Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons in the past is repeatedly cited by the US and British governments as justification for his removal from power now. But just what was their response to his use of poison gas against Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s? Far from condemning his actions, they stepped up their support for Baghdad.
One of the most damning revelations to come out of the Scott inquiry into the arms-to-Iraq affair was the British government's secret decision to supply Saddam with even more weapons-related equipment after he shelled the Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988 with gas bombs, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians and maiming thousands more. Saddam said he had punished the Kurds for "collaboration" after the town had been successfully attacked by Iran. The weapons were produced with German-supplied chemicals.
At the end of the Iraq-Iran war later that year, Sir Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary, drew up a paper entitled The Economic Consequences of the Peace. There were "major opportunities for British industry", he said. But he was terrified his plan to increase British arms exports to Iraq, secretly agreed by the government, would be leaked.
"It could look very cynical if so soon after expressing outrage about the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms sales," one of his officials told the Scott inquiry. The government's decision to change its policy, but keep MPs and the public in the dark, was even more cynical, replied Lord Scott.
As Whitehall turned a blind eye to exports to Baghdad of equipment which ministers and officials admitted could be used to produce chemical and nuclear weapons, Howe ordered his paper to be kept under wraps until, in the words of Ian Blackley, a senior Foreign Office diplomat, the "cloud had passed" - a reference to the attack on Halabja.
This cynicism and hypocrisy was matched only by the US. Soon after the attack, Washington approved the export to Iraq of virus cultures and a $1bn contract to design and build a petrochemical plant the Iraqis planned to use to produce mustard gas. And while the Reagan administration condemned the use of chemical weapons during the eight-year Iraq-Iran war, US officers were secretly supplying Iraqi generals with bomb-damage assessments and detailed information on Iranian troop deployments.
"The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern," Walter Lang, a former senior US defence intelligence officer, told the New York Times this week. Washington was worried about the threat of Iran spreading its Islamic revolution to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Thursday, August 22, 2002
The puppet Bush regime is using new, aggressive forms of brainwashing to change the very way Americans think and feel.
This is the psychological dimension of the "High Cabal's" general onslaught against American workers, just as the "war on terrorism" is the military dimension and corporate crime and tax cuts for the rich comprise the economic dimension.
We are living under the beginning stages of a military dictatorship in precisely the same way that 1930s Germans suffered under the Nazi regime.
As in the case of Nazi Germany, state-sponsored propaganda (brainwashing) is a vital part of the Bush regime's strategy.
New propaganda slogans are being overtly and subliminally implanted by Bush and his gang through their speeches and actions:
dissent is treason
Constitutional liberties are less important than security
the "war on terrorism" excuses any attack on civil liberties
the Bush administration has the right and the duty to bring about "regime change" in any nation it chooses
the economy is basically sound
only a few bad apples are found in the corporate barrel, which requires no new oversight laws
if Bush and Cheney say they're not guilty of corporate crimes, then believe it and shut up
EVEN SOME OF THE high priests and acolytes of his father’s New World Order are starting to pan the major opus thus far of Bush 43, “Overture to a Regime Change.” Last week Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to the first President Bush, wrote an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal advising against a military attack on Iraq. Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger has voiced his doubts about the need for military action and Secretary of State Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the Gulf War, has been described in news reports as opposed to invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein.
Scowcroft worries that a war with Iraq, opposed by virtually all our allies, will divert our energies and threaten our resources for the war on terrorism, for which international cooperation is essential. He cites “scant evidence” to tie Saddam to the Sept. 11 attacks. As for the “weapons of mass destruction” the Iraqi dictator is said to be developing, his instinct for survival should preclude his using them against the United States. But an invasion aimed at removing him from power, Scowcroft warned, might convince Saddam he has nothing left to lose, “leading him to unleash whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses.” His first strike would likely be against Israel, which might respond with nuclear weapons, “unleashing an Armageddon in the Middle East.”
It’s possible that Scowcroft is overly pessimistic and the Bush administration can execute “regime change” in Baghdad without those dire consequences. Still, what is to be gained by running those risks? Well, we’ll save our President’s reputation, Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration official, explained to The New York Times. “The failure to take on Saddam after what the President said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the President that it would set back the war on terrorism,” said Perle.
THE UN's chief weapons inspector yesterday slammed George Bush and Tony Blair for talking up the prospect of war with Iraq.
Hans Blix made clear he was not willing to accept US and British claims over Saddam Hussein's terror arsenal until he had seen it for himself.
