Obama's Election Struck a Huge Blow Against Racism, But He's Kept the US War Machine "Set on Kill"

[StarfarerBill]

By Amy Goodman and Anjali Kamat, Democracy Now!

ANJALI KAMAT: On Tuesday, President Obama made another statement on the failure of intelligence agencies to intercept the Christmas Day plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. He said the US government had the necessary information to stop the twenty-three-year-old Nigerian suspect from boarding the Detroit-bound flight, but he excoriated the intelligence community for failing to connect the dots in time.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I will accept that intelligence, by its nature, is imperfect. But it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged. That’s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it.

ANJALI KAMAT: Obama said intelligence agencies knew that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had, quote, "traveled to Yemen and joined up with extremists there." The President also addressed concerns over repatriating the ninety-odd Yemeni men who are still detained in Guantanamo.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Given the unsettled situation, I’ve spoken to the attorney general, and we’ve agreed that we will not be transferring additional detainees back to Yemen at this time. But make no mistake. We will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al-Qaeda. In fact, that was an explicit rationale for the formation of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And as I’ve always said, we will do so -- we will close the prison in a manner that keeps the American people safe and secure.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, it's almost been a year since President Obama’s inauguration and his promise to close the prison at Guantanamo.

For a critical look back over the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security decisions in the last twelve months, we're joined here in New York by award-winning investigative journalist and activist Allan Nairn.

In 1991, we were both in East Timor and witnessed and survived the Santa Cruz massacre, in which Indonesian forces killed more than 270 Timorese. The soldiers fractured Allan's skull.

Over the past three decades, he has exposed how the US government has backed paramilitary death squads in El Salvador, in Guatemala, in Haiti. He also uncovered US support for the Indonesian military's assassinations and torture of civilians.

He's joining us now for the rest of the hour. Well, why don't you start off with a broad overview, as we move into this first anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration, of his term in office?

More:
http://www.alternet.org/world/145027/obama%27s_election_struck_a_huge_blow_against_racism%2C_but_he%27s_kept_the_us_war_machine_%22set_on_kill%22

[izquierdista]

1. And war is the worst racism of all

War is usually just thinly disguised racism, where a nation is fired up to go out and kill their (different) neighbors.