The REAL Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan (It Was Not To End the War Or Save Lives)

Atomic Weapons Were Not Needed to End the War or Save Lives

Like all Americans, I was taught that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end WWII and save both American and Japanese lives.

But most of the top American military officials at the time said otherwise.

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

General (and later president) Dwight Eisenhower – then Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces, and the officer who created most of America’s WWII military plans for Europe and Japan – said:

The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.

Newsweek, 11/11/63, Ike on Ike

Eisenhower also noted (pg. 380):

In [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude….

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg. 441):

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

General Douglas MacArthur agreed (pg. 65, 70-71):

MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed …. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.

Moreover (pg. 512):

The Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face ‘prompt and utter destruction.’ MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General’s advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary.

Similarly, Assistant Secretary of War John McLoy noted (pg. 500):

I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs.

Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bird said:

I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted.

***

In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn’t have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb.

War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.

He also noted (pg. 144-145, 324):

It definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn’t get any imports and they couldn’t export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in.

Alfred McCormack – Director of Military Intelligence for the Pacific Theater of War, who was probably in as good position as anyone for judging the situation – believed that the Japanese surrender could have been obtained in a few weeks by blockade alone:

The Japanese had no longer enough food in stock, and their fuel reserves were practically exhausted. We had begun a secret process of mining all their harbors, which was steadily isolating them from the rest of the world. If we had brought this project to its logical conclusion, the destruction of Japan’s cities with incendiary and other bombs would have been quite unnecessary.

General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” stated publicly shortly before the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan:

The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

The Vice Chairman of the U.S. Bombing Survey Paul Nitze wrote (pg. 36-37, 44-45):

[I] concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945.

***

Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary.

Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence Ellis Zacharias wrote:

Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.

Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.

I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.

Ellis Zacharias, How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender, Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.

Brigadier General Carter Clarke – the military intelligence officer in charge of preparing summaries of intercepted Japanese cables for President Truman and his advisors – said (pg. 359):

When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.

Many other high-level military officers concurred. For example:

The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that “The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war.” In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.” It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment was “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to “succumb” to [the tiny handful of people putting pressure on the president to drop atom bombs on Japan.]

British officers were of the same mind. For example, General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, said to Prime Minister Churchill that “when Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.”

On hearing that the atomic test was successful, Ismay’s private reaction was one of “revulsion.”

Why Were Bombs Dropped on Populated Cities Without Military Value?

Even military officers who favored use of nuclear weapons mainly favored using them on unpopulated areas or Japanese military targets … not cities.

For example, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss proposed to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal that a non-lethal demonstration of  atomic weapons would be enough to convince the Japanese to surrender … and the Navy Secretary agreed (pg. 145, 325):

I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate… My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest… would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will… Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation…

It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world…

General George Marshall agreed:

Contemporary documents show that Marshall felt “these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave–telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers….”

As the document concerning Marshall’s views suggests, the question of whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified turns  … on whether the bombs had to be used against a largely civilian target rather than a strictly military target—which, in fact, was the explicit choice since although there were Japanese troops in the cities, neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was deemed militarily vital by U.S. planners. (This is one of the reasons neither had been heavily bombed up to this point in the war.) Moreover, targeting [at Hiroshima and Nagasaki] was aimed explicitly on non-military facilities surrounded by workers’ homes.

Historians Agree that the Bomb Wasn’t Needed

Historians agree that nuclear weapons did not need to be used to stop the war or save lives.

As historian Doug Long notes:

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission historian J. Samuel Walker has studied the history of research on the decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan. In his conclusion he writes, “The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisors knew it.” (J. Samuel Walker, The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update, Diplomatic History, Winter 1990, pg. 110).

Politicians Agreed

Many high-level politicians agreed.  For example, Herbert Hoover said (pg. 142):

The Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945…up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; …if such leads had been followed up,there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs.

Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew noted (pg. 29-32):

In the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the [retention of the] dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the [Japanese] Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.

If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer.

Why Then Were Atom Bombs Dropped on Japan?

If dropping nuclear bombs was unnecessary to end the war or to save lives, why was the decision to drop them made? Especially over the objections of so many top military and political figures?

One theory is that scientists like to play with their toys:

On September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publicly quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a “toy and they wanted to try it out . . . .” He further stated, “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it.”