And Mr Blix also attacked Mr Bush's threat of action, admitting it was wrecking the prospect of a breakthrough on weapons inspections.
The outburst is the latest sign that international opposition is snowballing, making prospects of a fresh blitz on Baghdad increasingly unlikely.
Mr Blix said: "If the Iraqis conclude that an invasion is inevitable, then they may conclude it is not very meaningful to have inspections."
Asked whether he believed claims that Saddam had chemical, biological and possibly nuclear capabilities, the UN supremo added: "I am not assuming the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction. This is why an inspection is so important."
He continued: "I am sure the Iraqis are worried about the US attitude. We think it would be natural for them to accept the inspection because they claim, in a very determined way, there is nothing left, they have done away with all weapons of mass destruction. Why should they fear us coming?"
Washington: The biggest war game in the history of the United States, staged this month at a cost of $US253 million with 13,000 troops, was rigged to ensure that the Americans beat their "Middle Eastern" adversaries, says a leading participant.
General Paul Van Riper, a retired marine lieutenant-general, told the Army Times that the sprawling three-week millennium challenge exercises, were "almost entirely scripted to ensure a win".
He protested by quitting his role as commander of enemy forces, and warning that the Pentagon might wrongly conclude that its experimental tactics were working.
When General Van Riper agreed to command the forces of an unnamed Middle Eastern state he thought he would be given a free rein to probe US weaknesses. But when the game began, he was told to deploy his forces to make life easier for US forces.
"We were directed ... to move air defences so that the army and marine units could successfully land," he said. They were also ordered to turn air defence systems off or move them.
The Army Times reported that, as commander of a low-tech, third-world army, General Van Riper appeared to have repeatedly outwitted US forces.
He sent orders with motorcycle couriers to evade sophisticated electronic eavesdropping equipment. When the US fleet sailed into the Gulf, he instructed his small boats and planes to move around in apparently aimless circles before launching a surprise attack which sank a substantial part of the US Navy. The war game had to be stopped and the American ships "refloated" so that the US forces stood a chance.
"They had a predetermined end, and they scripted the exercise to that end," said General Van Riper, who quit when he found out that his orders were being overruled by the military co-ordinators of the game.
08/19/02 "WAG THE GASSED DOG" This is the purest war propaganda. One video of what may be Osama bin Laden plus a video of a dog being gassed which could have been created anywhere equals the US sinking to new lows trying to manufacture support for a war nobody but the oil companies want. This dog-video reminds me of Hill & Knowlton's much ballyhooed claim that Iraqi troops were stealing incubators from Kuwait hospitals and leaving premature babies to die on the floor. That was a hoax to sell a war. And until proven otherwise, the safest course is to assume this latest "shock video" is just another hoax by the public relations firms which grow rich and fat off of your tax dollars by lying to you for the US Government. Anonymous US officials have declared this to be "unquestionable" evidence that al Qaeda has chemical weapons. I find it very questionable. For one thing, compare the quality of the dog video with that of the famous Osama "confession" tape or even the most recent Osama tape. Why does a dog get much better video quality than the boss? Add to that the cuteness of the dog, as if intentionally selected by central casting to provoke the greatest feelings of sympathy in the viewer, instead of just grabbing any old mangy stray mongrel to use in such a test. Yes, this video is shocking, but the shock is intended to shock people past questioning the claims of where the video came from. All day long the media has been blasting the "Arabs kill puppy dogs" story all over the airwaves, trying to create a linkage between Arabs and chemical weapons where none can be proven to factually exist. Given the sensitization to chemical weapons contained in this media barrage, I have to wonder if the next stage provocation, intended to further the war against Iraq, will also involve chemical weapons.
The success of a handful of books that assail the Bush administration as hypocritical, incompetent, and corrupt has demarcated a groundswell of Americans who desire truth about their leaders amid the dearth of critical and official information that is today's mainstream media. It's a demographic large enough that any politician or pollster would identify it as pivotal in an election: Stupid White Men by Michael Moore now has 500,000 copies in print and is still number five on the New York Times Top 10; 9-11 by Noam Chomsky has 205,000 in print; and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by investigative journalist Greg Palast, published by an indie British press, just sold its paperback rights to American publisher Penguin Putnam for an undisclosed amount.
After griping extensively during interviews with the Voice about a media blackout of the viewpoints expressed in their books, each of these authors arrived at a similar conclusion: Their popularity as "dissenting" authors has extended beyond the liberal fringes and represents the fruit of a grassroots movement that corporate America, and potentially the government, can no longer ignore.
