Years ago, in a snug underground restaurant in downtown Tehran, drinking duq – an Iranian beverage of mint and yoghurt – Saddam Hussein's former head of nuclear research told me what happened when he made a personal appeal for the release of a friend from prison. "I was taken directly from my Baghdad office to the director of state security," he said. "I was thrown down the stairs to an underground cell and then stripped and trussed up on a wheel attached to the ceiling. Then the director came to see me.
" 'You will tell us all about your friends – everything,' he said. 'In your field of research, you are an expert, the best. In my field of research, I am the best man.' That's when the whipping and the electrodes began."
All this happened, of course, when Saddam Hussein was still our friend, when we were encouraging him to go on killing Iranians in his 1980-88 war against Tehran, when the US government – under President Bush Snr – was giving Iraq preferential agricultural assistance funding. Not long before, Saddam's pilots had fired a missile into an American warship called the Stark and almost sunk it. Pilot error, claimed Saddam – the American vessel had been mistaken for an Iranian oil tanker – and the US government cheerfully forgave the Iraqi dictator.
Those were the days. But sitting in the United Nations General Assembly last week, watching President Bush Jr tell us with all his Texan passion about the beatings and the whippings and the rapes in Iraq, you would have thought they'd just been discovered. For sheer brazen historical hypocrisy, it would have been difficult to beat that part of the President's speech. Saddam, it appears, turned into a bad guy when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. Before that, he was just a loyal ally of the United States, a "strong man" – as the news agency boys like to call our dictators – rather than a tyrant.
But the real lie in the President's speech – that which has dominated American political discourse since the crimes against humanity on 11 September last year – was the virtual absence of any attempt to explain the real reasons why the United States has found itself under attack.
Monday, September 16, 2002
WITH PUBLIC support for war against Iraq flagging in the U.S. in recent weeks, the Bush administration was clearly hoping the 9/11 anniversary would be just the thing to get war fever back on track.
Certainly, the media could be counted on to do its part to whip the citizenry into a frenzy of grief and rage, thereby rousing the American people to wage war on a country that apparently had nothing to do with 9/11, but at least offers a target that can be located.
The manipulation of grief to stoke enthusiasm for battle is, of course, nothing new. It was used in Iran in the '70s by fundamentalist Muslim clerics to drum up support for their fledgling movement. Whenever dissidents were killed by the Shah's brutal forces, the clerics held elaborate funeral ceremonies to further stir emotions and enlist recruits to fight the Shah and his backers in Washington. The clerics'strategy was highly effective — and they didn't even have CNN at their disposal.
This is worth remembering as we contemplate the media frenzy of the past week that has helped turn the bloodbath of 9/11 into a staging ground for endless war.
Certainly, the U.S. media have greatly helped the White House make its case. When tracking down Osama bin Laden proved too difficult, the Bush administration switched its focus to "regime change" in Iraq. The media have followed this turn in the plot without question, highlighting Saddam's use of chemical weapons against his own Kurdish population — an atrocity that receives far more media attention now than when Saddam was still a U.S. ally.
The U.S. media also acts as a filter, preventing incorrect ideas from slipping through.
As Antonia Zerbisias noted in The Star last week, CNN and MSNBC hosts have smeared Scott Ritter, former head of the U.N. weapons inspection mission in Iraq, who blames Washington for the mission's breakdown. TV hosts have openly questioned Ritter's loyalty as an American, indicating the media have taken on the function once performed by the McCarthy Committee on Un-American Activities.
Certainly, criticizing Washington these days leaves one vulnerable to the charge of anti-Americanism. With its demands for blind, unquestioning loyalty, and talk of good and evil, the world's only superpower seems to be increasingly taking on the characteristics of a cult.
Above all, the U.S. media have filtered out anything that could lead viewers to question why so many people around the world feel such bitterness toward Washington.
When George Bush, soon after 9/11, provocatively raised the question: "Why do they hate us so?" it seemed inevitable the media would start examining some possible reasons, such as the long history of U.S. interventions in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and elsewhere.
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- It would be immoral for America to attack Iraq without provocation, a former U.S. senator said here Saturday.
James Abourezk, who used to represent South Dakota in the senate, was speaking to reporters after he, Democratic West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall and two other Americans met with Iraqi Health Minister Omed Medhat Mubarak.
The four-person delegation arrived overnight in Iraq, saying it intended to push for peace as well as the return of U.N. weapons inspectors.
It is the first time in several years that a sitting U.S. legislator has visited Iraq, which has been under U.N. sanctions since it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
''We are on a humanitarian mission ... not only to convince the Iraqi people that the American people are concerned with their suffering, but also to show that the American people, their vast majority, are peace-waging individuals,'' Rahall told reporters after flying in from Syria.
There's another significant anniversary this week, but not one that's attracted the sort of attention the 11 September commemorations have.
On 16 September 1982, under the watchful eye of their Israeli allies who had encircled the area, Lebanese Christian militiamen entered Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps bent on revenge for the assassination of their leader Bashir Gemayel.
There followed a three-day orgy of rape and slaughter that left hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocent civilians dead in what is considered the bloodiest single incident of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
If Americans approached the 11 September anniversary with trepidation, many residents of Shatila camp, and its more run-down neighbour Sabra, have been dreading the milestone on Monday which marks two decades of pain and the futile search for justice.
Take Um Ahmad, who still lives in the same house where she lost her husband, four sons and a daughter when a thick-set militiaman carrying an assault rifle bundled everyone into one room of their hovel and opened fire.
Only she and her daughter Suad survived the carnage, their survival aided by the fact of their being hidden under the broken remains of their loved-ones. Another daughter, Nuhad, escaped by hiding in a cupboard in the kitchen.
Opening wounds
"I'd rather not talk about what happened," Um Ahmad says as she bids us sit down in the room where her family perished. "What's the point of opening old wounds?"
But talk she does, despite herself, telling us how the events unfolded and recalling each of her four sons by name, Nizar, Shadi, Farid and Nidal (whom they called Bassam because of his bright smiling appearance).
A terrible fate awaited the boys in this family photo
I learn that, for many years, the survivors did not set foot in the room where the killings took place. But this year they have decided to open it up, the only sign of its tragic history a large funereal-looking banner in Arabic over the door which says: "There is no god but God".
When I ask if she has a photograph of her boys, Um Ahmad begins rummaging deep inside a cupboard where she produces a framed colour picture of three sweet-looking kids. The youngest, barely out of nappies, had three bullets drilled into his head, she says.
Where did Um Ahmad come from in Palestine, I ask, wanting to change the subject.
"Safad, on the border with Lebanon," she says, a pale smile on her face for the only time during my visit.
"I was five years old in 1948 when we left. I can still remember it, like a dream," she adds.
Failed prosecution
Every year since 1982 has been a bad year for Um Ahmad, but 2002 has been among the worst.
Residents of the camps remain haunted by 1982
In 2001 lawyers representing her and two dozen other victims' relatives attempted to have Ariel Sharon (Israel's defence minister at the time, now prime minister) tried for the massacre under Belgian legislation, which grants its courts "universal jurisdiction" for war crimes.
There had been great enthusiasm about the case in the camps. Mr Sharon, after all, had already been found to bear "personal responsibility" in the massacres by an Israeli commission of inquiry (which concluded he shouldn't hold public office again).
But the relatives' hopes were dashed again in June 2002, when the Belgian judges ruled that the case was inadmissible.
The fact that Mr Sharon had got off on a technicality (thanks to his absence from Belgium) is of little comfort to people who have spent every day of the last 20 years living with the consequences of the massacres.
In fact, many in Shatila rounded on the lawyers for enlisting them in an exercise that, in the end, had only - to paraphrase Um Ahmad - "opened the old wounds again".
Nor was there any satisfaction in the camps that the man who had led the killers, Elie Hobeika, himself met a violent end this year. Death in a car bomb followed his announcement that he would testify against Mr Sharon in Belgium.
Anniversary plans
During my visit to Shatila few people knew how they were going to spend the anniversary.
This is the only monument to the victims of 9/16
It will certainly be a far cry from the ceremonies in New York and Washington, where American leaders told the world that its pre-eminent military power was going to ensure that justice for the victims would triumph over evil whatever the cost.
The Palestinian survivors of the 1982 massacres will probably gather for speeches at the place where their loved-ones were buried en masse - a dusty vacant lot marked by a pathetic temporary monument of breezeblocks.
But there will be no internationally-observed minute's silence for the innocent victims of Sabra and Shatila, or global news coverage about the survivors and their miserable existence at the scene of this evil crime.
Now that the gauntlet has been thrown down, the Bush administration's best-case scenario for confronting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a rapid sequence of events resulting in the dismantling of his deadliest weapons - or in military action.
US President George Bush stressed the urgency of action again on Saturday before meeting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at Camp David.