However, most of the Manhattan Project scientists who developed the atom bomb were opposed to using it on Japan.

Albert Einstein – an important catalyst for the development of the atom bomb (but not directly connected with the Manhattan Project) – said differently:

“A great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom bomb.” In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb was a political – diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific decision.

Indeed, some of the Manhattan Project scientists wrote directly to the secretary of defense in 1945 to try to dissuade him from dropping the bomb:

We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early, unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United States would be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race of armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.

Political and Social Problems, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 76, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 323-333).

The scientists questioned the ability of destroying Japanese cities with atomic bombs to bring surrender when destroying Japanese cities with conventional bombs had not done so, and – like some of the military officers quoted above – recommended a demonstration of the atomic bomb for Japan in an unpopulated area.

The Real Explanation?

History.com notes:

In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective …. It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union. By August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had deteriorated badly. The Potsdam Conference between U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four days before the bombing of Hiroshima. The meeting was marked by recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets. Russian armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. Truman and many of his advisers hoped that the U.S. atomic monopoly might offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of the Cold War.

New Scientist reported in 2005:

The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.

Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.

“He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species,” says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. “It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity.”

***

[The conventional explanation of using the bombs to end the war and save lives] is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US.

***

New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman’s main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was “looking for peace”. Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

“Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan,” says Selden.

John Pilger points out:

The US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.

We’ll give the last word to University of Maryland professor of political economy – and former Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and Special Assistant in the Department of State – Gar Alperovitz:

Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.

***

Instead [of allowing other options to end the war, such as letting the Soviets attack Japan with ground forces], the United States rushed to use two atomic bombs at almost exactly the time that an August 8 Soviet attack had originally been scheduled: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. The timing itself has obviously raised questions among many historians. The available evidence, though not conclusive, strongly suggests that the atomic bombs may well have been used in part because American leaders “preferred”—as Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Martin Sherwin has put it—to end the war with the bombs rather than the Soviet attack. Impressing the Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor.

***

The most illuminating perspective, however, comes from top World War II American military leaders. The conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved a million lives is so widespread that … most Americans haven’t paused to ponder something rather striking to anyone seriously concerned with the issue: Not only did most top U.S. military leaders think the bombings were unnecessary and unjustified, many were morally offended by what they regarded as the unnecessary destruction of Japanese cities and what were essentially noncombat populations. Moreover, they spoke about it quite openly and publicly.

Will Americans ever be free of QE slavery?

J. Keith Johnson

Over the past 40 years, the Federal Reserve has been force-feeding the world the idea that its printing press puts out more valuable paper than anyone else’s. This is, of course, because in 1971 it was given legislative approval to manage the U.S. currency, without any asset restrictions.

At the time the world was already addicted to U.S. dollars as a reserve currency due to the dollar’s tie to gold. As long as the dollar remained pegged to gold (at least in theory), other countries’ currencies maintained the same tie in proportion to their dollar reserves.

At first the nations balked when Nixon cut the golden thread, ending the world’s last true money base and creating the greenback. They knew that he had just undercut their value, and the dollar fell hard at first. However, they soon realized that a falling dollar was bad for their own currency, so they adopted a more accepting posture. Since then the management of the world’s reserve currency has rested in the hands of the Fed.

Over the years the American people have grown accustomed to the fiat currency. Realizing that inflation would destroy savings over a long period of time, spending became much more acceptable. After all, why save a thousand dollars only to see its purchasing power diminish over the years? Better to buy what you want and enjoy it now. So, as the time passed, Americans became net spenders rather than net savers.

There was a time when banks and Wall Street weren’t allowed to share the same bed; at least not officially. Banks needed to concentrate on serving customers and keep their interests from being clouded by markets. Everyone understood that once banks started getting involved in the markets, caring for customers’ cash would become secondary to shooting for massive profits.

When Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, it was already all but dead. Legislators had neglected to uphold the act, allowing banks to grow in their securities’ interest. While it would have been better to have never implemented Glass-Steagall in the first place (letting the natural forces of the market run their course), passing it and then, years later, not enforcing it was even worse.

As the money supply became less restricted and the banks less regulated, the inevitable occurred. The banks became addicted to easy money. And, of course, they passed this easy money off to the people. Everyone was enjoying easy money, while very few were considering the consequences.

