Scott Tucker: War Against War: Bradley Manning's Mind!

When I served in Vietnam as Advisory Team Leader in Trung Lap, in the heart of the "Iron Triangle" I would have been eternally thankful to have a man like Bradley Manning watching my back! Am investigative video created by The Guardian examines alleged WikiLeaker Bradley Manning's "psychologically condition" before he was dispatched to Iraq, where our Army decided to steal that country's oil, after roughing up their ctizens! Granted, concluding that he was probably not fit for overseas duty, and that security at his station was remarkably lax. The additional reporting provides a fuller picture of Manning's motivations, and discloses just how easy it was for him to hijack classified intelligence. Without our defense, a prisoner like Bradley Manning is defenseless against the media, the military and the government. We can at least spread the word about the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://www.bradleymanning.org/learn-more). Why is Manning's mind the only relevant sign of weakness, disability and pathology in the big media stories so far? Why not the sorry condition of our "corporate state", passing as a so- democratic republic? What is the "normal" psychology of soldiers allowed to beat up someone because he's not much above 5 feet tall? A shame, really, that only Senator Rand Paul, Republican from Kentucky, held out so stubbornly against a bipartisan majority on the issue of individual rights?

Sherwood Ross: US Spying Detects No Iranian Nukes

The former Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a new published report, that he had not seen "a shred of evidence" that Iran was "building nuclear, or nuqular", if your name is George W. Bush, who accepted the so-called 9/11 fairy tale about the asbestos-damaged "towers" belonging to "Silverberg". But I digress: Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize recipient who spent 12 years at the IAEA (sorry, NOT EIEIO) , told investigative journalist Seymor Hersh: "I don't believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran." El Baradei, the Nobel Prize recipient, who spent 12 years at the IAEA, told investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, "I don't believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran." El Baradei, who is now a candidate for the presidency of Egypt, added: "The core issue is mutual lack of trust. I believe there will be no solution until the day that the United States and Iran sit down together to discuss the issues, and put pressure on each other to find a solution." El Baradei's remarks are contained in in an article by Hersh titled "Iran and the Bomb".

Arianna Huffington: Memorial Dat Lessons From Darwin, Virginia Woolf, and "Altruistic Squirrels!"

Arianna Huffington, like the millions of Americans who will hit the road this Memorial Day, traveled to Providence, Rhode Island. In her case, it was to receive an honorary doctorate from Brown University during its commencement ceremony. Arianna is best known for her Huffington Daily Brief, but in this case, she wanted to repeat a lesson recalling the sacrifice of those who have given their lives in defense of ours, and to honor who continue to do so: However, as Advisory Team Leader in Vietnam, first near a small Montagnard village north of Kontum, and finally in Trung Lap, in the heart of Vietnam's "Iron Triangle" I witnessed too many problems related to our involvement of other nations' serious problems to feel good about my contribution! North of Kontum, I was asked to provide security for a medical mission, by guarding a helicopter which desperately had to fly to Dak To, which had been overrun by North Vietnamese enemy soldiers. Listening to the screams of the dead and dying, many of them still hoping to return to the United States, requires an extremely hard-boiled SOB. During my next assignment, in the "Iron Triangle" of Vietnam, I walked through a minefield, step by step behind a VietCong Enemy Agent. The enormous perspiration from the back of her cone-shaped hat made me realize that she had no more familiarity with the location of these deadly mines than I did. At the end of that "patrol", I pointed to the dense jungle to our left, and said: "Didi Mau", which means: "Go-go quickly"and, I never saw her face again, though my jungle combat boots still sit on a shelf in my garage. Before I left for Vietnam, my father, who was drafted into the German Army, pulled me aside into a room in our house where my mother could not listen to our conversation, told me: When I served in the German Army, I often had serious conversations with our officers, but in the end, they insisted on volunteering for the most difficult combat assignments. If you are not able to live up to their high standards, I do not want you to return to this house. Well, all of my men did live to tell their stories about Vietnam, and my father smiled at me for my devotion to their welfare!

Dahlia Wasfi: We Are The Terrorists!

