Thursday, August 29, 2002

Israeli dart shells kill family of Palestinians


The gap between the rhetoric and reality of the Middle East conflict was to be found yesterday in the form of a small, finned dart buried deep inside the chest of an unconscious 16-year-old Palestinian boy.

It stood out on the X-ray in perfect silhouette, a missile in miniature embedded in the flesh about half-way up the right side of his rib cage. One and a half inches higher up, just below the armpit, there was a second dart, pointing in a different direction. A third had torn its way into his stomach.

Salah al-Hajeen was one of at least six people blown up by a shell packed with some 3,000 inch-long arrows fired by an Israeli tank into a fruit-pickers' encampment in the orchards of Gaza. The darts are known technically as "flechettes"; the Palestinians simply call them nails. The shell killed four members of his family: Ruwaida al-Hajeen, 55, her sons, Ashraf, 23, and Nihad, 17, and 20-year-old Mohammed, a cousin. Though he was critically injured, doctors at Gaza's Shifa Hospital expected Salah to recover. Two beds along from him lay another family member – a 21-year-old man, also called Mohammed. He was unlikely to be so fortunate. He was in a deep coma, suffering from brain damage, two severed arteries, and a nail-shredded leg.

The Palestinian doctors showed us Salah's X-ray with no air of surprise or excitement. They made no mention of the darts when we first interviewed them.

The images of the youth's damaged insides were produced at our request after we returned to the hospital to check out whether the flechettes that we had discovered at the scene, buried to their hilts in the branches of blast-torn fig trees, had also hit people. "We have seen these nails many times before," said Dr Hani Sammour, quietly. "Some people die from them." Palestinian suicide bombers routinely pack their bomb-belts with nuts and bolts to maximise the injuries of the Israeli civilians whom they target. The Israelis always – reasonably enough – furiously condemn this revolting tactic, citing it as evidence of their attackers' terrorist credentials.

But the Israeli armed forces, whose Chief-of-Staff was trained in Britain and which is funded and equipped in large part by the United States, have a similar weapon. It is an Israeli-manufactured 120mm shell, fired from a tank, which can be set to explode in the air at a specified distance and fires out its payload of darts in all directions. It has been the subject of complaints by human rights groups and foreign diplomats, including Britain's. But, according to military experts, the flechette bomb is not banned under international conventions.

The flechettes are designed to kill and maim armed men on the ground. You only have to examine their effect on a tree – they can scythe clean through an inch-thick branch – to appreciate their deadliness. But late on Wednesday night – not for the first time in this 23-month conflict – they were used by Israel against Palestinian civilians to fatal and indiscriminate effect.

Palestinian neighbours of the al-Hajeen family said that they came from a refugee camp in Gaza City. They had been spending the nights on a family-owned plot in the fields south of Gaza City with more than a dozen other people, in order to get up at dawn to pick the figs and grapes to sell to wholesalers who took them to market. The nearby Israeli troops must have known civilians were in the area. "There were at least 20 people here every night for the last two months," said Majdi Siam. As it was hot, they slept outside, under a lemon tree. That proved to be a fatal mistake.

''The lies we are told''



YellowTimes.org) – There is an age-old adage that is well-understood and manipulated to the fullest by the media, advertising agencies, the military, politicians, indeed, anyone in a position of influence and power. It has been used time and again over the millennia to justify the invasions of other countries, to initiate or enter into wars, and to gain ultimate control over groups of people and countries. Hitler skillfully wielded it to sway a whole nation to persecute and attempt to exterminate the Jewish faith whom he blamed exclusively for Germany's problems. Contrary to what one might expect, this all-powerful axiom consists of three simple words: "Perception is everything."

How a person perceives something leads in turn to the creation of a set of beliefs which forms the basis of one's behavioral decisions. The control of information coupled with the knowledge that fear is a great motivator sets the stage for power-hungry leaders to begin practicing the ultimate in manipulation - getting others to do their bidding.