What happens to a wild animal if someone constantly leaves scraps out for them to eat? They become accustomed to the scraps. The hunting instinct gives way to easy food. The healthy living of a varied diet, running, hunting, gathering and working to survive is replaced with complacency, a poor diet, easy food and, eventually, they become less healthy. But they also become so accustomed to it that, rather than appreciating a little help at a time when they might have needed it, they come to expect it as their mainstay.

Welcome to Western civilization in the 21st century. From the top down, we’ve become addicted to easy money. The problem is, there’s a price to pay. Our addiction has enslaved us to the whims and mechanisms of the central bankers.

Consider the recent announcement. As the drug addicts (bankers/Wall Street) lined up waiting to hear what would happen, their mouths watered for more QE. Never mind that past QE only offered a temporary fix. Never mind that inflation is destroying the backbone of our economy, the working man. They just wanted their fix. And, of course, they got it. In fact, they were promised that it wouldn’t end until their bellies were full.

How long did it take before their bellies groaned again? By the end of the first week we’re seeing cries for more QE. QE∞ simply wasn’t enough. The addict is crying for another fix. To whatever degree the pusher complies, the addiction will deepen and the health of the addict will deteriorate. The only answer lies in breaking free of the addiction.

In the immediate term, the best way to do so is likely to accumulate assets that do not diminish in value. Precious metals, some properties and other assets can stand the test of time. In the long run, for our posterity, the only solution is to be freed of the Fed shackles we’ve embraced. However, as voters have shown in a strange and sad irony, America is not ready for freedom.

Israel-US discussing joint Iran attack

Israel and the US are considering a joint surgical strike targeting Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, according to a report in Foreign Policy magazine that appeared Monday, soon after Republican candidate Mitt Romney slammed US President Barack Obama’s Iran policy.

“Iran today has never been closer to a nuclear weapons capability,” Romney said in a foreign policy address delivered at the Virginia Military Institute. “And it has never acted less deterred by America.”

Soon after those comments, Foreign Policy CEO and editor at large David Rothkopf – who wrote unflatteringly of Romney that this was one of the first times recently he addressed foreign policy without “tripping over his own misstatements” – reported that the White House and Israeli officials “assert that the two sides, behind the scenes, have come closer together in their views [regarding Iran] in recent days.”

Rothkopf, who was an undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, wrote that “while there may not be exact agreement on what constitutes a ‘red line’ – a sign of Iranian progress toward the development of nuclear weapons that would trigger military action – the military option being advocated by the Israelis is considerably more limited and lower risk than some of those that have been publicly debated.”

Rothkopf quoted a “source close to the discussions” as saying that a surgical strike on the enrichment facilities “might take only ‘a couple of hours’ in the best case and only would involve a ‘day or two’ overall” and would be conducted by air, using primarily bombers and drone support.

“Advocates for this approach,” he wrote, “argue that not only is it likely to be more politically palatable in the United States, but were it to be successful – meaning knocking out enrichment facilities, setting the Iranian nuclear program back many years, and doing so without civilian casualties – it would have region-wide benefits. One advocate asserts it would have a ‘transformative outcome: saving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon; reanimating the peace process; securing the Gulf; sending an unequivocal message to Russia and China; and assuring American ascendancy in the region for a decade to come.’” Such an attack could not be carried out by Israel alone, the report said.

“To get to buried Iranian facilities, such as the enrichment plant at Fordow, would require bunker-busting munitions on a scale that no Israeli plane is capable of delivering,” Rothkopf wrote. “The mission, therefore, must involve the United States, whether acting alone or in concert with the Israelis and others.”

The Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment on the report.

Uzi Arad, former national security adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said in an Israel Radio interview that regardless of whether such reports were politically motivated, the fact that there continues to be public talk about military action against Iran – be it by Israel, the US or together – increases the pressure on Iran at a time when sanctions are already having an effect.

Arad, who did not deny that there may have been a political motivation behind the report, says there is also logic to it.

No one who really knows will either confirm or deny the story, he said. However, he added that it made sense that the military option is on the table and that quiet, professional discussions between Israel and the US have been taking place. The fact that these discussions are being bandied about “will be felt by Iran,” and could add to the other pressures on Tehran aimed at getting it to slow down the nuclear program, he said.