On Michael Moore's recent lecture tour, he became convinced that he was no longer just preaching to the converted. "I look out at the auditorium or gymnasium, and I don't see the tree huggers and the granola heads," he told the Voice. "I see Mr. and Mrs. Middle America who voted for George W. Bush, who just lost $60,000 because their 401(k) is gone. And they believed in the American Dream as it was designed by the Bushes and Wall Street, and then they woke up to realize it was just that, a dream."
In a September 19 interview collected in his latest book, 9-11, Noam Chomsky called America "a leading terrorist state," and he explained how September 11 will "accelerate the agenda of militarization, regimentation, reversal of social democratic programs [and] transfer of wealth to narrow sectors." This mix of unsettling and prescient commentary helped ignite the sales of 9-11, a paperback collection of interviews with Chomsky, in which he catalogs questionable U.S. government actions (the boycott of Iraq and the vengeful "terrorist attack" on Nicaragua in the '80s, for example) that have sullied its reputation around the world. The 205,000 copies in print place it among the bestselling titles of Chomsky's more than 30 books. It's worth recalling that Chomsky's early books criticizing U.S. policy in southeast Asia were bibles of the Vietnam anti-war movement.
Thursday, August 22nd, 2002
CRISIS SITUATION:
From The Nation : Recent events have confirmed that the American political establishment is not united in support of the Bush Administration's policy of forcible "regime change" in Iraq. The rest of the world, and a good part of the American public, also seem unconvinced of the necessity of an attack. "Iraq: The Doubters Grow" the lead editorial from the September 2/9 issue of The Nation outlines nine critical questions that should be asked before any possible military invasion is even considered.
YOUR MISSION:
Clip or copy these nine questions and include them in letters to your representatives, friends, family and foes. Sign the Campaign of Conscience Peace Pledge to Stop the Spread of War to Iraq. Consider participating in one of the many antiwar marches and protests scheduled coast to coast. And check out the following links for more information on how you can help prevent an unnecessary attack on Iraq. The sites recommended offer online activist ideas and options, info on regional peace events and protests, media resources, lots of background material and many more links: The National Network to End the War Against Iraq / The Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) / Voices in the Wilderness / Not In Our Names / US Bombing Watch in Iraq / United for Peace. And read these articles from The Nation.
New York City in 2022. Half the 40 million people in the swarming metropolis are unemployed, the air is thick with pollution, food and water are as precious as jewels. This was the world of the future as envisaged in the sci-fi thriller, Soylent Green, in 1973. Now, according to the World Bank, it could come true unless there are dramatic and immediate changes to the way we live.
Unlike the Charlton Heston movie, the Bank does not suggest that we will be making food from dead bodies in 20 years' time. But its warning of an increasingly dysfunctional global society, with enormous pressure on basic resources such as water, energy and health, is remarkably similar.
Looking into its crystal ball, the Bank sees a world of nine billion people by mid-century generating a global GDP of $140 trillion a year. This staggering fourfold increase in the size of the world economy would be enough to guarantee a large-scale reduction in the 1.2 billion people living on less than a dollar a day, but the Bank argues that the price will be environmental catastrophe, social breakdown and lower living standards for everyone if policies remain unchanged.
Released to coincide with next week's summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg, the Washington-based institution's annual world development report sounds the alarm bell for global leaders as they prepare for 10 days of talks, providing a nightmarish prophecy of what could happen if they fail to turn rhetoric into action.
The dollar today fell from recent highs against the euro and yen following a report that Saudi investors were pulling billions of dollars out of the US.
According to the Financial Times, disgruntled Saudis have withdrawn as much as $200bn (£131bn) as relations between the US and Saudi Arabia come under increasing strain.
In the most recent irritant in already strained ties between the two countries, an analyst from the Rand corporation thinktank told the Pentagon that Saudi Arabia was the "kernel of evil". The fact that 11 of the 15 perpetrators of the September 11 attacks were Saudis had already sullied Saudi Arabia's image in the eyes of Americans.
An analyst cited by the Financial Times said Saudi investors have been deserting the US in recent months. Youssef Ibrahim of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American thinktank, said the move followed hawkish US commentators' calls for the freezing of Saudi assets.
But financial analysts reacted sceptically to the report. State Street Bank, an American bank, said there had been no significant shift out of dollar assets by foreigners recently.
