Friday, March 23rd. Mr. Brummett's appearance took place in the show's final two (2) hours. The show will soon be archived at the Republic Broadcasting Network web page.

The implications of the sudden May 23rd,1967 departure of the Liberty from the Ivory Coast; the arrival at Rota, Spain on June 1st (to take on logistical re-supply and additional intelligence analysts, some of whom had Russian language skills); the immediate subsequent departure for the Eastern Mediterranean; the sinister character of Israel's attack on an American intelligence vessel; the role of Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara in preventing the arrival of American fighter planes from the USS America and the USS Saratoga to assist the Liberty; and a statement by Lyndon Johnson that the fighter stand-down order involved the President's desire to avoid a confrontation with an ally--at a time when the USS Liberty had not yet confirmed the identity of its attacker, nor conveyed this information to Washington--are the tip of the iceberg of the information and analysis provided by Gary Brummett.

Arrangements for Mark Dankof to interview Gary Brummett were made by Mark Glenn of both Crescent and Cross and the American Free Press.

Additional resources are:

Eric Margolis's "The USS Liberty: America's Most Shameful Secret." Click here.

James M. Ennes, Jr.'s "The Assault on the USS Liberty Still Covered Up After 26 Years (1993)" for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Click here.

The Official USS Liberty Survivors site: Click here.

Peter Hounan's book, "Operation Cyanide." Click here.

James Bamford's book, "Body of Secrets." Click here.

John Gidusko's USS Liberty web site: Click here.

Order the video, "Dead in the Water" from:

Moe Schafer
4994 Lower Roswell Rd
Suite 33
Marietta,Ga. 30068

While serving as President Bush’s White House lawyer, Alberto Gonzales advised Bush that the president’s war time powers permitted Bush to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and to use the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on US citizens without obtaining warrants from the FISA court as required by law. Under an order signed by Bush in 2002, NSA illegally spied on Americans without warrants.

By spying on Americans without obtaining warrants, Bush committed felonies under FISA. Moreover, there is strong, indeed overwhelming, evidence that justice was obstructed when Bush and Gonzales blocked a 2006 Justice Department investigation into whether Gonzales acted properly as Attorney General in approving and overseeing the Bush administration’s program of spying on US citizens. Also at issue is whether Gonzales acted properly in advising Bush to kill an investigation of Gonzales’ professional actions with regard to the NSA spy program.

We are faced with the almost certain fact that the two highest law enforcement officials of the United States are criminals.

Marilyn Monroe may have been tricked into killing herself as part of a plot hatched with the knowledge of the former US attorney general, Robert Kennedy, according to a secret FBI file.

The document, uncovered by an Australian film director, Philippe Mora, suggests Monroe was "induced" to make a suicide attempt, in the belief she would be found in time, and her stomach pumped. Instead, it suggests, she was left to die by staff and friends, including the actor Peter Lawford, who was married to Kennedy's sister, Patricia.

The 36-year-old actress was found naked and face down on her bed on 5 August 1962, with a large quantity of barbiturates in her system. For 45 years conspiracy theorists have claimed that her death was not a simple suicide, with some linking it to alleged affairs with Kennedy and his brother, the then President, John F Kennedy.

War propaganda glorifies military indoctrination as the highest form of patriotism while simultaneously demonizing the enemies of the state.

Adolf Hitler realized the power of propaganda to mould and shape public opinion. Hitler wrote a highly informed essay on the powers of propaganda in his political autobiography, Mein Kampf.

Modern governments employ propaganda to incite public outcries for war in order to advance their agendas in foreign policy.

War propaganda is nothing new. The dynastic Egyptians created monumental sculptures that glorified Pharaoh as a conqueror who personally executed – frequently by fracturing their sculls with a mace - hundreds of the enemies of his state. Thus, the public glorification of war and its most heinous crimes has been with us for thousands of years.