But the reality of the unfolding diplomatic drama might be quite different.
Indeed, the momentum generated by the President's galvanising speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday is likely to meet a series of hurdles that could both slow it and make the process much messier than it now appears, according to UN diplomats, former weapons inspectors and Iraq experts.
The preferred US timetable is tight:
Two weeks or less to win compromise on a tough UN resolution ordering Iraq to "comply or else" on disarmament and authorising the use of force if necessary to secure that goal.
An additional four weeks to get UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq to begin finding and dismantling its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles.
Then, within six months or so, Iraq would surrender its arsenal and potentially also begin to comply with a host of other UN resolutions. At the first sign of obstruction, UN members would be empowered to use force.
ZARANJ, AFGHANISTAN – A secret new US Special Forces mission to hunt down Al Qaeda along Afghanistan's border with Iran is triggering cross-border accusations of espionage, amid persistent suspicions that Iran is harboring terrorists.
The Green Berets have based themselves in a desert compound three miles from the Iranian frontier.
Surrounded by a maze of barricades to thwart suicide bombing attacks, the new base is being seen as an affront by Iranian religious hard-liners, who oppose the US-led "war on terror."
Interviews in Zaranj with Afghans expelled – and sometimes beaten – by Iranian authorities suggest that Tehran is treating the new US presence as a threat to its national integrity. The Iranian military is blaming the threat on local Afghans, whom they accuse of spying for the Americans.
While the US soldiers have been probing border areas where Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan meet, it is unclear if the teams will cross over into Iran, Western military analysts say. They add that US special operations commanders in their home bases are still formulating rules and guidelines for new "snatch squads" to nab Al Qaeda suspects at large across the globe.
Meanwhile, Iranian border troops, their ranks bolstered since the arrival of the three dozen American soldiers, have been digging fresh trenches in the sands here and setting up new gun positions.
The tensions at the border form the latest chapter in two decades of bad relations between the US and Iran. Western analysts in Iran warn that Bush's categorization of Iraq as part of an "axis of evil" has strengthened the hand of hard-line Islamic forces which have supported terror in the past.
Friday, September 13, 2002
ATLANTA The grace period for air travel has ended. Gone are the days of goodwill after the Sept. 11 attacks, when passengers, airlines and airports were willing to put up with all kinds of intrusive and time-consuming security measures. Gone, too, are the months when carriers desperately wooed frightened travelers by catering to their needs, and when well-intentioned U.S. officials optimistically laid out new safety plans.
Now, airlines and airports are vigorously lobbying the government to scale back or modify many of its new safeguards. Passengers are clamoring for more consistent and less exasperating security procedures. And airlines are cutting back on passenger services and creating ticket restrictions they never would have dared put in place last fall. Hartsfield Atlanta International, the busiest airport in the world, is grappling with many of the issues hanging over the industry a full year after the terrorists struck, transforming air travel more than any aspect of daily life. The airport serves as a hub for Delta Air Lines, the third-largest carrier in the United States, and AirTran Airways, a fast-growing low-fare carrier.
No single industry was hit harder by the attacks than the airlines, which have lost $10 billion in the last year.
Besides resorting to drastic cost-cutting efforts to stay aloft, the airlines are engaged, along with airports like Hartsfield, in a contentious debate with the 10-month-old Transportation Security Administration over what security measures should be cut back.
The airlines openly object to security measures that they say have scared away customers, especially on short flights.
The Transportation Security Administration "has the best intentions in the world," said Frederick Reid, Delta's president. "But unless you keep the law enforcement focus and add customer service and efficiency to it," he said, "you will kill aviation."
Delta has been one of the most outspoken airlines about dropping certain security procedures, such as searching carry-on bags at the boarding gate.
'We are stretched, really stretched,'' a senior U.S. Army combat commander told me. The 10 divisions that constitute the sole surviving superpower's fighting strength are scarcely able to handle today's responsibilities, much less a full-scale war in Iraq. What's more, a pre-emptive strike against Baghdad may only be the first of such military ventures.
Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, vice chairman and dominant Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, last week shined a light onto this nation's future pre-emptions. Questioned on CNN's ''Crossfire'' about military intervention in Iraq, Hunter said: ''The president understands this is a new era of what I call terrorists with high technology. I think we're going to have to make this decision over and over.''
He listed Libya as another nuclear threat, followed by other possible U.S. targets, adding: ''Iraq is the first take on that question.''
That alarms the uniformed military. These career officers, who are faithful to civilian supremacy in military affairs, do not question policy. What bothers them is lack of muscle to execute so muscular a global strategy. The concern is about quantity, not quality. Old-timers view today's volunteer soldiers as better trained and better motivated than their draftee predecessors. There are just not enough of them to meet demands.
Major troop assignments in Korea, Japan, Germany and elsewhere in Europe (well over 100,000) did not end with the Cold War. Fighting in Afghanistan will last a long time, and a U.S. presence is projected there even longer. Peacekeeping commitments in Bosnia (which were supposed to have ended five years ago) and Kosovo are open-ended. One battalion (830 troops) is assigned to the Sinai, requiring an additional battalion ready to go there and still another battalion coming back. Four divisions (around 60,000) are talked about at the outset for Iraq, with the possibility of many more to follow.
Stretched though the Army may be, no help is on the way. Defense Department sources know Congress will not approve any increase in manpower. On the contrary, decreases in weapons systems can be expected once the midterm elections are out of the way.
SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Japan is Asia's most exposed economy to a possible U.S. war on Iraq because of its high dependence on imported energy and exports, according to a new regional analysis.
Oil accounts for 52 percent of Japan's total energy supply, and about 86 percent of its $50 billion in annual oil imports comes from the Middle East.
That is a far higher figure than the 25 percent dependency on Mid-East oil for the United States and 5 percent for the U.K., according to Japan's New Energy Foundation.
South Korea and Taiwan are also heavily dependent on oil from the Middle East. Between them, the three countries account for about 85 percent of East Asia's oil imports.
Military analysts say oil tankers heading out of the Arabian Gulf would likely become targets if hostilities break out. That in turn would put pressure on oil supplies in Asia, despite most refiners keeping reserves of at least 70 days.
On Tuesday the U.S. Navy warned that al Qaeda terrorists may be planning attacks against tankers, sending oil prices to $30 a barrel on the NYMEX Wednesday. (Full story)
West Texas Intermediate for October delivery closed at $29.77, after briefly touching the $30 mark. In London, Brent crude closed at $28.40.
Berlin declared yesterday that it would do its utmost to avert a war in Iraq, warning of a possible "explosion" of oil prices that could derail Germany's economic recovery.
Speaking before President George Bush delivered his blunt words at the General Assembly in New York, Hans Eichel, Finance Minister in the ruling Social Democrat-led coalition, said an escalation of the conflict could trigger a surge in oil prices that could "upset many plans". The German government would " try to prevent things getting that far", Mr Eichel told the Bundestag.
His remarks reflect the hostility of German public opinion to what Chancellor Gerhard Schröder calls an American "adventure" in Iraq – a hostility Mr Schröder is hoping to harness to help him win re-election this month.
A similar warning was voiced by Wim Duisenberg, head of the European Central Bank, who said the possible attack was exacerbating worries about economic growth.
Qatar and Turkey also expressed their opposition. The al-Udeid air base in Qatar is emerging as a likely regional command and control centre for the Americans.
Bulent Ecevit, the Turkish Prime Minister, said the threat of an attack was "a sword dangling over our heads". Mr Ecevit's co-operation could be vital to the Americans, but Turkey fears that if Saddam Hussein is unseated Iraq could fall apart, destabilising the entire region, including volatile Kurdish areas in south-eastern Turkey.
THE Pentagon fears that the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, might deny the US forces in Germany - the greatest concentration of American men and materiel outside the United States - the right to use German airspace in any attack on Iraq.
This would prove a devastating blow to planners who rely on Germany as an integral part of their strategy to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
The US hospital at Ramstein air base is the largest in Europe, and is included in plans to care for wounded servicemen in a future campaign. AWACS radar planes, bombers, fighters, massive transport aircraft and stockpiles of much needed ammunition are on US bases in Germany, as well as tens of thousands of servicemen.
Currently the Americans fly at will through German airspace but the anti-American rhetoric is increasing in Germany, as polls show 85 per cent of the population are against a US-led invasion to topple Saddam.
A Pentagon spokesman said: "It is true that we would need German permission to use its airspace in operations against Iraq."
In Berlin, the German foreign ministry refused to confirm or deny whether permission to launch Iraq-related missions from Germany would be given although, there are no plans to impede US activities on the bases themselves.
A spokeswoman said: "When a decision to go to war is made it is the day such decisions concerning Germany will be decided. The question remains open."
