A furor has erupted in North America over reports that Russia will expand its armed forces of 1.32 million by a new 180,000 men. This will bring Russia close to China’s armed forces of about 2 million active soldiers.

The pro-war right in the US and Europe are trumpeting this increase as a prelude to a coming East-West war. ‘The Reds are Coming’ goes the old Cold War chorus.

We heard the same canard during WWII when clever British propaganda convinced most people that Hitler’s Germany was determined to conquer the world. In truth, Germany was trying to restore its pre-World War I borders.

Such was also the case with Stalin’s Soviet Union. Both imperial nations were torn apart after 1918 by the rapacious French and British imperialists, abetted by the Americans. Germany was panicked into entering World War I in 1914 because it believed it was about to be attacked in a two-front war by France, Britain and Russia.

Big numbers scare people. Russia may have what seems a large army today, but it is a vast nation of 17 million square kilometers with over 12 different time zones stretching from Eastern Europe to the frozen Barents Sea. Over 100 ethnic groups and religions are found in the vastness of Russia, today the last of the great 19th century empires (unless we count the United States) – counting break-away Ukraine.

Guarding the vast borders of this imperium and keeping it together requires very large numbers of soldiers and police. In WWII, the USSR fielded an astounding 34 million soldiers. The USA deployed 16 million, China at least 14 million. By comparison. today’s numbers of soldiers look puny.

Even so, Russia’s 1.32 million and its new 180,000 soldiers will strain the weak national economy. But, how then, was Stalin able to mobilize 34 million soldiers? One reason: today’s weapons cost one hell of a lot more than in the 1940’s.

Russia knows that in wartime the US plans to unleash its powerful Navy and Marine Corps against its Pacific provinces, notably Vladivostok. This distant region relies on two vulnerable rail lines, the Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur Mainlines, for contact with the rest of Russia. Just as interesting, when I was invited to Beijing by Chinese intelligence, I asked its senior officers ‘how long would it take the Chinese People’s Army to seize Vladivostok’ their reluctant answer was only ‘two days.’

Russia’s naval forces are unable to support one another, a huge strategic weakness shockingly demonstrated by the calamitous 1904 Russo-Japanese War. Today, much of Central Asia is independent. Moscow is hard-pressed to keep the Caucasus under control, as two Chechen Wars have shown.

Russia probably needs a million-plus army just to keep the lid on the vast imperium. Its current ‘military operation’ in break-away Ukraine needs many more troops. This conflict now extends to a 1,000 km long border. Such vastness is too much.

A decade ago, President Putin declared his intent to downsize Russia’s conventional forces and rely on nuclear weapons to defeat any foes. Few in the west paid any attention amid all the anti-Putin hysteria. But this is what happened. The Red Army was seriously reduced; its tank armies and air forces cut to the bone, in line with the rest of Europe. Then came the US-engineered coup in Kiev that resulted in the current conflict. The once mighty Red Army was revealed to be a paper tiger led by bumbling generals.

There was a time when all cringed before the power of the mighty Red Army. That was very long ago.

Republicans in the US Senate have been urging the White House to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles that can strike deep into Russia. Such is the madness of pro-war sentiment.

America’s lackluster Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, has apparently confirmed that Washington plans to shortly deliver such strategic weapons to Ukraine. This week, Britain’s new prime minister arrived in Washington to discuss more strategic arms for Ukraine.

One is vividly reminded of the mobs of idiots who thronged Paris train stations in August 1914, screaming ‘on to Berlin.’ As a British historian aptly noted, `if patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, then war is the first platform of fools.’

US-supplied long-range missiles are the last step between what was a border conflict and all-out war that will very likely go nuclear.

Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that he reduced conventional forces to divert funds to Russia’s stunted civilian economy. Nuclear weapons, said President Putin, will be used to replace conventional forces if Russia is attacked. We must take him at his word.

The border war with Ukraine, which began in 2014, has shown just how much Russia reduced its former conventional might. The once mighty Red Army has proven a shadow of its former self. Under Putin, armies of tanks have been replaced by new apartments across the sprawling nation.