Indeed, Hagee wields “a very large megaphone” that reaches “a very large group of people,” said Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee, who has studied the Christian right for 30 years. With CUFI, the Texas pastor has exponentially expanded the reach of his megaphone beyond his television audience. Thanks to the viral marketing made possible by the hundreds of evangelical leaders who have signed on to his new organization, his warmongering has rippled through mega-churches across America for months.

Hagee calls pastors “the spiritual generals of America,” an appropriate phrase given his reliance on them to rally their troops behind his message. The CUFI board of directors includes the Reverend Jerry Falwell, former Republican presidential candidate and religious right activist Gary Bauer, and George Morrison, pastor to the 8,000-member Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada, Colorado, and chairman of the board of Promise Keepers. Rod Parsley, the Ohio televangelist who is rapidly becoming a major political figure in the Christian right, signed on as a regional director. Among CUFI’s other supporters are nationally syndicated Christian right talk show host Janet Parshall, who serves on its board of advisers, and Ron Wexler, an Orthodox Jew and president of the theocratic Ten Commandments Commission, which has the backing of nearly every prominent conservative evangelical in the country. Many popular TBN televangelists, among them the controversial faith healer Benny Hinn and the best-selling author of self-improvement books, Joyce Meyer, have also offered their support. Meyer was named one of the country’s 25 most influential evangelicals in an oft-cited 2005 Time magazine article -- as was Stephen Strang, CEO of Strang Communications, which published Jerusalem Countdown. Long before his launch of CUFI, Hagee had sought to influence American policy toward the Middle East. For 25 years, he has hosted a “Night to Honor Israel” at his church, an event that showcased Tom DeLay as the keynote speaker in 2002, and that has attracted leaders of the Israeli government as well as American politicians.

They had not been told the reasons for their arrest. Yet, according to DeCarlo's report, "this officer was told without question by the driver [Sivan Kurzberg],'We are Israeli. We are not your problem.Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.'" Another of the five Israelis, again without prompting, told Officer DeCarlo ­- falsely ­- that "we were on the West Side Highway in New York City during the incident". From inside the vehicle the officers, who were quickly joined by agents from the FBI, retrieved multiple passports and $4,700 in cash stuffed in a sock. According to New Jersey's Bergen Record, which on September 12 reported the arrest of the five Israelis, an investigator high up in the Bergen County law enforcement hierarchy stated that officers had also discovered in the vehicle "maps of the city with certain places highlighted. It looked like they're hooked in with this", the source told the Record, referring to the 9/11 attacks. "It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park."

The five men were indeed Israeli citizens. They claimed to be in the country working as movers for Urban Moving Systems Inc., which maintained a warehouse and office in Weehawken, New Jersey. They were held for 71 days in a federal detention center in Brooklyn, New York, during which time they were repeatedly interrogated by FBI and CIA counterterrorism teams, who referred to the men as the "high-fivers" for their celebratory behavior on the New Jersey waterfront. Some were placed in solitary confinement for at least forty days; some were given as many as seven liedetector tests. One of the Israelis, Paul Kurzberg, brother of Sivan, refused to take a lie-detector test for ten weeks. Then he failed it.

Despite the failure in Iraq, the repudiation of the president’s foreign policy in opinion polls and the 2006 elections, and the collapse of respect for the U.S. in most other countries, support for the Bush Doctrine of preventive war remains surprisingly intact among one important slice of Americans: the presidential candidates of both major parties. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently lamented that Democratic contenders were sounding soft, crafting their foreign-policy positions to generate “applause lines in Iowa.” He needn’t have worried. The parade of White House aspirants to appear before a hawkish Israeli audience in Herzliya, and an equally hawkish AIPAC crowd in New York, is a truer gauge of where leading candidates stand.

He was 44.