"Foreigners bought $350bn in dollar assets since September 2001, 10% below the previous nine months," said an analyst. "This suggests that foreign appetite for dollar assets has not dramatically changed."
But there has been a shift out of dollar assets by American investors amid concern over the huge US trade deficit - $37.1bn in June - and over the weakness of the American recovery. Worries over the US economy have pushed down the dollar since the beginning of the year, although the greenback has been gaining in recent weeks.
Despite scepticism over a big Saudi shift out of dollar assets, Iran - described as part of an "axis of evil" by President George Bush - is reportedly considering switching crude oil sales from dollars into euros.
A committee of experts is said to be pondering the move, with Iran's central bank yet to issue a final decision on whether to drop the dollar. Iran has earned at least $10bn so far this year from crude exports, with oil revenues providing 80% of its foreign income.
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
The second-most frustrated man in Washington's foreign-policy establishment these days, next to Secretary of State Colin Powell, must be Brent Scowcroft, the courtly and self-effacing retired army general who served as George Bush Sr's national security adviser.
WASHINGTON, Aug 13 (IPS) - The second-most frustrated man in Washington's foreign-policy establishment these days, next to Secretary of State Colin Powell, must be Brent Scowcroft, the courtly and self-effacing retired army general who served as George Bush Sr's national security adviser.
Like Powell, Scowcroft has consistently counselled the younger Bush to pursue a cautious, multilateral approach in carrying out his ''war on terrorism'', especially with regard to Iraq and the Middle East in general.
But his advice has gone virtually entirely ignored, as the unilateralist, pro-Likud hawks centred in the Pentagon's civilian leadership and Vice President Dick Cheney's office have consolidated their control of policy since last December's successful military rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
With the exception of Cheney, many of the men who now appear to be dictating policy - on both the scope of the war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the general unilateral thrust of U.S. policy - served under Ronald Reagan but then left government or were forced out under Bush's father.
Others, as in the case of two of today's most influential players - Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby - were retained but kept under a tight rein.
The significance of the fact that Scowcroft has gone public with his advice on several occasions over the last three months cannot be exaggerated.
Saudi's richest investors are threatening to pull billions of dollars out of America in anger at suggestions they helped fund Osama bin Laden.
A lawsuit filed by relatives of 900 people who were killed in the September 11 attacks is provoking fury among wealthy Saudis.
The suit filed in a Washington court last week seeking damages of $100,000 billion names three members of the Saudi royal family, including defence minister Prince Sultan bin abd al-Aziz al Saud.
The lawsuit alleges that Saudi money has "for years been funnelled to encourage radical anti-Americanism as well as to fund the al Qaeda terrorists".
Banks and charities named in the suit are calling on Saudi Arabia to review its financial and political ties to the US.
Bishr Bakheet of the Bakheet Financial Consultancy said: "Naming Prince Sultan is the equivalent of saying J Edgar Hoover was a communist spy. Assuming the court proceeds with this lawsuit, the Saudi investment community, already in shock, will start withdrawing their money. People are really going to walk out."
This threat comes as foreign investment in the US dries up because of business scandals, lower corporate earnings and the collapse of the technology boom. According to government figures, foreigners put $124 billion into the US last year, down from $301 billion in 2000.
AMMAN, Aug. 17 (IPS) - Dr. Oasma Al Baz, political advisor to the Egyptian president, said Egypt will not allow passage through the Suez Canal of US ships headed to strike Iraq.
In statements published here Saturday he added Egypt rejects any military operation against Iraq, its territorial unity, independence and safety of Iraqi people, adding any military attack on Iraq represents a vary dangerous step endangering the security of the region.
Dr. Al Baz said the question of UN weapons inspectors is an issue which concerns the UN and the Security Council and not Washington and the US has no right to take any military action against Iraq nor has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another country and impose a set-up of new leadership on its people. (QNA)
Monday, August 19, 2002
Israel has reached agreement with the Palestinians to begin reducing its military presence in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Bethlehem in exchange for Palestinian efforts to reduce militant attacks.
But the deal was thrown into doubt almost as soon as it was made, with Palestinian militant groups saying they would not halt their attacks on Israel.
Implementation of Sunday night's plan is due to begin on Monday, but the timetable for the various stages remains vague.
Palestinian officials said the two sides had agreed that Israel would withdraw its forces from Gaza and Bethlehem within 48 hours.
