EUROPEUS

(By Stephen Holmes / Source: The Nation - USA) According to Chalmers Johnson - a former Navy man, cold war consultant to the CIA and emeritus professor at the University of California, San Diego -, Bush's imperial presidency may be the final chapter in the collapse of American democracy.

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(By Ken Silverstein / Source: Harper's Magazine - USA) Until recently, I thought the odds that the United States would attack Iran were less than fifty-fifty, but the chances of a military confrontation are clearly growing (as my colleague Scott Horton has been reporting on for some time). Earlier this year, I asked a former CIA official, who was stationed in the Persian Gulf during the first Gulf War and served in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, if he though the administration was planning a military strike. “I don’t think the administration is about to carry out military action,” he told me. “The military does not want to do this. We will lose planes if there is a massive air strike over Iran. We’ll have pilots killed and captured.” Yesterday, I called the official—who speaks with me only off the record—and he now believes a military strike is likely. Here are his comments, which I offer not as an endorseme:

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It is strange how difficult it is for the average reader to find out what really happened with the 15 UK navy people in Iran. It is equally difficult to believe what happened with the Iranian hostage in Iraq and it is impossible to make any guess anymore. For that everybody is responsible, especially the governments with all this spin over the last few years - today you have no idea who says the truth and who’s lying.

Reading on the news that the European Parliament has approved a damning report on secret CIA flights that condemns member states, which colluded in the operations, I felt that Strasburg must be definitely on another planet watching what’s going on back on Earth, at the least they are definitely not in Europe.