At a campaign rally in Lübeck on Tuesday for the general election on 22 September, Mr Schröder said : "Not on my watch - no German involvement in a war with Iraq, whatever the UN may say."
The British Army is not ready to fight a desert war despite preparations for a conflict in the Gulf, defence sources said yesterday.
Contingency plans are in place to send a "light" armoured division of two brigades to Kuwait but the tanks are not "desertised".
Half of the Challenger II tanks sent to Oman during an exercise last year were left stranded when their engines became clogged with dust after a few hours in the desert.
But despite those problems, no British tanks have been desertised and an MoD spokesman said the time required to do so would have to be written into any deployment plans.
There are also problems with the Army's main infantry weapon, the SA80 rifle, which despite a refit suffered repeated stoppages during Operation Jacana in Afghanistan when dust blown up by the helicopters clogged its working parts.
The weapon is being tested under exercise conditions in Oman in a move senior officers hope will restore confidence in the weapon. But the Royal Marine commandos who used it in Afghanistan say it is a very poor weapon.
While any attack on Iraq is now certain to take place next year rather than this, the apparent lack of urgency in getting the tanks and rifles ready for war is "deeply disturbing", one source said.
It is also likely to suffer severe problems getting the tanks to Kuwait, an operation that would take around 10 weeks even assuming no problems cropped up.
The MoD allowed one of its three roll-on roll-off ferry charters to lapse, with the result that the French snapped it up. That has forced the MoD to look elsewhere on a very limited market for means of getting their tanks to Kuwait.
Nevertheless, the main problems remain the Challenger 2 tanks and the SA80. Senior Army officers remain convinced that the Royal Marines were not maintaining their weapons properly and that the SA80 A2 will prove its worth in Oman. But one Royal Marines officer said this was "complete nonsense".
DAVID ASMAN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: President Bush at the U.N. today mapping out Saddam Hussein's violations of U.N. resolutions. Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who at one time warned in similar tones about Saddam Hussein, sounds different now. The question is why.
Scott Ritter joins us here in our studio. Good to have you, sir.
SCOTT RITTER, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Thanks a lot.
ASMAN: Let me read to you a couple of quotes. I'm sure you've heard it before, but these are from four years ago, when you sounded about Saddam Hussein not very much different from the way President Bush did today at the U.N.
This one is from this week -- August 30, 1998 -- "Six months is a very reasonable time scale for Iraq to resume weapons capabilities."
The second two are from Good Morning America also in August of '98.
First, "Iraq's job is to avoid bringing the world's attention to the fact they've retained these weapons," and then, "Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike." Sounds like Saddam Hussein is very dangerous and could mount a chemical strike right now.
RITTER: And what point are you trying to make?
ASMAN: Do you disagree with that in any way, shape or form?
RITTER: I don't disagree with anything I've ever said. Why in God's name would I disagree with something I've said?
ASMAN: Then how is it that people have gotten the impression that since those statements were made, you're now being somewhat apologetic for what Saddam Hussein is doing?
RITTER: Forget those people. Let's deal with the facts.
First of all, it's a matter of perception. When I resigned, I didn't resign as someone beating the drum of war. I'm not out there promoting war. I didn't promote war when I was a weapons inspector. I'm not promoting war now.
I'm promoting the process of weapons inspections as mandated by the Security Council. So I resigned in protest from being unable to do the job of completing the disarmament of Iraq.
As George Bush was displaying his grasp of diplomatic vocabulary in front of the UN yesterday, 7,000 miles away in the Gulf his fellow Americans were speaking a different language.
Their words were military terms: frigates, bombers, air defence fighters, refuelling tankers, carrier battle groups, reconnaissance planes, special forces. All these things are on their way to the region or already in position in readiness for a possible attack on Iraq.
In the most blunt indication yet that the US administration's threat is not an idle one and it will force Iraq if necessary to meet its UN pledges, the US central command will move its headquarters to Qatar in November, perhaps indefinitely. The relocation is the culmination of a series of low-key moves on the Gulf chessboard designed to put all the pieces in place for a rapid US assault should the UN route now being pursued by Washington fail.
The establishment of command posts and the pre-positioning of heavy equipment in the region over the past year have put central command (Centcom) in a position to launch a strike on Baghdad within a fortnight of the order being given, if it is decided to mount the operation with a fast and light force of 50,000. There are about 30,000 American troops in the region already.
"It would take 10 days to bring in the additional equipment, 10 days to airlift the troops and 10 days to get to Baghdad," said John Pike, the head of GlobalSecurity.org, a thinktank which closely monitors military movements.
Nor would it take long to complete the military build-up if it were decided to play it safe and gather an overwhelming force of 200,000 or more before striking. Under Centcom's blueprint for a full-scale invasion, Operation Plan 1003, the force could be assembled in two months. That would be much faster than the six months' build-up in the last Gulf war, partly because it would involve fewer troops, partly because the sluggish US military machine has become gradually more nimble.
'bloody mess'?
WASHINGTON - The U.S. would win a war with Iraq, but the battle and victory itself would have consequences that President Bush should think very hard about, a respected military analyst said yesterday.
"Could this be a bloody mess? Yes, it could," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And what do we do after we win?"
In a briefing on his 100-page analysis of Iraq's military, Cordesman said war probably is necessary to deprive dictator Saddam Hussein of chemical and biological weapons and stop his drive to get nuclear weapons.
But Cordesman said he was troubled that the White House had yet to plan for a postwar Iraq and had done little to gauge the reaction of Arab allies and Iran.
Cordesman also presented a doomsday scenario of Israel retaliating with nuclear weapons if Iraq unleashed a chemical or biological attack against it.
"The history here is of a man who lashes out," Cordesman said of Saddam.
If Iraq attacked with weapons of mass destruction, and he were an Israeli, "I would not be paying attention to phone calls from President Bush" urging restraint, Cordesman said.
Cordesman's estimates, which are similar to those of the CIA and other analysts, put Iraq's troop strength at about 400,000, backed by about 300 aircraft, 2,000 tanks and 3,000 armored personnel carriers.
This force has been decimated by 10 years of poor maintenance, lack of spare parts and little training, Cordesman said.
"This is a relatively weak and divided military and under pressure it might collapse," Cordesman said, but attacking on a guess "is not the way you go to war."
His cautionary analysis is at odds with the views of Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, civilian members of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Review Board who have influence at the White House.
OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, going where few other leaders dare to tread, has linked the September 11 suicide attacks to the perceived arrogance and selfishness of the United States and the West.
Chretien is the first head of a western major nation to suggest that the suicide hijackers might have been motivated by what he describes as the misguided policies of a rich and powerful West that did not understand the need for restraint.
The veteran prime minister, who has been in power for nine years, told the CBC in an interview aired yesterday that there was "a lot of resentment" about the way in which powerful nations treated the increasing number of poor and dispossessed people in the world.
"You know, you cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation for others. That is what the Western world - not only the Americans, the Western world - has to realise. Because they (the have-nots) are human beings too. There are long-term consequences if you don't look hard at the reality in 10 or 20 (or) 30 years from now," he said.
Chretien continued: "And I do think the Western world is getting too rich in relation to the poor world and necessarily, you know, we're looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied greedy and with no limits. And September 11 is an occasion for me to realise it even more."
A total of 3,025 people - including 23 Canadians - died in the September 11 attacks. The official count does not include the hijackers.
Chretien comes from the moderate left of Canada's ruling Liberal Party, which has sometimes looked upon US Republican administrations with suspicion.
Canadian Transport Minister David Collenette went further in an interview with the CBC that was shown in the same September 11 package as the prime minister's. He likened some leading players in the United States to bullies on an ice hockey rink.
Chretien's relations with US President George W Bush have always been cool and this criticism of Washington's increasingly unilateral foreign policy is unlikely to win him fresh friends in the White House.
Chretien's office yesterday denied media reports he felt Washington was responsible for the attacks, saying the prime minister was instead focusing on the increasing divide between rich and poor "which has been clearly used by fanatics to fan resentment toward the developed world."
Thursday, September 12, 2002
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Sept. 11 — For several months, the Special Operations Forces soldiers whom the United States sent to Afghanistan have been growing beards and donning local garb in an effort to blend in with the local people and their surroundings.
But last weekend, the story goes here, Pentagon brass were shocked by news photos of scruffy looking Special Operations Forces swinging into action to help abort the assassination attempt here against President Hamid Karzai in which his companion, Gul Agha Shirzai, governor of Kandahar Province, was wounded.
"On Monday," said a Special Operations Forces officer, leaning against the mud wall of a local bazaar, "we got the word: some general in Washington ordered no more beards."
Asking that his name not be used, the freshly shaved officer continued, "The guys are really burning on this" and nodded to his squad, men who all looked as if they had just emerged from a sheep-shearing shed.