But Israeli officials indicated much a looser schedule to allow the Palestinian agencies the opportunity to calm the situation and quell anti-Israeli violence.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yafa Ben Ari told the BBC: "At the moment we have a high level of warnings of future terror activity and that level of warning must cease."
BBC correspondent James Reynolds in Jerusalem says this deal is very much seen as a first step.
A similar agreement was reached earlier in August but it came to nothing.
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF, the US general who commanded allied forces during the Gulf War, joined a growing number of senior US military and political figures yesterday who are opposed to a unilateral invasion of Iraq and said President Bush “should not go it alone”.
General Schwarzkopf, now retired from the US Army but still a commanding voice on matters relating to Iraq, said that the success of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and the expulsion of President Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait was almost entirely based on the existence of a broad international coalition. He said: “In the Gulf War we had an international force and troops from many nations. We would be lacking if we went it alone at this time.”
He emphasised the dangers of an invasion without international consensus and military support because of the size and strength of the Iraqi Army. “It is not going to be an easy battle but it would be much more effective if we didn’t have to do it alone,” he said.
To be effective, a US-led invasion would need launching points not only from Kuwait and Turkey, but also from Saudi Arabia, which Riyadh has so far pointedly refused, he added.
Wesley Clark, the retired general who led the Nato alliance during the Kosovo campaign, also joined the voices counselling against an invasion without international co-operation.
President George W Bush is seeking "dictatorial powers" in his efforts to combat future terrorist threats, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle, has said.
Mr Bush had earlier accused the Democrats of denying him the flexibility he needs to protect the country and the American people.
But responding after the speech, Tom Daschle - who is a Senator for South Dakota - said he did not want to give "this president or any president dictatorial powers that compromise the checks and balances that our founding fathers recognised".
Photographs refering to the NewsWeek article below from the website 'Physicians for Human Rights'
Trudging over the moonscape of Dasht-e Leili, a desolate expanse of low rolling hills in northern Afghanistan, Bill Haglund spotted clues half-buried in the gray-beige sand. Strings of prayer beads. A woolen skullcap. A few shoes. Those remnants, along with track marks and blade scrapes left by a bulldozer, suggested that Haglund had found what he was looking for. Then he came across a human tibia, three sets of pelvic bones and some ribs.
MASS GRAVES are not always easy to spot, though trained investigators know the signs. “You look for disturbance of the earth, differences in the vegetation, areas that have been machined over,” says Haglund, a forensic anthropologist and pioneer in the field of “human-rights archeology.” At Dasht-e Leili, a 15-minute drive from the Northern Alliance prison at Sheber-ghan, scavenging animals had brought the evidence to the surface. Some of the gnawed bones were old and bleached, but some were from bodies so recently buried the bones still carried tissue. The area of bulldozer activity—roughly an acre—suggested burials on a large scale. A stray surgical glove also caught Haglund’s eye. Such gloves are often used by people handling corpses, and could be evidence, Haglund thought, of “a modicum of planning.”
Haglund was in Dasht-e Leili on more than a hunch. In January, two investigators from the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights had argued their way into the nearby Sheberghan prison. What they saw shocked them. More than 3,000 Taliban prisoners—who had surrendered to the victorious Northern Alliance forces at the fall of Konduz in late November—were crammed, sick and starving, into a facility with room for only 800. The Northern Alliance commander of the prison acknowledged the charnel-house conditions, but pleaded that he had no money. He begged the PHR to send food and supplies, and to ask the United Nations to dig a well so the prisoners could drink unpolluted water.
EUROPEANS ARE beginning to experience the same sensations of impotence that Muslims long have. Whatever they think or say, it is tossed in the wastepaper basket by their American friends.
In the last week or so it has become evident that the Bush administration is hell-bent on implementing a new law, part of the recent anti-terrorist legislation, that sets out in no uncertain terms to undermine the new International Criminal Court, the pride and joy of a lot of countries but of the Europeans in particular, who see it as an effective tool for deterring would-be war criminals.
The U.S. State Department has made it clear to all foreign countries that their military aid will be cut off unless — like Romania and Israel last week — they sign a pledge to protect Americans serving in their countries from the court's reach. Norway has told the Americans "no" and doubtless other Europeans if asked will say the same thing. But "nos" won't be enough perhaps.
The law says, as the New York Times reminded us, that authority is given to the president to free Americans in the court's custody by "any necessary and appropriate means." One presumes that means war.
Now the Europeans are beginning to understand what President George Bush meant when he said last autumn, "who is not with us is against us."