Those in positions of power knowingly concoct fabrications, half-truths, and outright lies, repeated ad nauseam through carefully controlled media, to create the fear-filled reality needed to further their own personal, often repulsive, agenda. The leaders of the United States are by no means exempt from this tactic, but are truly the masters of deceit.

U.S. leaders patriotically wave the mighty U.S. Constitution before the hypnotized eyes of the American populace, parade its noble and high moral obligations of equality, self-determination and liberty as the very fundament of the American spirit, and tout U.S. foreign policies as the embodiment of these lofty ideals. The American people are taught from a very young age that the intentions of their government and military are good, just, and honorable. After all, in the words of George W. Bush, we are a generous, "freedom- and peace-loving" nation.

Constant platitudes about our wonderfully sublime, brave, patriotic, and compassionate character are intended to shield us from the unspeakable truth of the very dark and evil side of our nation's history and foreign policies.

A long, hard look in the mirror will reveal that we are by far the most violent nation on earth. From the moment of our birth, we are immersed in a culture of violence and the glorification thereof as evident in the amount of violence that is found on TV, in movies, song lyrics, books, video games, etc. We have the highest numbers of rape and murder in the world and incarcerate the greatest percentage of our citizens. We are the largest producer and exporter of weapons of mass destruction and have the world's biggest military budget comprising 36 percent of the total world military spending and gobbling up more than 50 percent of our own national budget, according to the Center for Defense Information. (1)


Where democracy dies



When the Cincinnati-based federal appeals court ruled that secret immigration hearings are unconstitutional, it laced its opinion with powerful language about American democracy, like the quote above.

Circuit Judge Damon J. Keith's 54-page decision is a gold mine of quotable phrases denouncing official secrecy. Perhaps the most succinct: "Democracies die behind closed doors."

The court used this high-powered prose to make a compelling argument on behalf of open courts, even courts that exist to conduct administrative proceedings to determine whether immigrants should be deported.

For the same reasons that trial and appellate courts are open to the public, the court said, immigration courts must be open so that the American people may judge for themselves whether the process works as it should.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has effectively transformed the immigration courts into secret tribunals, before which foreign citizens may be brought in total secrecy, some with no lawyer to defend their interests, judged guilty and banished from this country.

The three-judge panel unanimously found that repugnant to the Constitution and to the very idea upon which America was founded. Here is why: If the government is free to conduct such important business as deportation hearings in secret, there is no way for the American people to know whether the proceedings are fair.


Situation Deteriorating Rapidly in Afghanistan



Summary

Recent reports indicate the Taliban and al Qaeda are regrouping in preparation for a major escalation of fighting in Afghanistan. Moreover, STRATFOR has received intelligence that resistance to U.S. forces in Afghanistan has spread well beyond these groups, threatening a steep increase in fighting over the coming months.

Analysis

The editor of London's Al-Quds Al-Arabi magazine, Abdel-Bari Atwan, who reportedly is close to associates of Osama bin Laden, told Reuters Aug. 27 that bin Laden is firmly back in control of a regrouped and reorganized al Qaeda. He said the shock and disruption of the initial U.S. attack against the group has worn off and that al Qaeda has regained confidence, re-established ties with the Taliban and is preparing for a protracted war of attrition in Afghanistan.

This follows the airing by the Middle East Broadcasting Co. July 9 of a message -- purportedly from an al Qaeda spokesman -- warning of impending guerrilla warfare and assassinations. The statement claimed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was alive and well and that the Taliban was reorganizing and preparing for guerrilla war.

In the absence of any major attacks since Sept. 11, Afghanistan presents a prime venue for demonstrating that both organizations are operational and capable of inflicting serious damage on the United States. A renewed war there also plays to both groups' strengths and doctrines.

Afghanistan offers all the communications, logistics, support, cover and terrain familiarity these groups lack elsewhere. Both groups say the Afghan resistance in the 1980s was responsible not only for repulsing the Soviet invasion but also for contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. They will jump at the opportunity to trap another superpower in the same grinder.