The Special Operations Forces commander here has declined to explain or defend the new rules to reporters, according to Army Major Teri Oman, a spokeswoman for conventional Army forces at Kandahar Airfield.
The impact on the ground is that American patrols now stand out sharply against the Afghan landscape.
Instead of knots of bearded men with a few touches of local garb and concealed weapons strolling through this city with a studied casualness, a Special Forces squad looks like what it is: foreign soldiers patrolling in Afghanistan.
With M-4 rifles slung over their shoulders, men patrol dressed in the beige, brown and olive green uniforms made famous in the Persian Gulf war.
Their faces are shaved as smooth as those of most high school seniors. The Special Operations officer, a six-month veteran of Afghanistan, looked as if he had just stepped off a troop transport from Germany.
In Afghanistan, where beards are a sign of manly maturity and wisdom, the Pentagon initially maintained "reduced grooming standards" for Special Operations Forces in the field. Green Berets and Navy SEALs operating here have grown beards, often modifying their uniforms to local standards, adding such items of civilian wear as dust scarves and loose shirts.
"We ate their food, we grew the beards," continued the Special Operations officer who was in full uniform, with the exception of a checkered scarf, a touch probably in violation of the new rules.
Smiling to passers-by, he added ominously: "We didn't act like an occupying army, like the Soviets. Well, now we are moving in that direction.
OF COURSE it was just coincidental that, on Sunday, as CNN was discrediting former United Nations weapons' inspector Scott Ritter, it was running promos for the remake of Four Feathers, A.E.W. Mason's tale of the coward who would not go to war.
Ritter, who had that day urged Iraq's National Assembly to let in weapons inspectors or face annihilation, is no chicken hawk. After his 12-year turn as a U.S. Marine intelligence officer, he faced down Saddam Hussein's goons as chief inspector of the United Nations Special Commission to disarm Iraq (UNSCOM). In 1998, he quit in protest over differences between what Washington wanted and what Iraq allowed.
Ever since, he has been very vocal about what really led to UNSCOM's failure to complete its mission — a failure Ritter largely blames on Washington — and how weapons' inspectors must be allowed back in to avert what will certainly be a brutal, bloody war. He insists that, if the Bush administration has evidence showing that Saddam is building nukes, then the American people have a right to see it before they sacrifice their lives.
So, naturally, CNN talking head Miles O'Brien on Sunday questioned Ritter on his loyalty.
"As an American citizen, I have an obligation to speak out when I feel my government is acting in a manner, which is inconsistent with the — with the principles of our founding fathers," said Ritter. "It's the most patriotic thing I can do."
Not in this climate. Not when there's the ironically named U.S.A. Patriot Act which abrogates civil rights. Not when those who criticize the administration are considered to be "with the terrorists." Not when the U.S. media let President George Bush's advisers — who, with the exception of Secretary of State Colin Powell, have never served their country as Ritter has — gallop all over the airwaves.
You couldn't flip a channel on Sunday without catching one of the Bush bunch, including wife Laura, Powell, vice-president Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security adviser Condoleeza Rice, promoting an attack on Iraq as if they were actors flogging their latest project on Leno and Letterman.
The Iraq attack is on. The shadow U.S. president, Head Chicken Hawk Cheney, sounded the call this week in a forceful speech. And I think Head Chicken Hawk Cheney is so wrong that it’s hard to focus on anything else, even a looming deadline for a larger project.
The Chicken Hawks are on the verge of starting World War III, or at least a much larger war in the Middle East that will eventually affect all of us. I know a lot of people want to stop them. I have already increased my support of peace organizations and made plans to participate in some public demonstrations in the Dallas area against the Chicken Hawks’ offensive, blood-for-oil war. I have been writing letters, making calls, battling against Chicken Hawks in chat rooms and message boards, even invoking Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and call to love our enemies, to what seems like little avail. But I persist, as do many others, against the odds. Who knows, I might even march across the entire damned country again, as I did in 1984 in protest of Reagan-Bush’s Cold War policies.
Anyways, Head Chicken Hawk Cheney made it sound like Saddam Hussein is a menace to the world worse than Hitler was in the 1930s. A message to Chicken Hawks Cheney-Bush: Hussein might be bad in numerous ways, but Iraq is no Nazi Germany. And the U.S. today is more like Nazi Germany was than Iraq is.
Iraq is still severely weakened by the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, when our bombs destroyed many Iraqi civilian facilities like homes, schools, mosques, and hospitals and more than 100,000 Iraqis died, along with 148 Americans. And it’s really hurt by the economic sanctions imposed by the UN in 1990, with underlying support from the U.S. More than one million additional Iraqis - many of them children under the age of five - have died of sanctions-related causes like amoebic dysentery and starvation. In fact, Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. Attorney General, reported to the UN Security Council in 1997 that the number of Iraqi children under age five who died increased from about 7,000 in 1989 to 57,000 in 1996. That number continued to rise to 78,000 dead in 1998, according to the Iraq Resource Information Site.
Iraq has some 2,000 tanks and several hundred aircraft and spends a piddling $1.4 billion annually on defense, less than Vietnam, Columbia, and Kuwait. How can you compare tiny Iraq to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, which probably had the world’s most powerful military machine at the time and was a real threat to world peace? How is devastated Iraq supposed to overtake us, especially when UN inspectors like Scott Ritter say they have no weapons of mass destruction? If Saddam can get a nuclear bomb, so can any two-bit dictator, and then what do we do? Are we going to go after all the two-bit dictators? How will we find them all when we can’t even locate bin Laden?
Then look at the U.S.: We are arguably the most powerful, sophisticated military machine in known history. We spend about $396 billion a year on the military – and that number is expected to increase substantially in the coming years [at the height of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, we spent about $300 billion]. The closest country in military spending is Russia at $60 billion annually, according to the Center for Defense Information. Another country in that "axis of evil" the Chicken Hawks wants us to fear so much, North Korea, spends even less at $1.3 billion. Iran, the third "evil" country, is up there at $9.1 billion but still only ranks 13th in the world in military spending [see http://www.cdi.org/issues/wme/spendersFY03.html for a list of what other countries spend].
America's determination to topple Saddam Hussein has intensified the debate over enforcement of UN resolutions, reviving claims they are selectively targeted to reflect the political interests of the major powers.
Opponents of UN sanctions against Baghdad allege that Israel has been permitted to defy resolutions for the past 30 years ordering it to quit the West Bank and Gaza, while Iraq's non-compliance has been punished by repeated bombings and a rigorously enforced trade embargo.
President Bush's speech to the UN general assembly in New York today recognises mounting international pressure for a fresh resolution against Iraq before any military action is taken.
His critics are unlikely to be persuaded. "The US has consistently employed a double standard when it comes to UN resolutions and international law," maintains Voice in the Wilderness, the campaign to end economic sanctions against Iraq. "For decades the US has vetoed UN resolutions condemning Israel's occupation of Arab territories."
Professor Malcolm Chalmers, who teaches international studies in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, agrees that UN resolutions reflect political relationships between permanent members of the security council and their allies.
"The way the security council works from the beginning is governed by its composition," he says. "In the case of Iraq the driving force is not what the United Nations said but what the major powers and the United States see as their priorities.
"There are other countries which have not complied with international treaties. Israel has been supported by America. It's a reflection of the modern world in which the US is the only power with the military might to enforce resolutions."
Sir Adam Roberts, professor of international relations at Oxford University, believes there is a fundamental difference between the UN's forthright condemnation of Iraq and its disapproval of Israel. "The comparison that is frequently made between Iraq's response to the resolutions relating to disarmament and Israel's responses to the resolutions about occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is a facile comparison," he says.
"The resolutions of the security council 242 and 338 call on all the parties to negotiate a peace settlement and it's perfectly possible to argue that serious attempts have been made ... and that responsibility for failure is not entirely Israel's fault.
"By contrast the resolutions on Iraq from 91 ... call unequivocally on Iraq to take certain actions and accept certain conditions as a quid pro quo for the ceasefire, and Iraq has been said quite clearly by the security council in 1998 to be in 'flagrant violation' of various resolutions. That was unanimously passed by the security council in resolution 1205 of 98. Iraq is the only state the security council itself has said is in flagrant violation of its resolutions."
Behind the memorial candles and commercial remembrances lies one of the most astute marketing campaigns in American political history. This week, as the nation marks the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the Bush administration will twist voters' outpouring of raw emotion and patriotic fervor into a launching pad for the inevitable invasion of Iraq.
In a September 12 speech to the United Nations, President Bush will further showcase his arguments for knocking off Saddam Hussein. Behind the scenes, his advisers have been torquing the arms of European leaders, who rightly have withheld approval. The White House is making a very bold gamble, one that has most of the world scared to death.