At the rate things are going, who knows whether there may be some briefing from some Pentagon "think paper" that will warn that Europeans are no longer to be regarded as allies. Saudi Arabia is still recovering from last week's shock of being labelled by a Pentagon working party as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" of the U.S. in the Middle East. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld made it clear that he did not dissent from this piece of inside advice.
At best, many Europeans consider what has happened in America the last couple of years as bizarre. First, acting as if it were some insecure newborn democracy, it chooses as a president the son of the second last president but one who has few qualifications other than his family name. The election itself was run in such a roughshod way that the ballot was suspect.
Then the new president appoints a lot of senior officials — vice president, defence secretary, national security adviser and many other high-level appointees, who have never known war, or shed blood, much less seen corpses rotting on the battlefield or villages destroyed with the remains of children's bodies splayed in a hundred directions. Many of them, like the president himself, consciously avoided the draft at the time of Vietnam.
Why cite a Greek hero when we can cite the president's favorite British hero?
In "Goldmember," Austin Powers has "Earn Daddy's Respect" on his To Do list. So the teary but still groovy spy confronts his prodigal father, played by Michael Caine.
"Got an issue?" Daddy breezily responds. "Here's a tissue."
Tissue issues between the two Bush presidents spilled into public view on Thursday when that most faithful family retainer, Brent Scowcroft, wrote a jaw-dropping op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal headlined "Don't Attack Saddam."
Mr. Scowcroft gave the back of his hand to conservatives' strenuous attempts to link Saddam to 9/11.
Bellicose Bushies have yet to offer a sustained and persuasive rationale for jumping Saddam, beyond yammering about how "evil" he is, as if he had a monopoly on that.
In the Journal, Mr. Scowcroft, one of the team that drew that fateful line in the sand a decade ago, ticked off all the reasons why invading Iraq makes no sense: it would jeopardize, and maybe destroy, our global campaign against terrorism; it would unite the Arab world against us; it would require us to stay there forever; it would force Saddam to use the weapons against us or Israel.
"Scowcroft is now more critical of Bush's foreign policy than Sandy Berger, which is mind-boggling," says Bill Kristol, a Bush I veteran who edits The Weekly Standard.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — The Justice Department has rebuffed House Judiciary Committee efforts to check up on its use of new antiterrorism powers in the latest confrontation between the Bush administration and Congress over information sought by the legislative branch.
Instead of answering committee questions, the Justice Department said in a letter that it would send replies to the House Intelligence Committee, which has not sought the information and does not plan to oversee the workings of the U.S.A. Patriot Act.
One of the Republican party's most respected foreign policy gurus yesterday appealed for President Bush to halt his plans to invade Iraq, warning of "an Armageddon in the Middle East".
The outspoken remarks from Brent Scowcroft, who advised a string of Republican presidents, including Mr Bush's father, represented an embarrassment for the administration on a day it was attempting to rally British public support for an eventual war.
The US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday spelled out what she called the "very powerful moral case" for toppling Saddam Hussein. "We certainly do not have the luxury of doing nothing," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. She said the Iraqi leader was "an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbours and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, all of us".
But while Ms Rice was making the case for a pre-emptive strike, the rumble of anxiety in the US was growing louder. A string of leading Republicans have expressed unease at the administration's determination to take on President Saddam, but the most damning critique of Mr Bush's plans to date came yesterday from Mr Scowcroft.
The retired general, who also advised Presidents Nixon and Ford, predicted that an attack on Iraq could lead to catastrophe.
"Israel would have to expect to be the first casualty, as in 1991 when Saddam sought to bring Israel into the Gulf conflict. This time, using weapons of mass destruction, he might succeed, provoking Israel to respond, perhaps with nuclear weapons, unleashing an Armageddon in the Middle East," Mr Scowcroft wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
Sunday, August 18, 2002
"If you thought the army was here protecting people like yourself, I've some news for you, we're here to defend wealth." - Billy Bragg
First it was Jeffrey Skilling, former CEO of Enron, who testified before a Congressional Hearing that he was just mentality inept and could not understand how Enron operated, then last week Bernie Ebbers, former CEO of WorldCom stated that he was "too stupid to know what my company's doing." There are others that have decided not to tell anything about what or when they knew things were not as they should be or even appeared to be.
This week in Waco, Texas (site of the Luby's Restaurant massacre and David Koresh's bonfire), we have had another spectacle: George W. Bush's Economic Summit. And a fine summit it was. The pinnacle of disgraceful "yes" men and women who could not fall over themselves quickly enough to applaud the miraculous job that Boy George had done with the American economy. And Mr. Bush was quick to say that he had the economy under control.