We, the United States, have an obligation to every last victim of our illegal aggression, because of all the carnage which has been done in our name. Since World War II, 90% of the casualties of war were unarmed civilians, and at least 1/3 of them were children. Our victims have done nothing to us. I still remember our family's hasty flight from our home in Breslau, Germany, (now Wroclaw, Poland, which had been overrun by the victorious Soviet Army). On our way to Dresden, the man whose responsibility it was to bring us to Dresden stopped in the middle of a dark forest, and shut down our boilers, in order to avoid the attention of American fighter planes. His assistant ran outside of our train to notify us, when it might be possible to start our boilers again. After we arrived safely in Dresden, we were greeted by Red Cross nurses, who served us delicious noodle soup. I still remember a few kind faces, who looked inside my baby carriage, at a small child who had not yet been used to the horrors of war. Since Dresden was overcrowded with refugees, the city administration forced us to stay in a large farm house, on a hill overlooking a now burning city. Since our family had just celebrated Christmas in Breslau, I began singing "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht" (Silent Night, Holy Night), while my mother and Grandmother wept uncontrollably! Much later, when I served as Advisory Team Leader near Trung Lap, Vietnam, my team and I were advised by our Vietnamese friends that a Vietcong patrol was hidden in large barrels in a small river. I saw a colorful fruit growing from a tree barely touching the barrel, to which my Vietnamese Interpreter commented: "This fruit, VC eat" Since I was still upset by the shabby treatment by American pilots near Dresden, I decided to keep the VC hiding place to myself, and give our troublesome enemy a fair chance of surviving their war. Getting back to Dahlia Wasfi's comments "We Are The Terrorists", I know that she is right, and I want no part of any atrocity, especially against innocent civilians!

Patrick J. Buchanan: What Must America Defend?

For a change, we need to be honest with the president, with the Congress, as well as with the American people about the consequences of cutting the defense budged, said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his valedictory policy address to the American Enterprise Institute. A smaller military, no matter how superb, will be able to go fewer places and do fewer things. Gates seeks to ignite a debate the country seems reluctant to have. With a federal budget running out of balance by 10 percent of gross domestic product, what are we Americans willing to sacrifice? What are we willing to forgo? What are we willing to cut? The biggest budget items are Social Security, Medicare and Defense. To Democrats, the first two are untouchables. To most Republicans, defense is off the table. Indeed, the likelihood is that any budget deal to which both parties agree will contain escape clauses to enable Congress to avoid the painful decisions, and kick the can up the road. Consider the situation our US military faces: The useful life of the planes, ships, missiles, guns and armor that date to the Ronald Reagan buildup of the 1980's is coming to an end, and the cost of replacement weapons is much greater. A fleet of 2,440 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, for example, will cost over $1 trillion. While we no longer face a Soviet Union with nuclear and conventional forces equal to our own, US commitments have not been reduced, but augmented since the end of the Cold War. Six Warsaw Pact nations were brought into NATO, along with three republics of the old Soviet Union.

Anneli Rufus: The War to Protect Bluefin Tuna in Libyan Waters

The most important war in Libya is not in our news! The casualties are Atlantic bluefin tuna, which though not an officially endangered species has reduced bluefin populations by 80% since 1970. A single bluefin typically sells for $75,000, and the species will be decimated unless the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a nonprofit Watson founded in 1978 intervenes. French, Spanish, German, Italian and Maltese poachers ply these waters with impunity, although the EU has outlawed all fishing there due to Libya's civil war. It's a NATO no-fly zone, which is good news to poachers: No inspectors, no surveillance. "Any boat we find here will be an illegal boat," warns Watson, who says he liberated 800 tuna off Libya last year. Bluefin are not killed upon being caught, but hauled live in huge underwater nets to shore stations, where they can be fattened up like feedlot steers. Sea Shepherd divers slit those nets with knives: It's the latest in a long series of rip-roaring and highly controversial rescue missions involving blades and ballistics, fire and ice, stink-bombs and blood. Sea Shepherd crews have sunk at least 10 whaling vessels by fouling their propellers, intercepting their harpoons, blocking their slipways to prevent loading, and barrage them with foul-smelling butyric acid.

Robert Scheer: Geithner and Goldman, Thick as Thieves

What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion, interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week, in response to a court order for a Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, it wasn't an "interest-free" loan! Make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money, when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages, were being slapped with interest payments of more than 25 percent! One wonders if Barack Obama was fully aware of Geithner's deceitful performance at the New York Fed, when he appointed him treasury secretary in the incoming administration. The president was probably ignorant (as he always is), as were key members of Congress. "I wasn't aware of this program until now," said Barney Frank, D-Mass., who at the time chaired the House Financial Services Committee, admitting to Geithner's "single-tranche open-market operations" program, and there was no language in the Dodd-Frank law supposedly reining in the banks that compelled the Fed to reveal the existence of this program.