In the ever-expanding tragedy of the second Iraq war, the tragedy of Ted Westhusing is just one among tens of thousands. Four years of warfare have decimated Iraq. Its economy and infrastructure are in ruins. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis are dead. Hundreds of thousands more have fled the country. More than 20,000 American soldiers have been wounded, and more than 3,000 killed. Yet among all of those tragedies, amid all the suffering and heartache, Westhusing's story stands out. It shows how one man's life, and the fervent beliefs that defined it, were crushed by the corruption and deceit that he saw around him.

The disillusion that killed Ted Westhusing is part of the invoice that America will be paying long after the United States pulls its last troops out of Iraq.

Dr. Kevin Barrett of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance for 9-11 Truth joined Mark Dankof's America on the Republic Broadcasting Network on Thursday, March 15th. Dr. Barrett's was on the show's final two hours.

Kevin Barrett's Truth Jihad Radio airs live on the Republic Broadcasting Network on Saturdays at 6-8 p.m. CST.

To access the web site of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance for 9-11 Truth, click here.

Growing ties between pro-Israel forces and a controversial, hardline “Christian Zionist” movement will move into the national spotlight at next week’s policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby.

One keynoter at the event, which annually draws hundreds of lawmakers, administration officials, diplomats and political hopefuls, will be Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), author of several books about biblical prophecy and an opponent of new territorial concessions to the Palestinians on biblical grounds.

William Blum of the Anti-Empire Report joined Mark Dankof's America on the Republic Broadcasting Network during the show's last hour on Wednesday, March 14th. For direct access to Mr. Blum's web site and information on how to subscribe to the Anti-Empire Report, click here.

Mr. Blum is the author of "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA: Interventions Since World War II."

Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar was a guest on Mark Dankof's America on the Republic Broadcasting Network on Monday, March 12th. His appearance constituted the last two hours of the show. Dr. Bakhtiar is an expert and international consultant on matters Iranian, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian, and formerly an associate professor at Nordland University in Norway.

For Abbas Bakhtiar's "The Great Deception: The Propaganda We Pay For," click here.

For Abbas Bakhtiar's "Why the US Invaded Iraq And Is Now Thinking About Invading Iran," click here.

For Abbas Bakhtiar's "US vs Iran: Hybrid War," click here.

For Abbas Bakhtiar's "Iran vs Saudi Arabia," click here.

Jim Fetzer of 9-11 Scholars for Truth joined Mark Dankof's America on the Republic Broadcasting Network on March 9th. Fetzer's warnings on 9-11 and the incompatibility of the official explanation with credible scientific analysis may be accessed through the 9-11 Scholars for Truth web site which may be accessed by clicking here.

Fetzer's site on the Kennedy Assassination may be accessed by clicking here.

I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic ... But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency." ... If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power.

American Jewish organizations have organized a massive nationwide campaign to call the White House every afternoon for the next two months and request/demand freedom for Pollard. [Note: Jonathan Pollard was sentenced in 1978 to life imprisonment for selling military secrets to Israel while working as an intelligence analyst for the US Navy.] The campaign is to last, if it does not succeed in attaining its goal beforehand, until after Passover, the holiday of freedom. The campaign, spearheaded by the National Council of Young Israel, is predicated on the fact that the White House tallies all incoming calls, "and so every single phone call makes a difference."

...And now this man who thinks we're in the middle of World War IV (against the Muslim world), and who's written a book entitled The Supreme Command arguing that presidents need to control their sometimes reluctant generals, has been appointed by Condoleezza Rice as the new Counselor of the State Department ... Salon's Glen Greenwald calls Cohen "as extremist a neoconservative and warmonger as it gets." The man wants the "overthrow" of the Iranian regime. He wants the president to (Churchill-like) force his hesitant generals to do the right thing and attack Iran.

Any military action against Iran's atomic programme is likely to backfire and accelerate Tehran's development of a nuclear bomb, a report today by a British former nuclear weapons scientist warns. In his report, Frank Barnaby argues that air strikes, reportedly being contemplated as an option by the White House, would strengthen the hand of Iranian hardliners, unite the Iranian population behind a bomb, and would almost certainly trigger an underground crash programme to build a small number of warheads as quickly as possible ... In a foreword Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector at the time of the Iraq war, argues that an assault in Iran could turn out to be every bit as disastrous.