Last week the U.S. stepped up its air attacks, sending 100 warplanes to bomb Iraq, which has been under intermittent siege since the end of Desert Storm in 1991. The Pentagon has continued to move ships, planes, and troops into the region. As for any congressional debate, it's as much for display as the deliberations of the UN, orchestrated to end in a non-binding resolution backing Bush.
Bush can hope war will benefit the economy. But it could also hurt. News early this week that Saudi Arabia would deny U.S. companies access to its prized natural gas fields is only the first sign of what could well turn into an economic energy boycott against the U.S., driving up prices and torpedoing our markets.
NEW YORK--We've lost a great deal during the past year. For one thing, the September 11 attacks became a pretend president's pretext to eviscerate the First Amendment and other basic rights. Stifling even the slightest whimpers of dissent may end up killing the two-party political system, long crippled and ineffectual, once and for all. Although terrorists had previously massacred Americans on American soil (jihadis in `93, rednecks in `95), 9-11 wiped away our national sense of invulnerability. An illusion of security--the fantasy that bomb-throwing hatemongers would shoot up airports and blow up buildings elsewhere in the world but not within the United States--turned out to be an utterly imaginary privilege of citizenship.
Infinitely more important, we lost a lot of people: 2,819 at the World Trade Center, including passengers on the planes that struck them. 189 in Washington. 44 in Pennsylvania. 3,052 Americans in all, not including many more who will die from cancer, asbestosis and other ailments related to the attacks. Many more are disabled. Huge numbers have suffered emotional damage, losing parents, children, spouses, friends.
And we killed a lot of people, too. We killed so many that nobody's sure of the exact number: 84 accidentally-bombed Afghans who were either neutral or on our side. Four Canadian soldiers. 40 innocent people celebrating a wedding. Several U.S. servicemen died in helicopter mishaps. Estimates range from 3,500 to 10,000 total, and that's not including the Taliban troops we killed on purpose--even though they had nothing to do with 9-11.
The odds that one of those 6,500 to 13,000 people--or their children--would someday have cured cancer or written a great novel may be slim. But those deaths are nevertheless an unfathomable tragedy, and not just to their friends and families. If a universe is lost when a single person dies, who can justify what was done to us, or what we did to others?
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 11 — In the final days of her five years in office, Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, has sharply criticized the United States for eroding civil liberties at home and human rights standards around the world since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"The United States could be a leader in combating terrorism while upholding human rights," Mrs. Robinson said in an interview here on Monday. "Instead it has sought to put all the emphasis on combating terrorism and has not been fully upholding human rights standards. And that's having a ripple effect on other less democratic countries."
She cited the United States' use of immigration laws to detain foreigners within its borders for indefinite periods, the racial profiling of people of Arab descent in searches and the prosecution of American citizens as enemy combatants, limiting their rights to legal representation. She also mentioned severe restrictions placed on the prisoners taken during the military campaign in Afghanistan and now being held at the American military base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
Mrs. Robinson, the United Nations' top human rights official, said that over the last year, when she questioned other governments on repressive measures, they responded by pointing to the United States and saying, in her words, "For goodness sakes, standards have changed."
A number of developing nations have copied antiterrorism measures adopted by the Justice Department in the past year but have applied them to suppress opponents, Mrs. Robinson said. She mentioned new laws and political crackdowns in the name of fighting terrorism in Egypt, Zimbabwe and Pakistan, among others.
By coincidence, Mrs. Robinson's term ends on Sept. 11. She did not seek another term. Her successor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian, has spent most of his 33-year career at the United Nations in the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, and recently directed the operation overseeing East Timor's transition to independence from Indonesia.
A former president of Ireland, Mrs. Robinson, 58, brought a new outspoken style to the commissioner's job, often rattling the United Nations, traditionally timid about open criticism of governments. She sought to make sure her critique included both developing countries and major powers. Her forthright commentary often grated on Bush administration officials, who complained that she had made confronting the United States a personal cause.
The Bush administration suddenly finds itself fighting wars on two fronts - foreign and domestic. The first is in response to terrorism. The second is over corporate fraud and corruption at home.
This weekend the administration confronted both, with mixed results. Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on Meet the Press, made a forceful case for regime change in Iraq, even if that meant US military intervention. The VP's appearance laid the ground for President Bush's September 12 address before the United Nations.
Cheney was less successful in fielding questions concerning allegations of accounting fraud and personal profiteering during his tenure as CEO of Halliburton, 1995-2000. The SEC is currently investigating the company's accounting practices and angry shareholders are alleging fraud and have sued Cheney and the company.
When asked Sunday to respond to the allegations, Cheney deflected the question, suggesting that the curious should refer to Halliburton's web site where, he claimed, they would find the answers. He said he could not answer the questions directly because it might be viewed as trying to influence the SEC's investigation.
But, as had been reported earlier when Cheney first referred reporters to the Halliburton Web site, the material there fails to answer those questions. Instead the site gratuitously states that Halliburton is innocent of any wrongdoing but has established new "accounting guidelines."
The site goes on to praise Cheney, as an "outstanding" leader. The company goes on to blame "political reporters" (guess that means us) who "want to see if there are any similarities between the company's accounting practices and those of the corporations under intense scrutiny because of their accounting." The web site continues: "However, we will work to answer every question honestly, no matter how ridiculous."
While Cheney continues to cite the SEC investigation for his public silence, he has not talked to the SEC about Halliburton either. Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise confirmed this weekend that SEC investigators have not even contacted the vice president yet.
Don't be surprised if he is never contacted. During the SEC's investigation of George W. Bush's Harken Energy stock sale in 1990 during his father's administration, the SEC never interviewed George W. Bush himself. Nor did the watchdog group approach Harken board members. In that case the SEC closed the investigation without taking action.
Fifty-two years ago, on a cold day on the Korean front, my lieutenant gave me a copy of Chinese Gen. Sun Tsu’s classic The Art of War. I've been a disciple ever since; the book has become my military bible, and I read a passage daily.
Sun Tzu lays it all out: Know your enemy; the art of war cannot be neglected; all warfare is based on deception; the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans; make sure the enemy threat is real.
Wise thinking about war and peace that Bush 43 should borrow from to help him counter the counsel of his advisers baying for Saddam's head. And since nobody has yet come up with sufficient justification for our grunts laying their lives on the line, the war gang would do well to slow down and study this brilliant Chinese general's words as well.
By the way, none of these hawks – not one of whom ever wore a soldier suit, even though most were of draft age back during the dark days of Vietnam – or their sons or daughters will be accompanying our warriors on their march to Baghdad. As usual, it will be a war fought by mainly blue-collar Americans with no vested interests in the oil business.
Back in 1991, when Stormin' Norman had the Iraqi army on the ropes, Super-Hawk Dick Cheney knew that Saddam had WMD (weapons of mass destruction) – but he still went along with Bush 41's decision to let the perps walk. Cheney should have stood in the door when 41 made that bad call and insisted we take out Saddam while we had the world behind us, and the forces on the ground to do the job. Or he should have resigned.
Yet 11 years later, Cheney is the main cheerleader for attacking Iraq because – breaking news – Saddam has chemical and bio weapons. And, he keeps telling us, Saddam now also has nukes.
Even though many experts say it isn't so, let's buy into Cheney's pitch and agree that Iraq has a few small nuclear warheads. The question then becomes: “Can he land them in New York City or Los Angeles?” The answer is: “No.”
"What harm can he do in four years?" I'm ashamed to say it, but that was my initial reaction to the Supreme Court's selection of George Bush as president. Attempting to avoid alternating waves of gnawing discomfort and quiet desperation, I asked myself a question my imagination dared not answer. Squelching a parade of fears, I sacrificed truth and clarity at the altar of rationalization. "It's not the end of the world," I said, and set my sights on 2004.
Now it appears those first fears were but legless underachievers. Early concerns focused on the environment and education and what Paul Krugman refers to as our "$7 trillion reversal of fiscal fortune;" certainly nothing as dark as what's transpired in the past year. Even as civil liberties, international commitments and our right to petition the government fell by the wayside, and it looked as if incompetence, neglect or something worse contributed to what went wrong, I needed to trust that this president was above exploiting tragedy for personal or political gain.
Using the Statue of Liberty and Sept. 11 as backdrops, however, he continues to shamelessly cull Americans into accepting his agenda: "War is peace. Slavery is freedom. And we're going to attack Iraq no matter what." As one seasoned government official told the Christian Science Monitor, "This administration is capable of any lie. . . in order to advance its war goal in Iraq." Given Gulf War propaganda expert John MacArthur's assertion that this crew will "make up just about anything ... to get their way," it's now clear that unimaginable harm can occur in a matter of months. And, frankly, musings on "the end of the world" are open to interpretation, too.
