Truest statement of the week

One point to make at the outset: Just as yesterday’s release of the extremely important IPCC report on climate change added multiple dimensions to the problem, beyond the obvious physical effects of global warming, to include increase of poverty, competition for scarce resources which could eventuate in war, etc., the US involvement in the Middle East, using the continuing intervention in Iraq as a benchmark (although in fact America is all over the place beginning at least a half-century before the invasion of Iraq), reveals widespread destruction, much of it deliberate, and, at home, the wholesale perversion of the Constitution, and hardly irrelevant to that process, the commission of war crimes with impunity and contempt shown international law and organization. War is more than body counts and dollar amounts; bypassing direct congressional authorization in favor of continuing resolutions, so as to avoid discussion of war policies and expenditures, the bipartisan dedication to obfuscation and government opacity, so well describes the current mood. Obama’s contempt for international law matches and is at one with his contempt for government transparency—to which, in foreign policy especially, he walks in a sea of near-unanimity.


-- Norman Pollack, "'American Footprint' in Iraq" (CounterPunch).