Osama bin Laden has said that al Qaeda was preparing for a decade-long campaign in Somalia, akin to the Afghan precedent, when U.S. troops precipitously withdrew after a disastrous mission in 1993.

A protracted war in Afghanistan also offers al Qaeda a much higher chance of immediate and repeated success against U.S. targets than complex bombing operations abroad. It allows the group to strike again quickly without having to sort out its international financial and communications networks or trust that its sleeper agents have not been compromised.

Global climate change threatens the insurance industry


When winds reach 120 miles per hour, houses begin to crumble, walls break and roofs fly away. With global climate change, winds like this are coming more often. In the United States during the last three decades, the number of weather-related natural disasters has increased five-fold. Last year was the second-hottest year since records began in 1860. This means five times as many major hurricanes and tornadoes annually touching down in places like Miami and Houston. It means 500 percent more floods, mudslides, hailstorms, droughts, ice storms and wildfires. It means more wrecked cars, houses, crops and businesses.
The industry to be hardest hit by these careening catastrophes is insurance. According to the Department of Energy, insurance losses from natural disasters have increased 15-fold since 1960, even when corrected for inflation. Carlos Joly, the chairman of the United Nations Environment Program's insurance industry initiative, says, "The threats to our economies and lifestyles from climate change are no less consequential than terrorism." He adds that the danger is much more commonly accepted among European insurers than among American providers.

Before Hurricane Hugo in 1989, no major storm had cost more than $1 billion in insurance claims. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida and the insurance industry paid out $15 billion. Allstate Insurance dispensed $500 million more than it had ever collected from all types of insurance in Florida. Seven other companies went bankrupt.

Franklin Nutter, president of Reinsurance Association of America, says, "The scientific community's consensus is we're in a period of warming and weather variability. Climate change will affect property and human lives."

In the 1960s the average was 16 "large" weather-related disasters annually in the world. Now, the average is 72. The combined insured losses, corrected for inflation, have jumped from $7 billion to more than $90 billion.

Since Hurricane Andrew, there have been 18 other natural disasters costing more than $1 billion each. Insurance industry profit has narrowed nearly six-fold in the last decade, sending the $2 trillion industry into shock.

Qatar raises stakes over Iraq



The Gulf state of Qatar has added its voice to Arab opposition over any American military action against Iraq.
The tiny state is home to a huge US air base at Al-Odaydia, 35 kilometres (20 miles) south west of the capital, Doha.

Speaking in Baghdad, the Qatari foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassem Al-Thani, said his country wanted a diplomatic solution to the dispute over the return of United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq.

In the US, Vice President Dick Cheney has maintained Washington's stance that containment of Iraq is no longer an option - Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein must be removed.

Qatar joins Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in denying use of their bases for any strike against Iraq.

Some US newspapers have even reported that the US military is preparing to transfer to the emirate equipment and some of the 6,000 US troops currently stationed in Saudi Arabia to avert Saudi objections.

'A link between Saddam and bin Laden? No way'



Alex Standish, editor of the UK journal Jane's Intelligence Digest - required reading for war-watchers and war-makers everywhere - thinks US intelligence officials are making 'a big mistake' on Iraq.


'They are trying to convince us of something that is highly unlikely', he says. 'If they really believe that Saddam is feeding and sustaining bin Laden's men, then they can't possibly understand the fundamental difference between Iraq and al-Qaeda.'


US officials have been playing the al-Qaeda card in relation to Iraq since the start of 2002. In March, CIA director George Tenet claimed that 'Baghdad has a long history of supporting terrorism [and] it has also had contact with al-Qaeda' (1).


In early August, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed 'there are al-Qaeda in Iraq', accusing Saddam of 'harbouring al-Qaeda operatives who fled the US military dragnet in Afghanistan' (2).


