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)
Thursday, August 29, 2002
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.”
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.”
Thursday, August 22, 2002
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.
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.
Friday, August 16, 2002
JERUSALEM, Aug. 13 — A threat by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to call early elections and the sudden rise of a new political star have combined to fire up that most ardent of Israeli pursuits, domestic electoral politics.
The new star, Amram Mitzna, a retired major general and the two-term mayor of Haifa, formally announced today that he was running for leader of the Labor Party.
He pledged to open talks with the Palestinians "without delay" and without preconditions, including any demands about changes in the Palestinian leadership.
In the two weeks since Mr. Mitzna first disclosed his intention to run, he has created a powerful stir in the Labor Party, whose dispirited rump has been part of Mr. Sharon's governing coalition since the shattering defeat of the last Labor government under Ehud Barak 18 months ago.
On Monday, Mr. Sharon declared that he was prepared to call for a quick election if he continued facing resistance to the 2003 budget. Parliament reconvenes in October, and Israeli law requires 90 days before an election, so the earliest date would be in January. If an early election is not held, Mr. Sharon's term will run through October of next year.
The prime minister issued his warning at a meeting of the foreign affairs and defense committee of Parliament. "Elections are not a good thing now, but we have to pass the budget, which is not easy," he said. "Therefore, if the budget does not pass, it is natural that we should have elections."
Egypt said yesterday it would resist an American threat to place a freeze on increases in future economic aid over the imprisonment of a human rights activist.
"Egypt does not accept pressure and will not bow to pressure and everyone knows that," the foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, said.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Bush administration would oppose giving any new aid to Egypt to protest against the imprisonment of Saadeddin Ibrahim, convicted in July after a retrial on charges including defaming Egypt. Human rights activists in Egypt and abroad condemned the trial procedure as a "sham".
The US move is seen by diplomats in the region as part of a new initiative to encourage democracy in the moderate Arab world.
It would be in line with Washington's calls for more democracy within Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and its efforts to force a "regime change" in Iraq.
Washington, while throwing its weight behind calls for more human rights in developing states in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America, has often been reluctant over several decades to involve itself in the struggle for democracy and human rights in North Africa and the Middle East where economic interests prevail.
Human rights groups have said the Ibrahim verdict is another government blow aimed at undermining Egypt's fragile civil society. But the government has defended what it calls the independence of its judiciary.
Mr Maher described the American threat as an attempt to meddle in Egypt's internal affairs. He said all states should respect the Egyptian judicial system and its rulings "as we respect their justice systems".
NEW YORK -- On June 6, President Bush ( news - web sites) ended his address to the nation on homeland security legislation by saying: "History has called our nation into action. ... Will America -- with our unique position and power -- blink in the face of terror, or will we lead to a freer, more civilized world? There's only one answer: This country will lead the world to safety, security, peace and freedom."
It sounded as if our homeland was the whole world. Now that his anti-terrorism legislation has become law, it is obvious that he meant what he said -- and perhaps more. Fast-forward to last week, after he signed the 35-page Homeland Security Act of 2002. These paragraphs are from The New York Times of Aug. 10:
"The Bush administration, making use of the new anti-terrorism law, warned foreign diplomats this week that their nations could lose all military aid if they became members of the International Criminal Court without protecting Americans serving in their countries from its reach ..."
"Under a little-remarked provision in the anti-terrorism package President Bush signed last week, President Uribe (of Colombia) can now use dozens of American-applied helicopters as well as Colombian soldiers who were trained by United States troops in operations against leftist guerrillas. ... Previous guidelines limited the use of the helicopters and soldiers to anti-drug operations."
Two days later, on Aug. 12, The Times reported: "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is considering ways to expand broadly the role of American Special Operations forces in the global campaign against terrorism, including sending them worldwide to capture or kill al-Qaida leaders far from the battlefields of Afghanistan ( news - web sites)."
So, we are not only preparing to get back into the assassination business everywhere in the world, but our trained killers will be immune from any punishment and any questioning not personally approved by Bush and his successors. One way to define the reach of the power the United States thinks it has is to note that only a handful of countries -- Iran, Iraq and Cuba among them -- do not receive some of the billions of dollars a year we spread around in military aid to other countries.
This is our new idea of law and order. Republicans have taken to calling the international court "the rogue court." We have decided to make our stand on a 1950s Cold War view of law. It all seemed so sensible, even moral, until President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and the public discovered, in congressional hearings in 1975, that our guys were out there trying to kill anyone who disagreed with us, beginning with Fidel Castro ( news - web sites). Judging by that, we will learn what is going on now in about 30 or 40 years -- when it will be too late.
Once again, Congress is signing off on it knows not what. The law passed by the Senate and House also provides that if any country defies us by charging any Americans, military or civilian, the president has the authority to free them by any "necessary and appropriate means" -- up to and including invasion. We could, for instance, invade the Netherlands if international courts charged one of us with conduct unbecoming an American.
MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL, S.D. (AP) - With four presidents staring down at him and one potential rival, Tom Daschle, looking on, President Bush ( news - web sites) on Thursday demanded broad authority to oversee the new Homeland Security Department.
"I don't want our hands tied so we cannot do the number one job you expect, which is to protect the homeland," Bush said.
Just off to Bush's right was Daschle, the Senate majority leader who has clashed with Bush on how much flexibility Bush should have over the proposed department's personnel. Daschle, a Democrat who represents South Dakota, is considering challenging Bush in 2004.
The White House invited Daschle to the event, and Bush went out of his way to welcome him in opening remarks. But Bush also shouted at times, and seemed to look directly at Daschle occasionally, as he outlined an agenda that Daschle has frequently bottled up on Capitol Hill.
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
America's leadership
The sacrifices of military members and their families should be rewarded with fair treatment and honesty from their leaders. Now their safety, job security, and retirement benefits are in jeopardy because top leaders are using deployment decisions as mere profit-making vehicles.
Thomas White, as vice chairman of Enron when it allegedly hid $500 million in losses and manipulated the California energy crisis, is secretary of the Army, even after being cited by the Senate Armed Services Committee for violating his signed ethics agreement. That means he used his position for personal gain and compromised his objectivity for military decisions.
Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton, is now the primary recipient of the Pentagon’s rush to build anti-terrorism military bases, costing taxpayers billions. U.S. military construction units could do all of this work for considerably less. This means more money for Cheney’s friends at Halliburton and less work for military personnel.
Commander-in-chief George W. Bush has made certain that former Enron and energy executives profit from defense and homeland security contracts. His own fortune was made through Enron/WorldCom-type accounting tricks and insider trading that have bankrupted companies and robbed people of their retirement savings. The Bush administration planned to invade Afghanistan even without the tragic events of Sept. 11 because Unocal had found the Taliban too uncooperative in its attempts to build an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Karachi.
Now Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld wants to eliminate an entire Army division, even as we are running out of reservists to backfill critical positions. The Bush team also thinks that it’s too costly for disabled veterans to earn their longevity pay in addition to retirement benefits. But it’s minimal when compared to cost-plus contracts for Halliburton.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and White are a gang of four who have ordered U.S. military members to be put in harm’s way for oil profits and that divisions be consolidated to free up money for private contractors. This administration has overseen a wrecked economy, befriended corporations that robbed their own employees, has tried to put Social Security into a losing stock market, restricted health care for veterans and deployed military members to fatten oil executives’ pockets.
It’s time for leadership the military can trust. It’s time for the gang of four to go!
M.D. Wooldridge
Würzburg, Germany