The Department of Defense celebrated its 15th Iftar meal, July 12, at the Pentagon. Attending the event were senior defense leaders, White House and congressional staffers, foreign dignitaries, defense attachés, imams, Gold Star families, and Muslims who work in the defense community.

by Glenn Greenwald (Guardian)

I’ve now seen “Zero Dark Thirty”. Before getting to that: the controversy triggered this week by my commentary on the debate over that film was one of the most ridiculous in which I’ve ever been involved.

“As painful as this day is and always will be, it leaves us with a lesson: that no single event can ever destroy who we are, no act of terrorism can ever change what we stand for,” the president said at a memorial ceremony at the Pentagon.

The intrepid Seymour Hersh reports at the New Yorker that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) of the US military gave members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK or People’s Holy Jihadis) training in signals intelligence at a facility in Nevada during the Bush era.

Earlier we mentioned a new report funded by the Pentagon, which argues that economic terrorists were behind the collapse of the economy (and that they’re not through).Not only is the pure rubbish, but the report also appears to be anti-Muslim.

Can it be that American military bases abroad, usually thought of as “stabilizers” in tough neighborhoods, are really the primary cause of radical terrorism against the US and its allies?

Islamophobia is growing in the United States. Hate graffiti is now discoloring my own building here in New York City — calling for the Holy Quran to be burned. The publicity-hungry Terry Jones in Gainesville could be discounted if he did not have his finger on the pulse of America.