...in her landmark, out-of-print 1984 book In Banks We Trust, an authentic classic of investigative journalism, Lernoux claims that Michael Ledeen attempted to purchase a secret list of Uruguayan members of the infamous Propaganda Due Lodge from a Uruguayan source.

Never have run across that list, personally...wonder who's on it.

http://www.amazon.com/Banks-We-Trust-Penny-Lernoux/dp/014008794X

More from the Rawstory interview [click on signature for live link to Part 2]:

"...Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna: Looking back at your career and over the many controversies, the allegations that you were tied to P2 were the most intriguing. Is there any truth to this? Did you know Francesco Pazienza?

Michael Ledeen: There’s no truth to the P2 charges. In fact I didn’t believe in its existence, even though various Italians, including Pazienza, were pushing me to interview Licio Gelli, who was the head of it. I was New Republic correspondent at the time, and it probably would have been a good story, but I thought it was just another of the endless conspiracy theories that one ran into every day. Probably I should have talked to Gelli, then you’d have another suspicious connection…

Raw Story: I am not accusing you or attempting to locate suspicious connections. I am simply asking about allegations. How did you meet current SISMI chief Nicollo Pollari? You are good friends, no?

Ledeen: Pollari isn't a good friend; he's a person I met occasionally, at bridge games in Rome. [Ledeen has some repute as a highly ranked bridge player, fwiw. ed.]

RS: When we have talked in the past you have indicated that you did indeed do some work for [Italian Intelligence] SISMI around 1980. What was the nature of the work?..."

etc.

Your absolutely right in your point about other countries but I'm not so sure about this - "... how we can examine and understand (well, talk about anyway) the most obscure and minute differentiations in our own politics...", unless by "we" you mean the public and not the mainstream media. If one had no prior knowledge of our system of government and looked only at the media coverage of the last eight years they would have to assume we lived under a monarchy. Not "obscure and minute differentiations" but simply whether there is agreement with the president or an attempt to block or thwart him, with everything seen and filtered through the lens of the president and his administration.

Basically we have a "unitard" too, with the Democrats occupying the area around the ass-flap.

Greg Stillson being the politician in The Dead Zone that Christopher Walken has a vision of, ending the world with a nuclear strike.

These people are manufacturing a scenario for the King to pull the lever and show how brave and decisive he is. It is clear that a weak President whose greatest desire is to be tough is a gift to these people.

I think you only listed 1 war. Where are the others?

This actually advances the whole "attack Iran" argument in an indirect fashion:

1956: Israel attacks Egypt in concert with Britain and France.

1967: Israel launches a three-pronged surprise offensive against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, seizing the Sinai peninsula, Golan Heights, and the West Bank and Jerusalem.

1973: Israel halts a Syrian drive into the Golan and reverses a limited Egyptian incursion in to occupied Sinai, then invades both countries proper.

1982: Israel drives into Lebanon ostensibly to crush the PLO (which it fails to do).

See the pattern?

NotOrbitBoy is scared of nonexistent Iranian nukes; that's him. How about we not follow him off the ledge.

It would be so much easier if you people would read all of the texts that you cite from. From that same Wikipedia entry:

In 1922 the population of Palestine consisted of approximately 589,200 Muslims, 83,800 Jews, 71,500 Christians and 7,600 others (1922 census[8]).However, this area gradually saw a large influx of Jewish immigrants (most of whom were fleeing the increasing persecution in Europe). This immigration and accompanying call for a Jewish state in Palestine drew violent opposition from local Arabs, in part because of Zionism's stated goal of a Jewish state, which many Arabs believed would require the subjugation or removal of the existing non-Jewish population.

If you were a rational person, that would certainly put the Arab "attack" on Israel in context. I'm somehow doubting that it will.

[to Electro Spambot]: It's pure nonsense, and your accusations of anti-semitism are insulting and racist.

They're lame, repetitive and redundant, trite, predictable, and almost identically the same. This spambot is Greenwald's infestation of the Rev. 3.4 beta "Riley M. Sinder" bot. Best to just ignore it, and encourage Glenn to just delete it every time it pops in with the same damn "Tell me more about your mother" line (see, e.g. "Joseph Weizenbaum" and "Eliza" for more on this phenomenon).

Cheers,

See Stephen Kinzer's fine book, "All the Shah's Men" for the Iran story, and his book "Overthrow" for more on the more general sanguinary, avaricious, and imperial tendencies of the U.S. over the last century.

Those who may prefer the executive summary should resort to Chalmers Johnson's A Litany of Horrors: America's University of Imperialism:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/043008V.shtml

1948 Arab-Israel War

Israel attacked by lebanese, syrians, iraqis, saudis, yemens, lybians, and egyptians.

Kind of a "welcome to the neighborhood" celebration.

Yeah, and Israel kicked their asses.

And now they have even a better military.

Plus, they've got loads of nukes now.

So why should America attack Iran?

The AEI and the other think tanks were created to promote the neocon corporate agenda. Leaving them alive is perilous to the country. They are the enemies to democracy with power, wealth and private troops and will continue to manipulate the press and the government to continue world domination. They have infiltrated all the places of power and one day will promote a domestic confrontation with Americans. Their willingness to lie and operate secretly demonstrates they will stop at nothing to accomplish their goal of world domination. It wasn't just Franklin giving secrets away he was just the only one caught. Feith's entire crew is complicit as well as Dennis Hastert and Roy Blunt and the donors to these think tanks. They believe they are America so whatever they do is justified and the law doesn't apply to them. If martial law is declared they will come for Glenn Greenwald and others who have spoken out first because they are the low lying fruit. The neocons are not acting from patriotism but from greed and self preservation.