Initially, Armageddon chatter was met with amusement, a la Y-2K hand-wringing and millennium madness. Some saw Satan in the smoke clouds, just as others see the Virgin Mary in their Cinnabons. Surprisingly, however, a recent Time/CNN poll showed that a whopping one third of all Americans are now checking the news for apocalyptic signs. And raptureready.com webmaster Todd Strandberg joyfully updates his "Rapture Index" as events unfold.
While Armageddon aficionados might be easily dismissed, when Brent Scowcroft says an attack on Iraq will lead to Armageddon and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa warns it will "open the gates of hell," these matters take on more weight. Likewise, when a Saudi diplomat explains that Bush's "obsession" with Iraq will lead to tragedy, one thing becomes starkly clear: Armageddon, tragedy and "gates of hell," aren't words traditionally used by generals and ambassadors.
Various mainstream sources have also reported that Christian Zionists are campaigning to oust the Palestinians in order to make way for the Second Coming of Christ. Considering Biblical prophecy a mandate for awarding regional control to Israel (while downplaying another aspect of the "to do" list - conversion of the Jews), conservative Christians are not only funding Jewish settlers, but garnering immense influence in Washington. The secretive Council for National Policy, for example, which ABC News labeled "the most powerful conservative group you've never heard of," includes John Ashcroft, Tommy Thomson and "Left Behind" author Tim LaHaye as former members.
Despite pressure from the Democratic National Committee, the Bush campaign refuses to release a tape of the rumored "king-making" speech G.W gave before the council in 1999, fueling speculation that the council was responsible for his presidential nomination. Whether that's true or not, as the Washington Post reported last December, "For the first time since religious conservatives became a modern political movement, the president of the United States has become the movement's de facto leader."
WASHINGTON (AP) - The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged President Bush ( news - web sites) on Wednesday to rule out unilateral military action against Iraq, saying it was the "single worst option" for dealing with Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites).
Sen. Joseph Biden ( news, bio, voting record), D-Del., issued the appeal a day before Bush's speech on Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly. Bush is expected to ask the Security Council to compel Iraq to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors. It is not clear whether he will say the United States is prepared to use force against Iraq if the Iraqi president refuses to comply.
Biden, in remarks to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, said he will be "extremely disappointed" if Bush lays out a unilateralist approach in his U.N. speech that conveys the message, "`The world be damned, here we go.' That is not in our interest," Biden said.
CAIRO, Sept. 10 — Anger at the United States, embedded in the belief that the Bush administration lends unstinting support to Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, is at an unparalleled high across the Arab world, according to analysts and diplomats in the region.
The resolve of President Bush to use force against Iraq, they say, compounds the antagonism, which is expressed with particularly unvarnished dismay in Egypt and neighboring Jordan, Washington's crucial Arab allies.
More than in previous bouts of anti-Americanism in the region, the anger permeates all strata of society, especially among the educated, and is tinged, people acknowledge, with disillusionment at their own long-entrenched American-backed leadership.
Frustration at the failure of the Arab governments to forge a common front against the administration and its close relationship with the government of Ariel Sharon in Israel seeps through many conversations.
"There is a sense by many ordinary people and politicians that the moves against Iraq are an effort to redraw the map for the strategic interests of the United States and Israel," said Rami G. Khouri, an American-educated Jordanian journalist and a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, a research group with offices in Washington.
Mr. Khouri, like many others, said the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, was deeply unpopular in the region.
"Everyone I know wants Saddam Hussein removed," he said. "Nobody I know wants the Americans to do it — because we believe they are the last people in the world who will work on the behalf of Arab interests."
But this deep antagonism toward the United States is mixed, Mr. Khouri and others said, with an affinity for the American way of life that feeds the disillusionment with the Bush administration.
MOSCOW - When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf – to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait – part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.
Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.
But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert.
"It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story.
The White House is now making its case. to Congress and the public for another invasion of Iraq; President George W. Bush is expected to present specific evidence of the threat posed by Iraq during a speech to the United Nations next week.
But past cases of bad intelligence or outright disinformation used to justify war are making experts wary. The questions they are raising, some based on examples from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, highlight the importance of accurate information when a democracy considers military action.
"My concern in these situations, always, is that the intelligence that you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven by the intelligence," says former US Rep. Lee Hamilton (D) of Indiana, a 34-year veteran lawmaker until 1999, who served on numerous foreign affairs and intelligence committees, and is now director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. The Bush team "understands it has not yet carried the burden of persuasion [about an imminent Iraqi threat], so they will look for any kind of evidence to support their premise," Mr. Hamilton says. "I think we have to be skeptical about it."
With all the war fever about re-invading Iraq, the press and politicians are ignoring the opinion of the veterans of our last war in the Gulf. But we veterans were there, and we have unique and critical first-hand knowledge of the course and consequences of warfare in Iraq. Our opinions should be solicited and heard before troops deploy for battle, not after they have returned wounded, ill or in body bags.
Another invasion of Iraq in 2002 will be very different from the invasion of 1991. The war's mission has changed in the intervening years, from removing Iraq from Kuwait to removing the entire Iraqi government and military establishment from power. Because the goal of the U.S. military has changed, the Iraqi army may retreat to the cities, where they may face better odds than in the desert.
During the open desert tank battles of '91, U.S. tanks out-classed and out-fought obsolete Iraqi tanks, and U.S. infantry captured tens of thousands of poorly supplied Iraqi soldiers operating without command and control from Baghdad. But in the urban warfare scenario of 2002, pitched infantry skirmishes and ambushes in cities may present a more level battlefield for Iraqi troops fighting in their hometowns. The Iraqi military can be expected to fight for each block within each city with the most ruthless means available. When faced with the impending overrun of their nation, the Iraqi military didn't hesitate to use chemical weapons against Iran.
Because of these significant differences, here are 10 reasons why, as a Gulf War combat veteran, I oppose a second Gulf War as a costly and preventable mistake.
When the planes hit the World Trade Center last Sept. 11, my brother Avrame, who was in the North Tower, refused to join the evacuation because he was concerned for the safety of his close friend and fellow worker, a quadriplegic who could not easily leave. So Avrame stayed, hoping that help would arrive. When it didn't, he and his lifelong associate died together, along with thousands of others innocent New Yorkers.
That day changed my life. It changed the lives of all those who lost loved ones in the towers.
It changed the lives of the relatives of those on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. It changed the lives of hundreds of families who lost loved ones in the Pentagon. And, perhaps to a lesser extent, it changed the lives of most people living in the United States.
In the months after the disaster, I often heard how Sept. 11 changed the world. But I don't think the attacks changed the world. And to the extent that Americans believe that Sept. 11 changed the world, it is because they don't know much about the world in which they live.
I have never heard anyone say that the horrific massacres of 1994 in Rwanda - which took more than 500,000 lives - changed the world. Nor have I ever been told that Indonesia's massacre of 200,000 East Timorese during a 20-year span changed the world. I have not even heard that the daily loss of 8,000 souls in sub-Saharan Africa due to AIDS changed the world.
Were these people less important than my dear brother?
Despite my own personal grief, I must conclude that, in light of these far greater calamities, Sept. 11 did not change the world. What it did, in its own terrible way, was invite Americans to join the world, which is already a very troubled place. The question is whether we will accept that invitation.
Sadly, President Bush has no interest in doing so. He does not want the United States to join, or even cooperate with, the new International Criminal Court. He has also withdrawn the United States from the long-standing Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia, even as India and Pakistan shudder on the verge of nuclear war. He refuses to support international agreements that would alleviate global warming, and he will not seek to ratify the treaty banning land mines, leaving the United States in the company of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, Bush's "axis of evil."
And now the president is planning for a war against Iraq. Never mind that Iraq has committed no act of aggression against us that justifies war, that there has been no evidence linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks. Neither does the president seem to care that the world is opposed to an invasion of Iraq.
Friday, September 06, 2002
Except They Aren't True
"Even though a story can be incredibly preposterous in the Western mind, it can resonate deeply in other parts of the world," Todd Levanthal, a U.S. Information Agency specialist on disinformation, told the New York Times (9/16/90). "The key is predisposition to believe, not the crudity of the charge." While the point of the article was to portray Arabs as conspiratorial and irrational, the U.S. media's acceptance of crude charges about the official enemy demonstrates that a "Western mind" is no barrier to a "predisposition to believe."
Most U.S. news outlets uncritically accepted the story that 300 premature babies died when Iraqi soldiers removed them from incubators, which were sent to Iraq as loot. Alexander Cockburn (The Nation, 2/4/91), an exception, cited Kuwaiti medical personnel who went into exile after the invasion, who said that babies were still in incubators at Kuwait's Maternity Hospital in September, and that empty incubators had not been taken.