Excuse me. If this is control, please stop the train, I want off.
I also need to mention that Charles Schwab was a keynote speaker at that Waco Summit. It also bears mentioning that on the very day of the summit, Mr. Schwab's company (which graciously donated $965,000 to the Republican National Committee for the 2000 election cycle - this total excludes contributions to individual candidates) handed out pink slips to 375 employees.
I hate to watch the employment news these days. This week the following job losses were announced:
IBM - 15,600 employees are to be laid off
Ames Companies - 20,000 employees are to be laid off
Agere - 4,000 employees are to be laid off
American Airlines - 7,000 employees are to be laid off
Flextronics - 5,261 employees are to be laid off
I know that it's stupid to be counting things these days, but I just can't help myself. There are so many things that I have lost count of lately. The short list is:
How many times I have heard that war with Iraq is inevitable
How many times I have heard that the economy is on track and headed in the right direction
How many times I have heard that Social Security Funds should be privatized
How many times I have heard that every thing should be blamed on Bill Clinton
How many times I have heard that the Constitution and Bill of Rights should be forgotten
How many times I have heard that we are at "war" (remember that Congress has not declared it as such)
How many times I have heard that George and John have the blanket authority to strip a citizen of his/her inalienable rights without offering any evidence of wrongdoing
How many times I have heard that Dick Cheney does not have to answer questions regarding his meetings setting governmental policies
How many times I have NOT heard how much Kenneth (Kenny-Boy) Lay's "get out of jail free" card cost the average American taxpayer
The president held a summit on the economy, left at lunch. He said he would catch up later on any talks he missed.
"We will read the summaries," President George W. Bush promised during what he called "a great show" at Baylor University, down near the Texas ranch.
So here is a summary of the state of Joe Velotta's economy: In a couple of weeks, he may have to start living in his car.
It's a two-seat Mazda, 14 years old, but Velotta is single with no kids and figures maybe he could take it if he has to. Eviction from his Queens apartment is in the offing. Velotta, a communications equipment installation manager with three decades of experience, couldn't pay rent the past two months because his unemployment benefits ran out. Congress has not seen fit to extend them, believing the extension it passed in March was sufficient.
It wasn't.
The Labor Department says about 700,000 laid-off workers, Velotta among them, had already exhausted even those benefits by June. The National Employment Law Project puts the estimate higher, at about 900,000. By year's end, if nothing is done and the sluggish pace of job growth doesn't quicken, a million or more Americans could be without jobs or unemployment checks.
WACO - The President's Economic Forum held here Tuesday raises the question, "By how much don't they get it?"
The range of opinion at this shindig went from A to B. This wasn't a forum - it was a pep rally. Sis-Boom-Bah City for the old cheerleader. President Bush said Baylor University "put on a good show." Got to agree. It was one of the most sophisticated phony political events I have ever witnessed.
Such attention to the details of stagecraft - the lovely flag painting behind them at the plenary session, the helpful hints on the backdrops: "Corporate Responsibility," "Better Health Care," etc., for those too dumb to figure it out from the vapid speeches. The wonderfully artificial inclusion of "real people" - all of whom just happen to think George W. Bush is divine.
This Potemkin Village of diversity lacked just one thing: anyone with a good idea. Any 10 ex-employees of Enron could come up with a long list of recommendations on how to fix things so this doesn't happen again. But they weren't invited.
The country is in a world of economic trouble because of an immense tax cut for the rich and 20 years of deregulation. So everyone at Potemkin Village favored more tax cuts for the rich and slashing that terrible government regulation that is strangling big business today.
We could dismiss this exercise in complacent stupidity for the silly political charade that it actually was, but there was a real danger at Waco, too: the horrible possibility that Bush actually believes that was a cross section of America.
A few days after September 11, I happened to be walking the halls of the Pentagon, the scene of so many contentious meetings during my years as commander of NATO forces in Europe, and ran into an old acquaintance, now a senior official.
We chatted briefly about TV coverage of the crisis and the impending operations in Afghanistan. At his invitation, I began to share some thoughts about how we had waged the Kosovo war by working within NATO--but he cut me off. "We read your book," he scoffed. "And no one is going to tell us where we can or can't bomb."