Now, as CNN reported on 22 August, the Bush administration claims that al-Qaeda members have taken refuge in northern Iraq. And the fact that Saddam doesn't control northern Iraq, which has been a US/British protected zone for Kurds since 1991? That's no excuse, says Donald Rumsfeld: 'In a vicious, repressive dictatorship that exercises near-total control over its population, it's hard to imagine that the government is not aware of what is taking place in the country.' (3)


'Iraq and al-Qaeda: is there a link?' asks a headline in this week's Time magazine. According to Time: 'As the world's two most nefarious villains, bin Laden and Saddam ought to have reasons to work together. They share similar interests - hatred of Israel, hostility toward the rulers of Saudi Arabia and, especially, enmity toward their common nemesis, the US….' (4)


We Are Not The Enemy!: The Battle of Portland">


The image is chilling. A middle-aged woman, plainly dressed, with a puff of auburn hair, is clutched in a hammer-lock by a Portland police officer dressed in full riot gear. His riot baton is jammed high under her chin. Around her, three more armor-clad police officers swarm in, face-masks down. The woman's face is contorted in terror. In her hand is a sign protesting George W. Bush.

This was the scene on the streets of Portland, OR, on the evening of August 22nd as captured by a photographer for the Associated Press. Thousands of peaceful protesters had descended upon the Hilton Hotel where Mr. Bush was attending a political fundraiser for Senator Gordon Smith. They held signs reading, "Drop Bush, not Bombs," and other similar slogans. Among the protesters were pregnant women, parents with infants and small children, elderly citizens, and citizens in wheelchairs

According to a report by CBS News, the protest became unruly when some of the fundraiser attendees were "jostled" as they moved through the crowd towards the entrance to the hotel. At that point, the riot police swarmed in, swinging clubs and dousing the crowd with pepper spray. Rubber bullets were also fired into the crowd, and snipers were seen on the roofs surrounding the scene. The protesters responded by hammering on the hoods of police cars and screaming, "We are not the enemy!"

A man named Randy, who attended the protest, reports the sequence of events as follows:

"I was between 5th and 6th on the sidewalk. Maybe the ones in front were warned to move, but I didn't hear any warning. It had been a peaceful protest. Suddenly the police came forward spraying pepper spray. A man nearby with an infant in a backpack got hit real good. The baby's face was so red I thought it had quit breathing. From the other direction came cop cars through the crowd and rubber bullets were fired at those closest to the cars. I kept retreating but the cops kept spraying. Lots of people were sprayed, including the cameraman from Channel 2 KATU."

Life on Dubya’s Animal Farm


Many disturbing comparisons have been drawn between the totalitarian society George Orwell
describes in 1984 and George Bush’s Amurika.

The similarities are easy to see, even if you’ve only read the Cliff’s Notes version of Orwell’s book:
Citizens are encouraged to spy on one another, there’s endless war with ever-changing enemies,
the media herald Big Dubya as the greatest leader in human history (while promptly dispatching his
many embarrassing gaffes down the memory hole), and, as we’ve seen in Portland recently,
dissent is coldly quashed with police-state tactics.

The parallels between 2002 and 1984 are obvious. However, as I listened to news reports
of the anti-Bush protest in Stockton, California on Friday, the book that came to mind was
Orwell’s other classic, Animal Farm.

With its obvious allusions to Soviet Russia, this dark satire about animals taking over and running a farm
isn’t usually associated with the cabal of rightwingers currently controlling this country in the same way 1984 is.
But aside from the striking correlations between members of the Bush regime and the avaricious pigs that run
Animal Farm (Ari Fliescher and Squealer the pig propagandist could easily have been separated at birth),
what happened in Stockton is something straight out of Orwell’s barnyard.

If you didn’t hear about the protest (and chances are you didn’t if you get your news from corporate media),
here’s what happened:

Bush came to Stockton on yet another of his Republican fund-raising appearances (if he put the same energy
into winning his war on terrorism as he does in raising money for his GOP cronies, the terrorists would be
vanquished by now). According to reports on KPFA FM and Indymedia (Click Here), up to 1,000
anti-Bush activists showed up, some of them bussed in from the northern California area.
They came to demonstrate opposition to the impending war with Iraq, among other issues.