The idea of sending more long-range missiles to Ukraine is sheer madness. Ukraine is slowly being ground down in this long war of attrition. Ukraine’s current strategy is to provoke a direct clash between Russia and the United States. Interestingly, Israel used the same strategy to provoke direct US military intervention against Syria and various Arab militias.

The United States, dominated by pro-war Republicans and wealthy pro-Israel special interests, appears eager to promote war with Russia. Most important, neoconservatives are urging intensified war against Russia to advance their goal of breaking up the Russian Federation into small, weak pieces dominated by Washington.

Such was the case under former Russian president Boris Yeltsin who allowed US financial interests to dominate Russia while he made merry. Former KGB officer Vladimir Putin put an end to Washington’s attempted to turn Russia into an American satrapy.

I interviewed the leaders of KGB at Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison in 1991. They expressed disgust with Russia’s then communist leadership and told me there would be a housecleaning. The result was, of course, KGB officer Vladimir Putin’s surprising rise to power. Putin quickly became the target of US media hate. He committed terrible brutalities in Chechnya but without him Russia might have ended up today’s supine, graveling Germany.

The US overthrew Ukraine’s last pro-Russian government. Ukraine had been part of the Russian state for hundreds of years and the center of its heavy industries. This coup cost the US $5 billion, according to its author, leading State Department neocon Victoria Nuland. An actor, the amiable Volodymyr Zelensky, was put in charge by Nuland. US funds and arms poured into Ukraine. Efforts by Washington to shatter the old Soviet Union were a brilliant success.

Except that Washington had to foot the bill, so far an astounding $44 billion, and deprive the US military of many important weapons systems. One also wonders why Donald Trump did not raise the issue of Ukraine’s payments to President Biden and his son.

As a veteran war correspondent and old friend of Ukraine, I see the US and Russia heading to a major war. The western powers have been relentlessly provoking Russia. The idea of supplying Ukraine with a new class of long-range missiles will likely ignite a horribly dangerous war that may very likely go nuclear. Now is the time for the great powers to impose peace, not supply arms. Time to end the unnecessary suffering of Ukrainians and Russians. Genuine diplomacy, not more weapons, is the answer.

Twenty-three years ago this month the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon shook the United States and horrified the world.

Almost three thousand Americans died. The US launched attacks across the Muslim world in what the media called ‘the War on Terror.’ The repercussions of these events continue today.

Washington quickly blamed Saudi/Yemeni jihadist Osama bin Laden for these attacks and vowed to hunt him down. But was he really guilty? As a veteran of the Afghan Wars and Mideast struggles, I still don’t believe most of Washington’s claims, most notably that the perpetrator was Osama bin Laden.

It was subsequently revealed that the 9/11 attacks were likely planned in Germany and Spain, not Kabul, Afghanistan. The head of Pakistani intelligence told me he believed bin Laden may have known in advance of the planned attacks but was not personally involved. Let’s recall that bin Laden was a CIA asset during the war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – which I covered.

Other senior Afghan mujahidin leaders concurred with this view. They believed the 9/11 attacks originated from Saudi Arabia. Many Saudis believed their nation was ‘occupied’ by the US. Most of the 19 aircraft hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. They were based around Delray Beach, Florida. But the US could not admit this embarrassing fact.

Interestingly, bin Laden, whose path I crossed in Afghanistan, claimed that the 9/11 attacks were ‘in revenge’ for Israel’s attacks on Beirut and other parts of southern Lebanon in 1982. Israel asserts the Lebanon attack was part of its campaign to crush the Palestine Liberation Organization which sought refuge in Lebanon.

US-supplied Israeli heavy artillery destroyed important parts of Lebanon’s capitol, Beirut, killing large numbers of Lebanese civilians over three months. Water and food to Beirut were cut off by Israel, a harbinger of the punishment currently being inflicted on Gaza. Lebanese neo-fascists allied to Israel massacred large numbers of Palestinian civilians at Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. I was there for Day 1 of the Lebanese civil war.