After the end of Iraqi occupation, the New York Times (2/28/91) offered this two-sentence retraction, buried five-sixths of the way through an article: "Some of the atrocities that had been reported, such as the killing of infants in the main hospitals shortly after the invasion, are untrue or have been exaggerated, Kuwaitis said. Hospital officials, for instance, said that stories circulated about the killing of 300 children were incorrect."
A "Captain Karim," ostensibly a former bodyguard of Saddam Hussein, was featured on 60 Minutes (1/20/91), as well as prominent TV outlets in Europe, making sensational charges about Saddam, e.g., "He become very happy when he see anyone in the acid bath." But as reported by Doug Ireland in the Village Voice (2/12/91), an investigation by French intelligence could find no evidence that Karim ever worked for Saddam, and labeled him a "mythomaniac" who had frequent contacts in Paris with Saudi military and intelligence officers.
Indulging in wishful thinking, Time's "Grapevine" page (2/11/91) asked "Is Saddam Cracking Up?" The piece claimed that Saddam was blinking very rapidly during his CNN interview the previous week: 40 times a minute, vs. 20-25 during an interview in June. Time consulted John Molloy, who trains salespeople to handle stress, who said, "When salesmen start blinking, they're usually in trouble. The guy looks like he's falling apart."
To put Saddam's blinking in perspective, Greenpeace's Peter Dykstra did a little research of his own: George Bush's eyes, he found, flickered at a Saddam-like 34 to 38 blinks per minute, while Michael Dukakis' showed a positively psychotic 74 b.p.m. Among the most reassuring eyes found by Greenpeace were Dan Quayle's, blinking a sane 20 times per minute.
The New York Times' editorial page (1/14/91) reported that "Baghdad Betty," an Iraqi government propaganda broadcaster, had told U.S. troops: "G.I., you should be home.... While you're away, movie stars are taking your women. Robert Redford is dating your girlfriend. Tom Selleck is kissing your lady.... Bart Simpson is making love to your wife."
When George Bush called Iraqi radio "ridiculous," the editorial said, "he couldn't know how right he was." But the joke was on the Times: The story it gleefully reported as fact was actually a joke Johnny Carson told on the Tonight Show (8/22/90). On Jan. 31 1990, Carson said that his joke had been "reported as a fact on CNN, Entertainment Tonight, Garrick Utley's Year-End Wrap-Up [on NBC], and in this issue of Time magazine [1/21/91]." In Carson's original joke, it's dad Homer Simpson instead of Bart -- a slightly more plausible scenario, since Bart is eight years old.
MOSCOW – When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf – to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait – part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.
Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.
But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert.
"It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story.
The White House is now making its case. to Congress and the public for another invasion of Iraq; President George W. Bush is expected to present specific evidence of the threat posed by Iraq during a speech to the United Nations next week.
But past cases of bad intelligence or outright disinformation used to justify war are making experts wary. The questions they are raising, some based on examples from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, highlight the importance of accurate information when a democracy considers military action.
"My concern in these situations, always, is that the intelligence that you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven by the intelligence," says former US Rep. Lee Hamilton (D) of Indiana, a 34-year veteran lawmaker until 1999, who served on numerous foreign affairs and intelligence committees, and is now director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. The Bush team "understands it has not yet carried the burden of persuasion [about an imminent Iraqi threat], so they will look for any kind of evidence to support their premise," Mr. Hamilton says. "I think we have to be skeptical about it."
With the massacres of a year ago came righteous outrage, bewilderment and a thirst for interpretations: What could such colossal violence mean? What did mass murder require of us? Who were we now? We needed a story.
The White House declared that the terrorists hated our freedoms; after an interlude of coalition building, the administration resumed its America-love-it-or-leave-it attitude. Members of Congress became sullen cheerleaders, cowed by the White House's willingess to question their loyalty. Patriotism seemed to function not as a spur to come to the aid of the country, but as a silencer.
Absolutists dominated the field — and eerily converged in their penchant for going it alone. The terrorists took it upon themselves to act in the name of all of Islam and all Muslims, to settle all accounts and slaughter all enemies. There could be no appeal or dissent; they expected their allies to be as silent as their enemies. They openly yearned to restore the eighth-century caliphate: a purist theocracy and an empire if ever there was one.
Squandering much support from around the world, President Bush soon showed he was ready to go it alone, keeping even Congress at arm's length. He was not content with self-defense. Countries that were not with us were against us. We were launched upon a permanent war against anyone he declared we were at war against; the administration reserved the right to break treaties and to undertake pre-emptive war.
The American left, too, had its version of unilateralism. Responsibility for the attacks had, somehow, to lie with American imperialism, because all responsibility has to lie with American imperialism — a perfect echo of the right's idea that all good powers are and should be somehow American. Intellectuals and activists on the far left could not be troubled much with compassion or defense. Disconnected from Americans who reasonably felt their patriotic selves attacked, they were uncomprehending. Knowing little about Al Qaeda, they filed it under Anti-Imperialism, and American attacks on the Taliban under Vietnam Quagmire. For them, not flying the flag became an urgent cause. In their go-it-alone attitude, they weirdly paralleled the blustering right-wing approach to the world.
Long before Sept. 11, this naysaying left had seceded. When Ralph Nader's Greens equated a Bush presidency with a Gore presidency, they took leave of any practical connection to America. Rightly demanding profound reforms but deluded about their popularity, they withheld their energy from the Democrats and squandered alliances that would have promoted their ideals. They acted as though their cause had to be lonely to be good.
Many liberals and social democrats saw through this hollow negativity and posed necessary questions. What was a war against terrorism? To what did it bind the nation? War against whom, and for how long? Why should American foreign policy be held hostage to oil? How should strong and privileged America belong in the world? Was the United States to be a one-nation tribunal of "regime change" wherever it detected evil spinning on an axis?
Some good answers float in the air now. They have not yet found political support, but they could. As the Bush administration paints itself into a corner, we could be headed toward a new liberal moment. Liberals need to step up their promotion of a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan and elsewhere, helping to stifle terrorism. Even conservatives no longer smirk about nation building or foreign aid.
Likewise, mainstream economists like Joseph Stiglitz (once chief economist of the World Bank) and Jeffrey Sachs (former free-market shock therapist) campaign to convince rich countries to give more development aid.
Liberals should affirm that American power, working within coalitions, can advance democratic values, as in Bosnia and Kosovo — but they should oppose this administration's push toward war in Iraq, which is unlikely to work out that way. Against oil-based myopia, there are murmurs (they should be clamors) that we should phase out the oil dependency that overheats the earth and binds us to tyrants.
On the domestic front, corporate chiefs have lost their new-economy charm — and the Bush administration's earlier efforts on their behalf have lost whatever political purchase they had. With the bursting of the stock market bubble, deregulation no longer looks like a cure-all.
Whom do Americans admire now? Whom do we trust? Americans did not take much reminding that when skyscrapers were on fire, they needed firefighters and police officers, not Arthur Andersen accountants. Yet we confront an administration whose policies reflect the idea that sacrifice — financial and otherwise — is meant for people who wear blue collars.
A reform bloc in Congress, bolstered in November, could start renewing the country. But we need much more than legislation. One year after, surely many Americans are primed for a patriotism of action, not of pledges. The era that began Sept. 11 would be a superb time to crack the jingoists' claim to a monopoly of patriotic virtue. Instead of letting minions of corporate power run away with the flag (while banking their tax credits offshore), we need to remake the tools of our public life — our schools, social services and transportation. Post-Vietnam liberals have an opening now, freed of our 60's flag anxiety and our reflexive negativity, to embrace a liberal patriotism that is unapologetic and uncowed. It's time for the patriotism of mutual aid, not just symbolic displays or self-congratulation. It's time to close the gap between the nation we love and the justice we also love.
Todd Gitlin, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society, is author of "Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives." He is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University.
The US State Department is due to host a conference on why there is so much anti-American sentiment in the world.
Twenty leading academics from the US and around the world will address members of the US Government on Thursday as part of a sustained campaign by the government to improve its global image.
There is a genuine sense of confusion amongst many people here in the US about why there should be so much anti-American feeling worldwide.
The belief, particularly on the right of US politics, is that the American dream is something most of the world would aspire to if they were only free to do so.
That has led to a sustained attempt by the Bush administration to promote American ideals and values around the world.
Certainly US President George W Bush has displayed a rare talent for alienating world opinion, right from his early decision to reject the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
And many outside the US would argue that it is American policies themselves that are at fault, not their presentation, however much money and effort is spent on it.
W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 5 — The name of the Department of Homeland Security is meant to evoke images of safety even family, hearth, comfort. It gives some people a knot in the stomach.
An uncommon word to begin with, "homeland" became an everyday word after the Sept. 11 attacks and was institutionalized when President Bush created the Office of Homeland Security.