Double Standards Make Enemies



On Sept. 5 and 6 the State Department will host a high-powered conference on anti-Americanism, an unusual step indicating the depth of American concern about this increasingly globalized phenomenon. Anti-Americanism can be mere shallow name-calling. A recent article in Britain's Guardian newspaper described Americans as having "a bug up their collective arse the size of Manhattan" and suggested that " 'American' is a type of personality which is intense, humourless, partial to psychobabble and utterly convinced of its own importance." More seriously, anti-Americanism can be contradictory: When the United States failed to intervene in Bosnia, that was considered wrong, but when it did subsequently intervene in Kosovo, that was wrong too. Anti-Americanism can be hypocritical: wearing blue jeans or Donna Karan, eating fast food or Alice Waters-style cuisine, their heads full of American music, movies, poetry and literature, the apparatchiks of the international cultural commissariat decry the baleful influence of the American culture that nobody is forcing them to consume. It can be misguided; the logical implication of the Western-liberal opposition to America's Afghan war is that it would be better if the Taliban were still in power. And it can be ugly; the post-Sept. 11 crowing of the serves-you-right brigade was certainly that.

However, during the past year the Bush administration has made a string of foreign policy miscalculations, and the State Department conference must acknowledge this. After the brief flirtation with consensus-building during the Afghan operation, the United States' brazen return to unilateralism has angered even its natural allies. The Republican grandee James Baker has warned President Bush not to go it alone, at least in the little matter of effecting a "regime change" in Iraq.

In the year's major crisis zones, the Bushies have been getting things badly wrong. According to a Security Council source, the reason for the United Nations' lamentable inaction during the recent Kashmir crisis was that the United States (with Russian backing) blocked all attempts by member states to mandate the United Nations to act. But if the United Nations is not to be allowed to intervene in a bitter dispute between two member states, both nuclear powers of growing political volatility, in an attempt to defuse the danger of nuclear war, then what on Earth is it for? Many observers of the problems of the region will also be wondering how long Pakistani-backed terrorism in Kashmir will be winked at by America because of Pakistan's support for the "war against terror" on its other frontier. Many Kashmiris will be angry that their long-standing desire for an autonomous state is being ignored for the sake of U.S. realpolitik. And as the Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf seizes more and more power and does more and more damage to his country's constitution, the U.S. government's decision to go on hailing him as a champion of democracy does more damage to America's already shredded regional credibility.


Little Annie Fanny



If Ann Coulter were a relief pitcher, she'd be in big trouble. Instead, she's a Republican attack-blonde, the author of the number one non-fiction book on the New York Times best-seller list, and a ubiquitous presence on TV talk shows. So you're not supposed to take offense when Coulter spouts politicized bigotry that makes ex-Atlanta Brave John Rocker's foolish remarks about queers, weirdos and foreigners in New York sound benign by comparison. Nor to point out that much of the so-called "evidence" of liberal sins in her book "Slander" is simply made up—780 often phony footnotes and all.

Apparently, the glib Connecticut ectomorph has taken to believing her own, well, "propaganda" is the only word I can get in the newspaper. Or maybe she's just a comedy act, as a recent column by one Melik Kayan in the Wall Street Journal hinted. How else could Coulter go on national TV, call NBC's perky "Today Show" hostess Katie Couric "the affable Eva Braun" of American liberalism, then bleat about liberal name-calling?

Eva Braun was Hitler's mistress. So when Coulter calls Couric, in effect, a Nazi slut, it's what Kayan calls "tongue-in-cheek agitprop." Where's everybody's sense of humor? The occasion of the Journal apologia was Coulter's telling the New York Observer—whose interviewer informed readers that he had a "friend" who would enjoy vigorous copulation with the bony pundit—that "my only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

Some of these boys, incidentally, sound like they're wearing their bowties too tight. I still recall my amazement at learning that Tory men thought Margaret Thatcher a hottie. "The eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe," was how the late English novelist Anthony Powell described her to me. Evidently,the Iron Lady conjured steamy memories of prep school spankings.