That was exactly how the United States proceeded. Of course, the campaign in Afghanistan, as it unfolded, wasn't an all-American show. The United States sought and won help from an array of countries: basing rights in Central Asian states and in Pakistan; some shared intelligence from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim states; diplomatic backing from Russia and China; air and naval support from France; naval refueling from Japan; special forces from the United Kingdom, and so on.
But unlike the Kosovo campaign, where NATO provided a structured consultation and consensus-shaping process, allied support in this war took the form of a "floating" or "flexible" coalition. Countries supported the United States in the manner and to the extent they felt possible, but without any pretenses of sharing in major decisions. European leaders sought to be more involved. At the Europeans' urging, NATO even declared--invoking, for the first time, Article V of its founding treaty--that the attack on the United States represented an attack on every member. But even so, Washington bypassed and essentially marginalized the alliance. The United Nations was similarly sidelined.
WASHINGTON –– A retired general who commanded "enemy" forces in a recently concluded $250 million U.S. war game says the exercise was rigged so that it appeared to validate new war-fighting concepts it was supposed to test.
Paul Van Riper, who headed the Marine Corps Combat Development Command when he retired in 1997 as a three-star general, said he became so frustrated with undue constraints on his command of "enemy" forces that he quit the role midway through Millennium Challenge 2002, which ended Aug. 15.
His complaints were reported Friday by the Army Times, a private newspaper that covers Army issues. The Times obtained a copy of an e-mail Van Riper sent to colleagues explaining why he had quit.
"It was in actuality an exercise that was almost entirely scripted to ensure a Blue (friendly forces) 'win,'" he wrote. Van Riper was in command of the Red force, meant to simulate the enemy.
Navy Capt. John Carman, chief spokesman at Joint Forces Command at Norfolk, Va., which sponsored the war game, said Friday that there is no record of Van Riper having quit his role as "enemy" commander. He said the retired general is "held in high regard" and entitled to his opinions.
There is a right and a wrong way for America to wage war. Obviously, if it is attacked, America must respond with all its might. The same is true if an ally is attacked. But the issue becomes much more complex if a threat, but not an attack, is involved. America must then consider carefully the consequences of its actions, both for itself as the world's preeminent power and for the longer-term evolution of the international system as a whole.
The United States may have to go to war to oust Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq because the potential nexus between conspiratorial terrorism and the weapons of mass destruction that Hussein is said to be producing cannot be blithely ignored. But war is too serious a business and too unpredictable in its dynamic consequences -- especially in a highly flammable region -- to be undertaken because of a personal peeve, demagogically articulated fears or vague factual assertions.
The garden was overgrown, the roses scrawny after a day of Kandahar heat, the dust in our eyes, noses, mouth, fingernails. But the message was straightforward. "This is a secret war," the Special Forces man told me. "And this is a dirty war. You don't know what is happening." And of course, we are not supposed to know. In a "war against terror", journalists are supposed to keep silent and rely on the good guys to sort out the bad guys without worrying too much about human rights.
How many human rights did the mass killers of 11 September allow their victims? You are either with us or against us. Whose side are you on? But the man in the garden was worried. He was not an American. He was one of the "coalition allies", as the Americans like to call the patsies who have trotted after them into the Afghan midden. "The Americans don't know what to do here now," he went on. "Their morale in Afghanistan is going downhill – though there's no problem with the generals running things in Tampa. They're still gung-ho. But here the soldiers know things haven't gone right, that things aren't working. Even their interrogations went wrong". Brutally so, it seems.
In the early weeks of this year, the Americans raided two Afghan villages, killed 10 policemen belonging to the US-supported government of Hamid Karzai and started mistreating the survivors. American reporters – in a rare show of mouse-like courage amid the self-censorship of their usual reporting – quoted the prisoners as saying they had been beaten by US troops. According to Western officials in Kandahar, the US troops "gave the prisoners a thrashing".
How do you tell a war has begun? This is not the 17th or 18th century. There are no highfalutin' declarations. Troops don't line up in eyesight of each other. There are no drum rolls and bugle calls, no calls of "Chaaa...rge!". When did the Vietnam War begin? When, for that matter, World War I? When mobilizations were ordered setting in motion irreversible chains of events or at the time of the formal declarations of war?
The lines of battle and the timelines to overt battle and full-scale combat have become fluid. Consider this: At the beginning of this year, when US President George W Bush started talking ever more in earnest about taking out Saddam Hussein and signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive, covert program to topple the Iraqi president, including authority to use lethal force to capture him, the US and putative ally Britain had approximately 50,000 troops deployed in the region around Iraq.