The political motivation behind the report may be designed to make Obama look tough on Iran in the face of Romney’s criticism.

THE U.S ELECTION FRAUD

Back during the George W. Bush neocon regime, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in his UN speech summed up George W. Bush for the world. I am quoting Chavez from memory, not verbatim. “Yesterday standing at this same podium was Satan himself, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur.”

Chavez is one of the American right-wing’s favorite bogyman, because Chavez helps the people instead of bleeding them for the rich, which is Washington’s way. While Washington has driven all but the one percent into the ground, Chavez cut poverty in half, doubled university enrollment, and provided health care and old age pensions to millions of Venezuelans for the first time.

Little wonder he was elected to a fourth term as president despite the many millions of dollars Washington poured into the election campaign of Chavez’s opponent.

While Washington and the EU preach neoliberalism--the supremacy of capital over labor--South American politicians who reject Washington’s way are being elected and reelected in Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia. 

It was the Ecuadoran government, not Washington, that had the moral integrity to grant political asylum to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange. The only time Washington grants asylum is when it can be used to embarrass an opponent.

In contrast to the leadership that is emerging in South America as more governments there reject the traditional hegemony of Washington, the US political elite, whether Republican or Democrat, are aligned with the rich against the American people. 

The Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has promised to cut taxes on the rich, taxes which are already rock bottom, to block any regulation of the gangsters in the financial arena, and to privatize Social Security and Medicare.

Privatizing Social Security and Medicare means to divert the people’s tax dollars to the profits of private corporations. In Republican hands, privatization means only one thing: to cut the people’s benefits and to use the people’s tax dollars to increase the profits in the private sector. Romney’s policy is just another policy that sacrifices the people to the one percent.

Unfortunately, the Democrats, if a lessor evil, are still an evil. There is no reason to vote for the reelection of a president who codified into law the Bush regime’s destruction of the US Constitution, who went one step further and asserted the power to murder US citizens without due process of law, and who has done nothing to stop the exploitation of the American people by the one percent. 

As Gerald Celente says in the Autumn Issue of the Trends Journal, when confronted with the choice between two evils, you don’t vote for the lessor evil. You boycott the election and do not vote. “Lessor or greater, evil is evil.”

If Americans had any sense, no one would vote in the November election. Whoever wins the November election, it will be a defeat for the American people.

An Obama or Romney win stands in stark contrast with Chavez’s win. Here is how Lula da Silva, the popular former president of Brazil summed it up: “Chavez’s victory is a victory for all the peoples of Latin America. It is another blow against imperialism.” Washington, making full use of the almighty dollar, was unable to buy the Venezuelan election.

How will a Romney or Obama win be summed up? The answer will be in terms of which candidate is best for Israel’s interest; which is best for Wall Street’s interest, which is best for agribusiness; which is most likely to attack Iran; which is most likely to subject economic and war protesters to indefinite detention as domestic extremists. 

The only people who will benefit from the election of either Romney or Obama are those associated with the private oligarchies that rule America. 

PaulCraigRoberts

What Is Happening to Muslims Will Happen to the Rest of Us

 Chris Hedges

The decision by the European Court of Human Rights last week to refuse to block the extradition of the radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and four others to the United States on terrorism charges removes one of the last external checks on our emerging gulag state.

Masri and the four others, all held in British jails, will soon join hundreds of other Muslims tried in Article III federal courts in the United States over the last decade. Fair trials are unlikely. A disturbing pattern of gross infringements on basic civil liberties, put in place in the name of national security, has poisoned our legal system. These infringements include intrusive surveillance, vague material support charges, the use of prolonged pretrial solitary confinement, classified evidence that the accused cannot review, and the use of political activities, normally protected under the First Amendment, to demonstrate mind-set and intent. Muslims caught up in the Article III courts are denied the opportunity to confront their accusers and to have their religious and political associations protected, and they rarely find a judge courageous enough to protect their rights. These violations of fundamental civil liberties will not, in the end, be reserved exclusively for Muslims once the corporate state feels under siege. What is happening to them will happen to the rest of us. 