It is not my job to provide the evidence for a war crimes trial



Three Western war crimes investigators turned up to see me in Beirut last week. No, they didn't come to talk about the Bosnian war. They wanted to know about torture at Israel's notorious Khiam jail in southern Lebanon, about beatings and imprisonment in cupboard-size cells and electrodes applied to the toes and penises of inmates under interrogation. Most of the torturers were Lebanese members of Israel's proxy "South Lebanon Army" militia, and they performed their vile work for the Israelis – on women as well as men – from the late Seventies until Israel's withdrawal in 2000: almost a quarter of a century of torture. Khiam prison is still there, open to the public, a living testament to brutality and Israeli shame.

The problem is that Israel is now trying to dump its Lebanese torturers on Western countries. Sweden, Canada, Norway, France, Germany and other nations are being asked to give citizenship to these repulsive men in the interests of "peace" – and also because the Israeli government would prefer they left Israel. The three investigators – two cops and a justice ministry official – had come to Beirut to make sure that their government wasn't about to give citizenship to Israel's war criminals. And they knew what they were talking about. We both knew that one former torturer was living in Sweden with his two sons, and that another had opened two restaurants in America.

WAR OPPOSITION GROWS


OPPOSITION to Britain joining America in an attack on Iraq has leapt in just a few months.

A poll of Labour voters shows 52 per cent against, compared with 46 per cent four months ago.

And half of ALL voters across the country oppose military action to remove Saddam Hussein's regime, with just 33 per cent in favour. The ICM survey also reveals that 52 per cent of all voters believe President Bush's drive to topple Saddam is wrong. It rises to 55 per cent among Labour voters.

The latest poll for The Guardian, in which 1,003 adults were quizzed, comes just weeks after a Daily Mirror study among our readers revealed opposition to a war against Iraq was 91.17 per cent. In one of our largest-ever phone votes, just 2,358 thought the US should blitz Iraq while over 27,000 said No.

Yesterday, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted that no decision had been taken on a military offensive.

He said Saddam could avoid an attack by re-admitting weapons inspectors.

Special forces suspect security leaks as Operation Mountain Sweep results in only modest success


NARIZAH, Afghanistan - Flying huge American flags atop their Humvees, U.S. Army Special Forces swept through villages in southeastern Afghanistan ( news - web sites) last week in search of al-Qaida and Taliban.



In most cases, however, the people and weapons the troops expected to find were gone, leading them to suspect that Operation Mountain Sweep, which ended Sunday, had been compromised by security leaks.

"I wouldn't say it wasn't successful," said Sgt. 1st Class Dwight Smith, a special operations soldier. "It's been going OK. We've recovered some caches. But it could be better."

More than 2,000 coalition troops, including U.S. special forces, paratroopers and civil affairs specialists, took part in the eight-day operation in the rugged mountain terrain along the border with Pakistan.

They found a ton of weapons, two caches of Taliban documents and took 10 people into custody. But main force al-Qaida and Taliban units were nowhere to be found.

Instead, they turned up cooperative village leaders and curious children — even though intelligence reports said the area is rife with Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers, some of them masters of guerrilla warfare learned fighting the Soviets in the 1980s.

Maj. Craig Osborne, an operations officer, suspects the enemy knew the Americans were coming.

"I have no firsthand knowledge of that but there is some speculation of that," he said.

The operations around Narizah, a mud-hut village in Khost province less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Pakistan border, were typical and underscored the frustrations of U.S. soldiers.

U.S. intelligence had reported an unusually large number of vehicles and armed men around the village. As paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division set up a security cordon around the area, troops from the 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group-Airborne approached the village.

War On Sanity


Studs Terkel, the old Chicago writer, has it dead right. Mr. Bush's war on terrorism is really a war on sanity. In all my years of observing the political scene, I've never heard so much nonsense from so many important people.

It is a policy based on the Big Lie and therefore is bound to fail.