U.S. casualties (dead and wounded) have now reached 27,000 in a war that was supposed to be a "cakewalk," over in a few weeks. If what four-star Gen. Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of NATO, told Amy Goodman in a March 2 interview is correct, U.S. casualties are yet in their early days ... The Israel Lobby sees the war as enhancing Israeli hegemony in the Middle East and making possible the completion of Israel's theft of Palestine from Palestinians. Thus, the three most powerful lobbies in America are the beneficiaries of the devastation of Iraq. The combined power of these lobbies makes it impossible for Congress to respond to the American people and end the war.

If Americans sickened by the carnage of Iraq wish to stop an even more disastrous war on Iran, they had best get cracking. For the “On-to-Baghdad!” boys are back, warning us that the only way to prevent an atom bomb from being detonated in an American city is to attack and destroy Iran’s nuclear sites. And the forces needed to execute an attack are moving into place ... What is the threat? Iran has no missiles that can reach us, no atom bombs. Though the Mullahs have been in power 27 years, they have yet to launch their first war. The war they fought was in self-defense.

Speculation of the involvement of Russian agents intent on silencing opponents to President Vladimir Putin's regime, wherever they may be, has increased with an attempted murder in America and an apparent suicide in Moscow.

On the face of it the two incidents appear to have nothing in common, but Paul Joyal, shot in Adelphi, Maryland, on Saturday, is a friend of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy poisoned with polonium in London last year.

And in Moscow, Ivan Safronov, 51, was an ex-colonel and journalist for Kommersant who had irritated the Russian FSB security service with his frequent exposes.

He was reported dead yesterday after apparently falling from a fourth floor window of his apartment block on Friday.

The shooting of Mr Joyal, 53, was part of an apparent robbery, but law enforcement sources last night said it could merely have been a set-up. Mr Joyal, who struck up a friendship with Mr Litvinenko during visits to London, had recently told NBC's Dateline programme that the Russian's death was an act of "political retribution".

Michael Collins Piper, American Free Press correspondent and author of Final Judgment; The High Priests of War; The New Jerusalem; and The Judas Goats, joined Mark Dankof on the latter's Republic Broadcasting Network radio show on Tuesday, March 6th in the show's final two hours. Piper and Dankof discussed Iran and the forces behind the drive to engage in a preemptive military attack on Tehran, especially Israel.

Piper's Final Judgment pins the Kennedy Assassination on the Israeli Mossad. Read Mark Dankof's review of the book by clicking here.

Enter the American Free Press web site by clicking here.

German Catholic leaders on a tour of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza compared the situation of Palestinians to that of Jews in the Holocaust.

Yediot Achronot reported that the bishops were visiting Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial and museum, when German Bishop Gregor Maria Franz Hanke said, "This morning we saw pictures of the Warsaw ghetto at Yad Vashem, and this evening we are going to the Ramallah ghetto." Hanke added that he planned to include his impressions of Palestinian suffering in his Easter sermon.

According to reporters with the group, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne, said Israel's West Bank security barrier was useless and one day would be torn down, like the former Berlin Wall. Built to impede Palestinian terrorists from infiltrating Israel, the security barrier has led to a dramatic drop in the number of attacks.

Vice President Dick Cheney will address the AIPAC policy conference. This marks the second year in a row that the vice president will speak at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's benchmark event. Cheney represents the Bush administration’s hardest line on containing Iran’s nuclear program, a central strategy for the pro-Israel lobby powerhouse.

The conference runs March 11-13; Cheney speaks March 12. Leaders of both parties in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate also will speak. It will also will be the first speech to AIPAC by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in her capacity as House speaker.

Washington - Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to reporters.

Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was acquitted on just one of five charges after a trial that focused renewed attention on the Bush administration's claims of evidence about weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Musharraf is thus caught between Washington’s growing demands and his own people, who increasingly accuse him of being an American tool. Washington simply does not understand it has pushed the isolated, unpopular Musharraf too far already. If he is blown up or overthrown, Pakistan and its 40–60 nuclear weapons, could turn into an even bigger and more dangerous hotbed of anti-western activity. The next army corps commander who takes over may not be as amenable to Washington’s demands as Pervez Musharraf.

Meanwhile, Washington is increasingly blaming its Afghanistan fiasco on whipping boy Pakistan, just as the Vietnam defeat was blamed on infiltration from Cambodia and Laos. Recently, a remarkably ill-informed Canadian defense minister foolishly proposed sending Canadian troops into Pakistan’s tribal agencies to “fight terrorists.”

The House of Clinton and the House of Bush are deeply intertwined, in their policies, their philosophies, their politics, even their personal lives: witness the extraordinary "adoption" of Bill Clinton as a surrogate son by the elder George Bush and his wife. This rapprochement is usually attributed to the respect and friendliness that Clinton showed Bush during their goodwill trip to aid the tsunami victims, and perhaps this did spark a more personal affection between the men. But their relationship began much earlier, in a mysterious circumstance that still cries out for further explication: the fact that during their contest for the presidency in 1992, both Clinton and Bush shared the same major Arkansas financier Jackson Stephens. (More on this fascinating éminence grise here.)

After his narrow victory, Clinton then proceeded to shut down the still on-going investigations into the corruption and crimes of his predecessor. Iran-Contra, BCCI, and especially Bush's massive, secret and often illegal efforts to arm Saddam Hussein and supply him with material for chemical weapons – all of these probes were cut off, starved or shunted aside by the Clinton Administration. (For more, see Robert Parry on "The Clintons' Real Trouble With the Truth.")

Also thwarted were probes into the "October Surprise" – the 1980 negotiations between the Reagan campaign camp, including Bush, with the Iranians who were holding American hostages. Direct intelligence from several credible sources emerged in the early 1990s about those meetings, in which Bush was almost certainly a personal participant, where the Reagan-Bush team secretly agreed to free up frozen Iranian assets and supply the extremist regime with military hardware in exchange for Tehran holding onto the hostages until after Jimmy Carter was defeated. These negotiations were, of course, high treason, a capital crime. The Clinton Administration helped quash these investigations too. Is it any wonder that the old man feels such affection for Big Bill? (For an overview of the Reagan-Bush machinations with the mullahs, see Speak, Memory; for an in-depth look, see the remarkable series by Robert Parry, "The October Surprise Mystery".)

Iran suspects that the CIA and the Mossad are involved in the disappearance of Ali Reza Asghari, a retired general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and a former deputy defense minister. As as result, Israeli security has increased at the nation's embassies worldwide. On Monday, a British newspaper reported that there was a possibility that the missing official possessed information on Ron Arad, the Israeli Air Force navigator that has been missing since 1986.

Arad's whereabouts have been in question since then, when his plane was shot down over southern Lebanon. Reports claim that pro-Iranian Hizbullah took the Israeli from Amal security chief Mustafa Dirani the following year and that in 1988 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard took Arad and transported him to Iran.

Additionally, Asghari may have intimate knowledge of Iran's nuclear development program, according to the British Daily Telegraph report.

On Tuesday, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Asghari arrived in Turkey on a private visit from Damascus, Syria.

Jeannie Chancey of Ladies Against Feminism and Nahla Al-Arian, wife of imprisoned Palestinian political activist and ex-University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian joined Mark Dankof on the Republic Broadcasting Network on Friday, March 2nd.

Access Jeannie Chancey's "Ladies Against Feminism" web site by clicking here.

Access Sami Al-Arian's "Free Sami Al-Arian" web site by clicking here.

Access Joe Kay's December 2005 story on the Al-Arian case by clicking here.