Talk Nation Radio

Greg Muttitt, visiting from the U.K., is the author of a new book on Iraq that is making a lot of news.  It's called Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq. Naomi Klein calls Muttitt's book "nothing short of a secret history of the war." Muttitt uncovers new and authoritative evidence that the war was, from initial conception through to the current day, driven by interest in oil.  And he tells a story of successful nonviolent resistance in Iraq, led by the oil workers, that has prevented the enactment of an oil law aimed at benefitting foreign corporations at the expense of the Iraqi people.

Clinical psychologist Bruce Levine says the U.S. public is particularly inactive.  Levine explains how we got this way, and how we might be cured.  Levine is the author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite.  He also contributed a chapter to The Military Industrial Complex at 50.  Levine's website is http://brucelevine.net

What happens when an Israeli from a Zionist military family meets Palestinians and hears their side of the story?  Miko Peled was brought around to researching the history of Israel and of his own family.  His grandfather signed Israel's Declaration of Independence.  His father was a general in the war of 1967.  His neice was killed in a suicide attack in Jersalem.  He has come to see the story of Israel as virtually the reverse of what he had believed.  Peled discusses his new book, The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, with a foreword by Alice Walker.

The political parties in Washington, D.C., have switched sides for the moment.  Now the Democrats accept presidential power abuses, while the Republicans are outraged, selectively, by a few of them.  Host David Swanson gives his thoughts.  Guest Elizabeth Holtzman discusses the possibility of creating a climate of accountability by prosecuting George W. Bush.  Holtzman was a member of Congress and of the House Judiciary Committee that voted for articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon.  She proposed the bill that required review of state secrets claims, as well as the bill that created a special prosecutor -- a law that was allowed to lapse following Kenneth Starr's abuse of it.  She was there for the creation of FISA.  She has brought Nazi war criminals to justice.  She was a leading advocate for impeaching George W. Bush.  Liz Holtzman's new book, co-authored with Cynthia Cooper, is called Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law and Plotted to Avoid Prosecution, and What We Can Do About It.  In the book, and in this interview, Holzman builds a case that Bush and his vice president Dick Cheney went out of their way to carefully protect themselves from prosecution but nonetheless left themselves open to it.