“One of the misapprehensions of the last decade is that the government had to go outside the law to places like Guantanamo or Bagram to abridge the rights of suspects in the name of national security,” said Jeanne Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College who has been an outspoken critic of the rights abridgement occurring in Article III courts. “But this is not the case. A similar degradation of rights that has characterized the prison at Guantanamo has also affected the judicial system within the United States. The right to dissent, the right to see the evidence against you, the right to due process, the right to fair and speedy trial, the right to have a judge who will be impartial, the right to fair and not disproportionate punishment, and the right not to be punished before you are convicted have been taken from us in the name of national security. It is not just in special secret prisons that this occurs, but also—dismayingly—within the U.S. federal courts.”

This is not about the guilt or innocence of Masri, an Egyptian who lost an eye and a hand as a mujahedeen fighting in Central Asia and who has repeatedly called for violence against the United States and allegedly helped orchestrate violence. This is about the right of all accused to a fair defense and humane detention conditions. Once Masri arrives on U.S. soil he will receive neither. He will, even before he is tried or convicted, endure prison conditions that replicate the brutality suffered by those in our offshore penal colonies, including the one at Guantanamo Bay. He will enter a world of prolonged and psychologically crippling isolation, made worse by the likely application of so-called special administrative measures. He will spend his days in a tiny cell under constant electronic surveillance. At New York’s Metropolitan Correction Center, where Masri and the other men will most likely first be incarcerated, he will never be allowed outdoors. He will be permitted to spend only one hour a day outside his cell, alone in a cage. Masri and the four other suspects could spend years in these conditions before trial. Because of security restrictions, it will take as long as six months for letters from his family to reach him. His lawyers can be prosecuted if they repeat in public what he tells them, especially about the conditions of his incarceration.

And, once he goes on trial, he will be in an Article III court, where national security provisions will almost certainly guarantee his conviction. Once convicted, he and the others are likely to be sent to the federal Administrative Maximum facility (known as ADX), in Florence, Colo., to spend, potentially, a lifetime in solitary confinement. There he will be permitted, at most, an hour a day out of his cell, in a cramped cage nicknamed “the dog run” because it looks like a dog kennel. His meals will be delivered to his cell through a slot. He will not be permitted to work in prison industries or have congregational prayer, an essential tenet of the Muslim faith. 

Torture is legal in the United States in the form of years of solitary confinement and the use of special administrative measures,” Theoharis said when we spoke by phone. “The Obama administration has not only refused to hold Bush officials accountable for torture, but maintains torturous conditions in federal prisons. And the Obama administration willfully misled the European Court about the conditions these prisoners face.”

Nearly every state now has a “supermax” prison similar to the federal prison at Florence, which former ADX Warden Robert Hood once called “a clean version of hell.”These prisons presage a dystopian world where disobedient citizens are seized, stripped of rights and broken psychologically. Law professor Laura Rovner and Theoharis—who is an outspoken advocate for her former student Fahad Hashmi, being held in the Florence supermax—detailed the corrosion of justice within federal courts in an article in the American University Law Review. They noted that the distortion within the federal legal system “represents a particular way of seeing the Constitution, of constructing the landscape as a murky terrain of lurking enemies where rights must have substantial limits and the courts must be steadfast against such dangers.” The two professors went on to argue that while legal scholars and human rights advocates have examined the dangers of these paradigms in Guantanamo, they have generally failed to acknowledge that “the federal system is similarly infected by such paradigms.”

US and Israel Prepare to Declare WWIII Against Iran, China and Russia

Susanne Posel

Obama and Netanyahu are currently deciding how to best strike Iran’s nuclear power facility in Natanz. There are talks of using drones and bomber jets so that the attack would only take a day or two. It is certain that US involvement is necessary for a success in Iran.

The Zionist regime has a long history of falsely claiming that Iran has a nuclear weapon. However, this is an old game they are playing and the American public’s memory may be too short to recall how many times this lie has been perpetrated. In the past, there have been several claims by Israeli Prime Minister and globalist puppet Benjamin Netanyahu and other supporters of the lie that Iran was on the precipice of having a nuclear weapon.

• In 1992, Netanyahu predicts that Iran was “3 to 5 years” from having a nuclear weapon.
• In 1992, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres predicts an Iranian nuclear warhead by 1999 to French TV.
• In 1995, New York Times reports US and Israel claim Iran would have the bomb by 2000.
• In 1998, speaking before Congress Donald Rumsfeld proclaims Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the US by 2003.