Jeff Neberman, who teaches European history at Boise State University, says it's "right out of Nazi Germany." The German word "heimat" means "homeland" and was used by the Nazis. Others dispute a direct Nazi link and note various cultures have used the word, too.
"Homeland" has "obviously grated on quite a number of people," said Todd Gitlin, who teaches culture and sociology at Columbia University. "It feels like an import even if you're not aware that its origins are German."
Leslie Savan, who wrote a book about advertising and popular culture, said "homeland" makes her think not only of Germany, but also of Russia and South Africa's former apartheid government.
"It's been one of those words that's supposed to sound cozy and warm," she said. "But because it sounds cozy and warm it has been used by totalitarian governments."
Bush wants Congress to turn the homeland security office into a full-fledged Cabinet agency called the Department of Homeland Security, a matter the Senate took up this week. The House has passed its version of Bush's plan to merge all or parts of 22 agencies into a 170,000-employee department focused on preventing terrorism.
WASHINGTON - As part of its "war on terrorism," the Bush administration has vastly expanded government secrecy, removing information from the public domain, limiting its disclosures to Congress and allowing law enforcement agencies to operate in the shadows.
Its policies are beginning to stir growing criticism from the courts, Congress and even from some conservatives.
"For whatever reason, this administration has gone way way too far in its pursuit of secrecy in some particularly worrying ways," said Mark Tapscott, head of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Administration officials, from the president down, have justified their policy on the needs of fighting terrorism.
"We can't have leaks of classified information. It's not in our nation's interest," Bush said last October.
But the policy goes beyond classified information. A March 19 memorandum from White House Chief of Staff Andy Card urged government agencies to more aggressively protect "sensitive but unclassified" information.
Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration was expanding secrecy. It moved to hold up the release of presidential papers from former President Ronald Reagan and insisted on keeping secret members of an energy policy task force chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Last week, the White House said it would keep secret 4,000 pages related to presidential pardons granted by former President Bill Clinton in the final days of his administration. It said all presidents had the right to discuss and decide on pardons in private.
'MORE SECRETIVE THAN NIXON'
"This administration is the most secretive of our lifetime, even more secretive than the Nixon administration. They don't believe the American people or Congress have any right to information," said last week Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that is suing the administration to force it to reveal the members of the energy task force.
On the morning of January 22nd, a lawyer named Bill Lerach got out of his van in front of the Houston federal courthouse and presented a cardboard box full of shredded documents to the cameras of a waiting press corps. At the time, the implosion of Enron was still leading the news, and Lerach had filed a lawsuit against the company on behalf of its aggrieved shareholders. "It's a smoking howitzer," Lerach told reporters that day. "It doesn't get any worse than this. Call the cops. Something has to be done here." The pictures of Lerach and the documents, which Enron employees purportedly had shredded, became an indelible image of the collapse of the energy-trading firm. "I thought I was going to be run over by the media," Lerach recalled months later. "Never underestimate the power of a physical exhibit."
Lerach, who has spent the last few decades suing corporate executives for lying to, cheating, and otherwise defrauding their shareholders, is probably the leading class-action lawyer in the country. He regards the Enron lawsuit as the most important case of his career. "This case sums up everything I've been saying about these companies for years," he told me happily. "I was right for ten years, and no one cared. In case after case, we pleaded that the analysts for the investment banks were corrupted. We pleaded that the accountants were corrupted by their consulting fees. These judges were incredulous. They threw us out. They said professionals would never behave that way. Well, we saw how they behaved, didn't we?"
For the past year or so, Lerach has shadowed the procession of corporate disasters. On August 20th, for example, his firm sued Martha Stewart, alleging that she dumped stock in her own company when she learned that she was going to be investigated for insider trading in shares of the biotech firm ImClone. To be sure, Lerach has lost a few of these cases, but even some of the defeats make him look farsighted. In November of 2000, he sued WorldCom; a federal judge in Mississippi dismissed the case last March—shortly before the company collapsed in an accounting scandal. In December of 1999, Lerach sued Tyco International, and a judge in New Hampshire turned him away last February—not long before that conglomerate had its own accounting scandal. But Lerach's goal is less about muckraking and more about the money to be made in his line of work. Even his public unveiling of the shredded documents in Houston revealed his multiple agendas. Lerach wanted to use the documents against Enron, but he also wanted to persuade the judge to designate his law firm's client the lead plaintiff in the case, and in that way earn tens of millions of dollars in legal fees.
I have read a lot of flabbergasting articles about Sept. 11 and its aftermath in the past 11 months, but one paragraph in the paper last week brought the bar to its lowest.
A poll by Knight Ridder "indicated that most Americans are gung-ho for the global war on terrorism and a solid 67 percent favor taking it to Iraq."
Nope. Close, but that's not the paragraph.
It was this one: "The poll results reflect some confusion about the war on terrorism, a conflict with shifting boundaries and elusive enemies. Nearly one-third of Americans view the entire Muslim world as the enemy, even though several Muslim countries support the U.S. war effort."
The question this presents is: What?
Well, what do you expect in a country where it sometimes appears government is using a Marx Brothers movie script as a template.
Where it sometimes appears Homeland Security should be renamed "Homeland Paranoia."
Where the economic policy resembles in sincerity and record-keeping a Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker telethon.
Where the media seem to spend more money printing fast-fading flags and producing flag-waving promotions than on researching and reporting the actual degradation of rights, even the dissolution of rights, among citizens.
Doesn't it seem as if the government is wasting billions and billions of dollars on unnecessary or unworkable "security" - an exercise that reminds me of a raccoon attracted to anything that sparkles? Doesn't it seem as if we are botching chance after chance to prove to the world that the United States, in the face of a potential threat, can still assure equal justice under the law
Isn't it odd that government leadership is so rabidly intent on invading Iraq that it appears more attention is being paid to overthrowing a nation's psyche (our own) by zealous public relations than accumulating any solid evidence such an invasion is necessary?
Shouldn't we be a little worried when airport security has turned into an exercise in how best to amass eyebrow scissors and nail files, and detain and humiliate non-white travelers?
We wait and wait for someone in charge to ask: Invade Iraq? Are you nuts?
BRITAIN’S two most senior churchmen have launched separate impassioned initiatives aimed at preventing war against Iraq.
In an article in The Times today the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, writes that a war would have grave consequences, possibly setting the Arab world against the West. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, has also raised his concerns in a private letter to the Prime Minister.
Their interventions are the latest in a number by bishops opposed to action against Iraq — and their comments are increasingly irritating the Government and its advisers. One official said that remarks from some senior clerics suggested they regarded Saddam Hussein as liberal-minded.
Tony Blair himself has been careful to refrain from comment on the criticism other than to say: “You have to decide what the greatest risk is and what the morally right thing to do is." The Prime Minister has promised to publish evidence to support his conviction that Iraq poses a grave and imminent threat. However, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor writes that unless the evidence is both persuasive and incontrovertible, concerns in this country and abroad are unlikely to be allayed.
Even with such evidence, important questions remained to be addressed, including the effect on international law and how well it would be respected in future if military action were not endorsed by the UN.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States would not be able to involve NATO in a pre-emptive strike on Iraq because offensive action runs contrary to the founding principles of the North Atlantic alliance, officials said.
NATO invoked its Article V mutual defense clause for the first time the day after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, but it was sidelined from the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan that followed.
An official at the 19-nation alliance said that although Article V is still "activated," Washington would have to prove a link between the hijacked airliner attacks and Baghdad for it to be used as a mandate for NATO strikes on Iraq.
"Article V was adopted for a very specific incident," said the official, who asked not to be named. "I don't think you can automatically presume that the situation we're talking about here (an attack on Iraq) would fit in this context."
But could Article V be re-invoked for strikes on Iraq?
"There is no chance," said the official. "We're talking pre-emptive action here and that's not part of NATO's doctrine."
Federal officials are investigating claims that Israeli agents posed as Canadians during a spy operation in Gaza that reportedly used sexual blackmail to collect intelligence used to assassinate a Palestinian militant leader.
Canada's ambassador to Tel Aviv has asked Israel for an explanation of the incident and has been told it did not happen, but officials are concerned Israeli agents may be breaking their promise not to work undercover as Canadians.
Akram Zatmeh, 22, claims he supplied information to agents posing as Canadians that helped Israel pinpoint the whereabouts of a senior Hamas leader. The leader was later assassinated by Israeli forces in a July 23 missile attack that also killed 14 others, including nine children.
The informant claimed he was recruited by three agents who said they were Canadians and took him to the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv before coercing him with promises of travel to Canada and threats to distribute fake photos showing him in sexual encounters.
In a similar incident in 1997, Canada recalled its ambassador to Israel after undercover Mossad agents were caught using falsified Canadian passports during an assassination attempt on a Palestinian militant leader. Israel apologized at the time and promised not to do it again.