The truth is this: The terrorist attacks against the United States are a direct result of our one-sided support of Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. That's it, pure and simple.

Bush, however, does not have the moral fortitude to admit that. Therefore, he had to concoct a Big Lie to explain the attack. Oh, he said, they hate us because we are free. This is absurd on its face. Why would Arabs or anybody else care one way or another whether we were free or enslaved? It's no skin off their noses either way. The rest of the world does not wake up in the morning worrying about the American people. They have their own lives to live.

But, as a consequence of the Big Lie, Bush is doing absolutely nothing to end terrorism. Terrorism, like all human action, proceeds from a cause for a purpose. If you want to end it, you have to remove the cause. Instead, Bush is imitating the Israelis and thinks that killing people, jailing people, deporting people and threatening people will solve the problem. Those tactics have not worked for the Israelis, and they will not work for us.

To be able to kill your way out of a terrorism problem assumes that there is a finite number of terrorists. There is not; the ranks are constantly being refilled. Does anyone think that if someone kills members of our family, we're going to love the killer? If someone destroys our home and our possessions, we're going to like that person? Every time we inflict death, wounds and destruction on people, we recruit more enemies.


Cheney's War


Richard Cheney's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars wasn't only about promoting the warfare state. Cheney was also careful to note how warm he is to the welfare state: "the president has asked Congress for an 8 percent increase for veterans' health care and a 7 percent increase for veterans' programs overall." [Loud applause.]

With the audience warmed up with your money, Cheney got on to the business at hand, which is killing. If you don't want war with Iraq, says the vice president, you are engaging in "wishful thinking or willful blindness."

Actually, there is a third option: some people don't like unrelenting war mongering that seeks the wholesale demolition of Iraq, a once-liberal, once-wealthy country that has been painfully impoverished in eleven years of US bombings and sanctions, a war which will only incite more anger in the Moslem world, inspire more terror attacks, and provide an excuse for a further expansion of the police state at home.

Cheney said that Iraq and its government have to go because there is evidence those folks don't like us. Well, you know, that kind of thing happens when your stated goal is the annihilation of somebody else’s country. People who live there, and in particular the government in charge, can become agitated.

What about the newest claims that Iraq will have nuclear weapons "very soon"? Well, it is hard to know what to make of them because such claims are, by now, so inevitable. Is there any country, no matter how poor, any group, no matter how disorganized and low tech, that the US would not claim is developing nuclear weapons should the US decide to attack it?

The Bush administration is capable of making false claims about anything, and no one doubts it. In fact, should it become public that the US has made up this nuclear weapons thing out of whole cloth, it can count on the neoconservative pundits to defend the right of the government to lie.

In Baghdad streets, they're not quaking in their boots



In the bustle of Baghdad yesterday, the impoverished taxi driver condemned the madness of his leader, but the millionaire businessman Faris El-Hadi stood right beside Saddam Hussein, staring down the latest Washington war cry.

Without even being asked a question, the 54-year-old driver exploded. As we swung past a high-rise bunker that is home to one of Saddam's security services, he yelled in English: "This time it will be a big war. We have so much oil - but it is just a bomb to explode; it does not bring us money.

"I fought for Saddam for 12 years. Two wars - Iran and Kuwait. But this time I must take my family to Africa. I will not have another war."

On the day of Washington's most forceful declaration of intent to wage war on Iraq - a declaration which has sent shudders through the region and has Arab governments warning of catastrophe - the taxi driver was the exception in a city that did not seem to skip a beat.

There was no panic - no queuing for petrol, produce or money. The hotels are empty, but staff insisted it is the 50-degree heat of summer, not the threat of war, that is keeping the foreigners away.


And the Iraqis that a foreign reporter can get to - moving among locals is banned without a minder from the Information Ministry - are blase at the prospect of another war.

Iraq Speech by Cheney Is Criticized by Schröder


BERLIN, Aug. 27 — Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany has criticized the speech on Monday by Vice President Dick Cheney, saying that it signals a mistaken shift in American aims regarding Iraq.