The George W. Bush administration was determined to conquer Afghanistan to secure a route for oil pipelines from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea. Bush had no idea about any of this but his far-right Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was lusting for oil and hated Afghanistan’s resistance movement, Taliban, which refused to take orders from the White House.

Cheney decided to invade Afghanistan. 9/11 was, of course, his perfect excuse, no matter the facts. The Afghans became the whipping boy for Washington’s egregious blunders during the 9/11 period. President Musharraf of Pakistan told me that Washington threatened to ‘bomb us back into the Stone Age’ if Pakistan did not allow US forces to attack Afghanistan from Pakistan. He gave in.

The tame US media amplified the war of lies against Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden. After 9/11, I was the principal CNN commentator on Afghanistan. Few Americans knew anything at the time about this distant, mysterious nation – except for me. I was with all the senior Afghan resistance leaders and with Taliban when it was formed to stop attacks by Communist forces, stop opium production and protect Afghan women from wide-scale rape.

Big TV in the US decided to label the Afghan resistance ‘terrorists.’ I refused to use this dishonest terminology originated by Israel to delegitimize the Palestinians. I refused to parrot the anti-Afghan propaganda being promoted by US TV. I called all the film clips of bin Laden supposedly blessing the 9/11 attacks as crude fakes. They were produced by the Afghan communists, America’s allies of the moment.

Unsurprisingly, I was kicked off CNN and blacklisted by them. According to a CNN producer, the Bush White House called CNN and ordered that I be taken off the air.

Bin Laden became the poster boy for evil Muslims and the whipping boy for all of Washington’s mistakes in its new colonial wars in the Muslim world.

Osama bin Laden wanted to see heavy-handed US influence evicted from the Muslim word. He failed. He was murdered gangster style in Pakistan in 2011 by a US hit squad. At the time, the so-called `world’s most dangerous terrorist’ was living in quiet retirement in Pakistan.

The real culprits behind 9/11 have never been revealed.

In 1982, I was with Israel’s army when it invaded southern Lebanon. We moved from menacing village to village ready for an attack by Hezbollah fighters.

Israel’s objective was to seize the southern portion of Lebanon, notably the Litani River, the region’s major source of potable water. The historic Port of Tyre – old when Rome was young – was another key target. It had been largely seized by Maronite fascist militias allied and supplied by Israel.

Israel claimed it was battling ‘terrorism.’ In fact, Israel’s ultimate objective was – as always – more land for the Jewish state. When Israel was created in 1948, there was much speculation about whether the new Jewish state would go on to annex all of southern Lebanon.

That did not happen after the US put its foot down. Those were the days before Israel dominated US Mideast policy and gave the US president his marching orders. Today, the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, on which I’ve been at sea, lies off the Mideast, ready to attack Iran.

The US and Israel have been trying to provoke wars with Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution which ousted its US/Israeli run royal regime. Assassinations by the US of Iranian General Soleimani and the killing recently of top Iranian commanders in Lebanon and Tehran have brought Iran and Israel to the edge of war.

According to my information, the US and Israel plan to launch over 3,400 air strikes against Iranian targets that include all nuclear installations (shades of Chernobyl). Transport hubs, airfields and ports, naval and air units, military plants, missile bases, telecommunications, intelligence HQ’s, broadcasting, Revolutionary Guards HQ’s, police HQ’s.

Israel has long been itching to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and permanently cripple its nuclear programs. The US has supplied Israel with the special heavy bombs, targeting info, and long-range aircraft for this job. In addition, Israel also has German submarines carrying missiles armed with nuclear warheads that can strike every Mideast capital.

Behind all the hyped-up drama of Israel v. Iran lies the fact that Iran has, so far, no way to effectively attack Israel. Its last barrage of missiles and drones proved about as dangerous and ineffective as throwing rocks. Iran has been under an intensive US arms and equipment embargo since 1979. Similar sanctions on Iraq resulted in it being unable to replace warped tank gun barrels in 2003 that could not shoot straight.

Israel’s attacks and assassinations have left Iran in a difficult position. It cannot really do major damage to Israel but, if it attacks, will suffer catastrophic damage itself. So long as neither side uses nuclear weapons, that is.