The reality is that between 1985 and 2002 the Israeli Ministry of Defense used shell corporations to smuggle nuclear triggers from the US. One of the operatives, Richard Kelly Smith, met with Netanyahu who worked for one of the shell corporations called Heli Trading Company and was an integral part of the smuggling ring.

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, David Rothkopf, who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said plans for a series of ‘surgical strikes’ on Iran’s nuclear facilities had been drawn up. Rothkopf is advocating how “politically palatable” a strike on Iran would be. He explains that this strategy would have a “transformative outcome: saving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, reanimating the peace process, securing the Gulf, sending an unequivocal message to Russia and China, and assuring American ascendancy in the region for a decade to come.”

Covert operations are in the works which will involve air strikes on Natanz and other sites “that could impact Iranian civilian populations.”

Israeli propaganda media is reporting findings that the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has decried about Iranian nuclear procurement.

Israeli Defense Officials continue to say that Iran is enriching uranium for the purposes of acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian President, said there is a “possibility of a strike against Iran.”

Definite plans on striking Iran have been leaked. The document reveals that the Zionist regime has a coordinated scheme to attack Iranina power plant facilities as well as “internet, telephones, radio and television, communications satellites, and fiber optic cables leading to and from critical installations – including underground missile bases at Khorramabad and Isfahan – will be taken out of action.”

Israeli targets in Iran include:

• The nation’s electrical grid
• Internet access
• Mobile phone network
• Emergency communications for firemen and police officers

In response to the Zionist regime’s preparations for war with Iran, Russia and China are combining forces to support Iran. Obama and Netanyahu thwart diplomatic efforts while Ahmadinejad continues to say publicly that there is an ever-present threat of military strike.

Iran has involved Syria in their military exercises with China and Russia to prepare an estimated 90,000 troops, 400 aircraft and 1,000 tanks in joint maneuvers along the Syrian coast line. It was also reported that Russian “atomic submarines and warships, aircraft carriers and mine-clearing destroyers as well as Iranian battleships and submarines will also arrive in Syria.”

As part of the WW III scenario, NATO forces are proclaiming their alliance with Turkey against Syria in a direct threat designed to incite an escalation of tensions in the region.

Turkey has been involved in the proxy war in Syria by allowing the CIA to utilize al-Qaeda and train members of the Free Syrian Army on a base in their country.

The Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has been very vocal about his belief that NATO and Turkish forces will bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Having international support against Syria has empowered Turkey.

Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary-General, prior to a talk in Brussels with NATO explained that: “Obviously Turkey can rely on NATO solidarity. We have all necessary plans in place to protect and defend Turkey if necessary.”

The Diyarbakir Air Base in Turkey has received 25 extra F-18 fighter jets from an undisclosed military source. The continued show of force in Turkey against Syria is fully supported by NATO. This implies that the US is expected to join in, after having devastated the region with their terrorist faction, the Free Syrian Army. To further invoke the use of technocratically-controlled countries, British and French Special Forces are collaborating with the CIA and MI6 to assist the Free Syrian Army inside Syria.

Dimitry Rogozin, Russian representative for the envoy to NATO, asserts that: “NATO is planning a military campaign against Syria to help overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad with a long-reaching goal of preparing a beachhead for an attack on Iran.”

Last week it was discovered that the Free Syrian Army are being armed by Saudi Arabia. The attack in Aleppo was actually funded with ammunition and weaponry from the US-aligned Middle Eastern nation. The Free Syrian Army deny knowledge of how they came to obtain thisshippment from Saudi Arabia; however it is fairly obvious that the Salafi extremists in their country are supporting the US-backed terrorist faction. Saudi officials have also declined comment thinking that refusal to speak will correspond with their ignorance. Yet, Saudi ammunition has been used since the inception of the CIA-trained “rebels” paid for my “foreign aid” from the US and British governments.

This subversive supplying of weapons to terrorists has resulted in the use of IEDs and car bombs to destroy the intelligence headquarters of the Syrian government in Damascus.

Terrorist plots carried out by CIA-trained men on behalf of the Zionist regime are murdering untold numbers of Syrians. This devastation coincides with the preparations for military strike against Iran. Ultimately, the Zionists are setting the stage for a massive depopulation scheme with the manipulation of super-powers and their allies.