In an interview broadcast tonight on RTL television, Mr. Schröder said the goal of the Bush administration no longer seems to be to persuade Iraq to allow unconditional arms inspections by United Nations experts. Instead, he said, the American goal seems to be to remove Mr. Hussein by military means regardless of whether inspections occur, which he says will undermine the chance of getting Iraq to allow the inspections.

"If the aim changes now, then it's one's own responsibility," Mr. Schröder said. "If somebody is to be removed with the aid of a military intervention, you can hardly convince him to let inspectors into his country. It's the change of aim that is the mistake."

European governments, including America's closest ally, Britain, have emphasized international pressure, including the threat of force, to make Iraq comply with United Nations resolutions and to allow unfettered arms inspections.

The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has said weapons inspections are the best way of reducing the threat posed by Mr. Hussein.

Military action had to remain an option but the possibility of an attack would "recede," Mr. Straw said, if other ways of addressing the risk of Iraq were found.

Monday, August 26, 2002

The Bush Doctrine Of Stupidity And Greed



I’m confused.

George Bush has declared that America is at war against terrorism. “The War Against Terrorism” is accepted as fact. We see the phrase on every major network news program.

George Bush has also called upon Congress to create a Department of Homeland Security to protect America from terrorist attacks.

Yet George Bush announced last week that he would not spend $5.1 billion appropriated by Congress for homeland security measures. Bush said he was withholding the money to teach Congress a lesson about fiscal restraint. We’re not going to have any foolish spending on frills and such while there’s a war going on, seemed to be the message.

This wasteful spending package included money for home defenses, military spending, foreign aid, AIDS treatment, and relief for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Specifically, it included $340 million to fund many of the nation’s 18,000 fire departments. Of that sum, $150 was earmarked for equipment and training grants requested by the fire departments. Another $100 million was to be used to improve communications systems for firefighters, police officers, and other emergency personnel, as well as $90 million for long-term health monitoring of emergency workers at the Ground Zero site.

Needless to say, the nation’s firefighters have not taken kindly to Bush’s demonstration of fiscal restraint. The International Association of Fire Fighters voted unanimously at its annual convention in Las Vegas last week to boycott a national tribute to firefighters who died on Sept. 11. Bush is expected to speak at the Oct. 6 ceremony in Washington, D.C.

“The president has merely been using firefighters and their families for one big photo opportunity,” declared R. Michael Mohler of the Virginia Professional Fire Fighters Local 774. “We will work actively to not grant him another photo op with us.”

The Bush Doctrine Of Stupidity And Greed



I’m confused.

George Bush has declared that America is at war against terrorism. “The War Against Terrorism” is accepted as fact. We see the phrase on every major network news program.

George Bush has also called upon Congress to create a Department of Homeland Security to protect America from terrorist attacks.

Yet George Bush announced last week that he would not spend $5.1 billion appropriated by Congress for homeland security measures. Bush said he was withholding the money to teach Congress a lesson about fiscal restraint. We’re not going to have any foolish spending on frills and such while there’s a war going on, seemed to be the message.

This wasteful spending package included money for home defenses, military spending, foreign aid, AIDS treatment, and relief for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Specifically, it included $340 million to fund many of the nation’s 18,000 fire departments. Of that sum, $150 was earmarked for equipment and training grants requested by the fire departments. Another $100 million was to be used to improve communications systems for firefighters, police officers, and other emergency personnel, as well as $90 million for long-term health monitoring of emergency workers at the Ground Zero site.

Needless to say, the nation’s firefighters have not taken kindly to Bush’s demonstration of fiscal restraint. The International Association of Fire Fighters voted unanimously at its annual convention in Las Vegas last week to boycott a national tribute to firefighters who died on Sept. 11. Bush is expected to speak at the Oct. 6 ceremony in Washington, D.C.

“The president has merely been using firefighters and their families for one big photo opportunity,” declared R. Michael Mohler of the Virginia Professional Fire Fighters Local 774. “We will work actively to not grant him another photo op with us.”