Another ugly possibility is that either side may revert to a plan considered by Egypt back in the late 1950’s: packing missile warheads with radioactive waste to counter Israeli threats to drop a nuclear weapon on Egypt’s huge Aswan Dam, an act that would have flooded the entire Nile Valley, including Cairo.

An Iranian attack on Israel will have little strategic efficacy. Prime targets in Israel for Iran would be Ben Gurion Airport, Haifa port, Tel Nof and other airbases and the Weizman Science complex. Only the airfields and Israel’s dimona reactor would be strategic targets, and perhaps Israel’s vulnerable electricity grid.

But Iran must keep its militant stance lest the current Tehran regime be discredited and even overthrown. This means more pinprick attacks and military parades in Tehran showing off high-tech weapons that barely work, if at all.

It is very unlikely Israel will invade Iran using ground operations. Iran is too big, too populous and too proven in war against Iraq. Gaza was too much of a public relations disaster for Israel. Iran could do little beyond commando raids across the border. The rest of the Muslim world has done nothing as it watches the starvation or wounding of over 90,000 Palestinians (half children) and the deaths of 40,000.

An Iranian militant once told me in Tehran, ‘we welcome an American invasion. They will break their teeth on Iran just as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan.’

New York – According to Britain’s esteemed medical journal, The Lancet, 186,000 Palestinian adults and children have so far been killed or died of disease in Gaza. Nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. 10,000 Palestinians languish in Israeli prisons.

The official Arab death toll to date is 39,670, including more than 15,000 children. Close to 80,000 Palestinians have been wounded.

Israel says 1,139 Israelis were killed. Half of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed by constant shelling, bombing and tank fire. Polio has just broken out in Gaza and the UN repots mass starvation there. Animals in Gaza – mainly horses and donkeys – have suffered terribly.

This is not a `war,’ as the media calls it. It’s an ongoing massacre, shooting fish in a barrel.

The two men who made possible this huge massacre, Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu and outgoing US President Joe Biden, met this week in Washington to talk about their ‘success’ in Gaza. Many members of US Congress applauded Netanyahu like trained seals.

Meanwhile, the US shipped thousands more 500lb and 2,000lb bombs and 105mm tank shells to Israel in violation of America’s own arms export laws. The arrest warrant issued against Netanyahu by the International Court of Justice was ignored by the US, which refuses to recognize the world court. And for good reason. Former President George W. Bush who committed a massive war crime in the trumped-up war against Iraq would have been arrested and put on trial. Add Biden and Tony Blair to this list of malefactors.

The US atomic bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Nagasaki killed an estimated 40,000. That puts the current death and wounded toll in Gaza within the range of Nagasaki – just at a slower pace. The number of dead and wounded at Hiroshima was around 70,000. Mass sickness and starvation ensued – as it is today in Gaza.

Many misinformed Americans and supporters of Israel still applaud Biden. They are wrong. He has blackened America’s name and disgraced the nation with its role in the Gaza massacre and made a mockery of the UN.

At least presidential candidate Kamala Harris has done the right thing by calling for the creation of a Palestinian state. She is already under fire from Israel’s extreme right-wing parties. They are obsessed by the potent Palestinian birth rate. Inside Israel, they talk about ways to slow down the Arab birth rate in the West Bank and Gaza. 2,000 bombs are an effective way.

Many Americans know nothing of this genocide. Their very biased news networks show little of the horrors of Gaza. The only network that does effective reporting from Gaza is Al-Jazeera. I expect it will soon be banned ‘for supporting terrorism.’ The next target of the far right will be social media. Young Americans who watch internet news are demonstrating across the country precisely because they have more access to real news than older Americans who watch the heavily censored biased major networks.

At the base of American politics vast sums of money remain the dominant factor. Half of the money flowing to the Biden administration has reportedly come from pro-Israel Democratic sources. Wall Street remains the giant cash cow for pro-Israel forces. Donald Trump is being given $100 million alone by the billionaire Israeli-American widow of Las Vegas gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson. That will buy an awful lot of the small-town used car salesmen who make up our corrupt Congress.